The Department of French and Italian offers graduate programs leading to the Master of Arts and the Doctor of Philosophy degrees in French and in Italian. Candidates for the master's degree may specialize in French Studies, French Linguistics, French Language Learning, or Italian. Candidates for the doctoral degree in French may choose one of three specializations: French Studies, French Linguistics, or Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE).<br>PhD students train to become researchers in the field of Italian Studies, Mediterranean Studies and a variety of related fields. After two years of coursework to complete and refine their research projects, doctoral students conduct original research and prepare for a professional life in the academic or in fields that require specialized and developed research skills (NGOs, Think tanks, government agencies, etcetera).The graduate program in Italian Studies is committed to the interdisciplinary study of Italian literature and culture. Our faculty work on areas ranging from literature and cinema to medieval and early modern culture to history and critical theory. Recent and current graduate students working in Italian have written on topics ranging from the literature of extracomunitari in Italy, Dante's body in the context of pilgrimage texts, the acquisition of verb morphology, to postmodernism and detective fiction. Prospective graduate students should know that they will receive a training appropriate for an ever-more interdisciplinary profession, and that they will have the resources of a major university, ranging from the European Union Center to the largest public university library in the world, containing world-famous Dante, Tasso, and Italian Renaissance Plays collections. We recognize that financial support is a crucial aspect of a graduate career, and we are committed to providing our continuing students with fellowships and teaching opportunities. All of our graduate students in Italian have received Graduate Teaching Assistantships, which include tuition and partial fee waivers. Before completing their degrees, our students have the opportunity to teach in their content area, in addition to language courses.