Bienvenidos and welcome to our new website.

We encourage you to explore this website, and better yet to come visit us when you can. Here's a short a description of our department. Over the past two years, the Department of Hispanic Studies has made considerable progress towards its goal to orient its research profile towards Transatlantic, Caribbean, and Border studies. The department currently consists of two Peninsular specialists, three Latin Americanists, and one Chicano Studies specialist. In addition to our two most recent hires, one in the Hispanophone Caribbean and the other in Southern Cone literatures, the department plans to search for a Mexicanist in the next hiring cycle.

On June 5, 2009, the Department became the host to one of Spain's educational missions, the  Spanish Resource Center .  Besides bringing a collection of Spanish literature, film, and music that would be made available to the Rice community, the Spanish Resource Center also sponsors a K-12 outreach program on language instruction throughout the greater Houston area. The Center will also co-sponsor cultural and academic events with the department.

Finally, in addition to being chair of Hispanic Studies, I am also the Director of the Américas Research Center (ARC). The ARC was created to support the research of Rice faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences that is focused on the Américas, in particular Latin America, as well as the Caribbean, the U.S.-Mexican Border, the U.S. West, and past and current diasporic movements in and out of the hemispheres. The ARC is a key feature of the President's Latin American Initiative, which seeks to develop collaborative relationships with universities in Latin America around research and student/faculty exchanges. The department of Hispanic Studies has played a key role in helping to develop the mission of the ARC and the President's overall initiative.

Please note that we will regularly post important events that you might find interesting. These events are always open to the public. So make us one of your bookmarks!

Hasta pronto,
Dr. José F. Aranda Jr
Chair of Hispanic Studies