French Studies (PhD)

About this programme

We strive to prepare our students to become leaders in an increasingly diverse society by providing them with French and Italian cultural literacy in dialogue with global contexts, and professionally relevant linguistic, research, interpretive, and expressive skills and tools. Students learn to understand their multilingual, multicultural world in historical perspective, to convincingly convey this understanding to others in both English and one or both of our target languages, and to articulate and implement the career transferability of their skills. The study of French and Italian language and culture is more important than ever in our increasingly interconnected world. France and Italy are core members of the European Union and important players in the global economy and their cultures are among the world's richest and most influential. French and Italian are among the five most popular languages studied at American universities, ranking second and fifth respectively.