The Department of Spanish and Portuguese is devoted to the literatures, cultures, and languages of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

In addition to language and literature, we offer courses in related applications: Iberian Linguistics, Translation Studies, Feminist Studies, Medieval Studies, and Applied Linguistics. Our internationally-recognized faculty is diverse in its specializations -- from Latin American and European cultures and literatures, to new media studies and popular culture, to linguistics and language pedagogy.  

Undergraduates studying Spanish and/or Portuguese focus first on proficiency in the four language skills: speaking, understanding, reading, and writing in Spanish and/or Portuguese. They go on to select language, literature, culture, or a combination of those fields. Many students combine a major in Spanish or Portuguese with a second major in another discipline in the humanities, the social sciences, or the natural sciences.

Qualified students may spend their junior year in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Mexico City, Costa Rica, Santiago de Chile, or Rio de Janeiro.

Related Programs

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Center for Portuguese Studies
Center for Portuguese Studies

The Center for Portuguese Studies promotes and develops studies about the Portuguese speaking world in California and in the United States.

Spanish And portuguese News & Features

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On Creativity and Censorship in Cuban Film
On Creativity and Censorship in Cuban Film

UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted Cuban writer-director Miguel Coyula and actress Lynn Cruz to discuss their 2021 film Corazón Azul. The filmmakers spoke about the challenges they faced over the decade it took to produce the film, specifically, government censorship in Cuba.

Black History in the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking World
Black History in the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking World

Jaime Alves, Black Studies professor at UCSB, said that scholars should frame Blackness as a resistance to Latin American colonial narratives that have falsely asserted Blacks were fully integrated into society. This talk was part of the 21st Hispanic and Lusophone Conference, hosted annually by UCSB’s Spanish and Portuguese department.

HFA Creativity Contest: Photography and Visual Art
HFA Creativity Contest: Photography and Visual Art

This spring, UC Santa Barbara’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted the annual creativity contest to highlight creative student voices across the UCSB campus. The following are the winning submissions in the Photography and Visual arts categories.

A Modern Take on Medieval French Farce
A Modern Take on Medieval French Farce

Jody Enders, medievalist and UCSB Distinguished Professor in the department of French and Italian Studies, recently translated two books of French farce. Enders spoke at a recent IHC Humanities Decanted event with Leo Cabrantes-Grant, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese. They discussed contemporary themes in medieval farces that resonate with a 21st-century audiences and how Enders approaches translating.

Borders: Past, Present and Future
Borders: Past, Present and Future

Cecilia Méndez, director of the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) program at UC Santa Barbara, along with Spanish and Portuguese Professor Juan Pablo Lupi organized the second UCSB Latin American and Iberian Studies graduate student conference on the topic of Borders, Power, and Transgression last month. In an interview, Méndez said understanding the connections between power and transgression of borders is a global concern.

Celebrating 100 Years of Jorge de Sena
Celebrating 100 Years of Jorge de Sena

Scholars from around the globe gathered last week to celebrate the 100th birthday of the late UC Santa Barbara professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Compartive Literature, Jorge de Sena. The event, a colloquium titled ““One Hundred Years of Jorge de Sena Itineraries: Portugal, Brazil, United States,” featured five keynote speakers who each provided unique insight into de Sena’s literary work and personal life.

VERBAL KALEIDOSCOPE: UCSB's First Indigenous Literature Conference
VERBAL KALEIDOSCOPE: UCSB's First Indigenous Literature Conference

The Spanish and Portuguese Department earlier this month presented “Verbal Kaleidoscope” the first interdisciplinary conference at UC Santa Barbara dedicated to Indigenous literatures. Several poets of the Zapotec, Mazatec, Spanish, Basque, and other language groups recited their work in what organizer Osiris Gómez described as a display of diversity.

“Verbal Kaleidoscope is a metaphor for cultural and linguistic plurality, said Gómez, a Spanish and Portuguese Ph.D. candidate. “The world, even at a community level is immensely diverse…With every swirl, movement, transition, we face new challenges and promising forms.”

FOCUS ON FACULTY: Aline Ferreira
FOCUS ON FACULTY: Aline Ferreira

Aline Ferreira, an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, is currently directing high-tech eye tracking equipment in UCSB’s Bilingualism, Translation, and Cognition Laboratory to observe the brain as it translates from a speaker or typist’s mother tongue to a second language and back again.

She discussed this and other projects in a recent interview with HFA student Sierrah DeBoer.