Italian Minor

• Develop language competence and communicative strategies.
• Apply knowledge of language history.
• Identify and utilize linguistic core concepts.
• Identify and analyze rhetorical strategies in different texts and genres.
• Apply knowledge of cultural and theoretical contexts.
• Locate and interpret sources and produce original research.
• Incorporate sources and modes of analysis from multiple disciplines and media.
• Appraise material critically.
• Recognize and cultivate personal growth.

RLL recently updated its departmental classroom to provide state-of-the-art audio visual technology for classroom presentations, lectures and films. The department also has a Quebec Studies seminar room with specially dedicated materials and equipment available to support film study. A spacious conference room serves for meetings and oral exams. All regular classrooms are equipped with up-to-date computing and display technology and are linked by a T1 connection to the Internet. Secure wifi is ubiquitous on campus.

The breadth of faculty specializations in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and a pan-Romance model make for an actively interdisciplinary research and teaching agenda which promotes linguistic, literary, cultural, and visual literacies. We have emerging interests in Catalan and Portuguese, with cross-disciplinary strengths in Iberian and Latin American Studies, Francophone Canadian, Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Studies, Early Modern Studies, as well as Cultural, Postcolonial, Gender, Disability, and Urban and Landscape Studies, in addition to Poetry, Theater and Performance, Film, and Romance Linguistics. RLL faculty contribute to interdisciplinary initiatives such as UB’s Humanities Institute, the Gender Institute, the Early Modern Reading Group, Poetics and Canadian Studies.

RLL graduate students are productive and high achieving. They have successfully competed for UB Presidential scholarships; been short-listed for Fulbright and Ford fellowships; received CAS and Humanities Institute dissertation writing grants; had papers accepted in major disciplinary conferences, and articles accepted for publication at peer-reviewed journals. They organize an annual conference and publish its proceedings.

Full time tenured/tenure track RLL faculty: 18
Teaching assistants: 15
Adjunct faculty: 9

Students who choose RLL and especially the Italian program as their main academic home at UB find a number of career opportunities open to them. Among graduates in the past decade, some have gone on to do graduate work, some have gone on to law school, and others have found positions in public service and secondary education. Students of languages, literatures, cultures, and linguistics develop a broad skill set that prepares them for a multitude of career choices. The skills that you’ll acquire in your classes include critical thinking, cultural competency, team work, research and analysis, and of course advanced communication skills in more than one language. Careers that you can pursue with this skill set include work in the travel and tourism industry, sales and customer service, international business, politics and public policy, diplomatic service, education, translation and interpretation, and social media consulting, among others.

Some fields in which RLL graduates have pursued careers include:

• Anthropology and linguistics
• Public relations
• Customs and immigration
• Diplomacy and foreign service
• Post-secondary and secondary education
• International student advisement
• International trade
• International relations
• Broadcast and print journalism
• Law and jurisprudence
• Public relations
• Translation
• Federal civil service
• Social work