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Undergraduate

Degree programs that lead to opportunity

With over 500 million Spanish speakers and over 240 million Portuguese speakers worldwide, our undergraduate programs offer a unique opening to two truly global languages. These languages are vehicles of thought and expression within vibrant cultures spread across the globe—including the United States, the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.

When you become familiar with and even fluent in a language, you acquire a new worldview—new ways of thinking, communicating, and experiencing your relationship to others. Language acquisition skills open the door to new opportunities.

In addition to majors and minors in Spanish and Portuguese, our department is also home to one of the few Catalan programs in the U.S. Spoken in parts of Spain, France and Italy, Catalan is also a main language in the global city of Barcelona. Undergraduate students may take Catalan courses in our department.

Languages that expand your world

Spanish and Portuguese embody long, rich, and influential histories of cultural creativity and innovation that continue today in literature, fine arts, music, architecture, film, science and technology, philosophy, religion, business, fashion and design, sports, and social practices.

When you major in Spanish or Portuguese, you not only become fluent in the language, but you also learn about culture, literature, and linguistics though a wide array of areas and subjects: history, politics, philosophy, visual arts, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, coloniality and decolonization, anthropology and cultural theory, and the scientific method, including data collection and data analysis. You are able to develop your interests in these topics from a new perspective.

Gain valuable linguistic + cultural competence

A major or minor in Spanish or Portuguese will provide you with the many benefits of a solid liberal arts education, while allowing you to become fluent in another language, obtain cultural competency, and develop cross-cultural understanding.

Our program offers small class sizes, dedicated faculty with expertise in diverse areas, courses that combine breadth and depth of knowledge, opportunities for student research, cultural and community engagement, and study abroad options with Latin American and European university programs.

A vibrant, flexible program

The B.A. degrees in both Spanish and Portuguese are flexible and offer much freedom in the selection of courses, including the wide variety offered in our department. We encourage you to study abroad as an integral part of your undergraduate experience. In most cases, courses taken abroad in an IU-approved program can count towards your major or towards requirements in other departments and programs. This makes our degrees easy to combine with other majors, minors, and certificates in the humanities, social, and natural sciences, including dual-degrees within the College of Arts and Sciences or other schools such as the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.