Study Abroad

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese strongly encourages all students interested in these languages, and particularly those pursuing a major or minor in our department, to study abroad for at least one summer or semester term. Start talking to advisers in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Emory Education Abroad early in your college career to plan for these opportunities.

Note: Our department does not grant credit for study abroad in non-Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries.

For Emory faculty-led summer programs abroad, students take Emory courses and there is no need to establish credit equivalency. This is also true for most courses in the Salamanca semester or yearlong program. In order to gain Spanish or Portuguese credit for other programs in Spanish- and Portuguese countries, you will need to apply for pre-approval and final approval from the department.

Before Semester/Year Abroad: Provisional Approval of Courses

As part of the application process for a semester or year abroad, you will familiarize yourself with the courses being offered in your program and submit a plan of which courses you plan to take. Some courses have been blanket-approved for Emory credit and do not require further consultation with the Emory department. If you wish to receive Spanish or Portuguese credit for other courses, your request will be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) in Spanish or the Director of the Portuguese Program (DPP) for provisional approval.

Most language classes from study abroad in Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries are approved at the 100 or 200 level. Culture courses can be pre-approved for 300-400 level credit when they meet the following criteria:

• The course is taught in Spanish or Portuguese.
• It relates to study of the Hispanic or Lusophone world.
• It deals with topics included in our Departmental curriculum. The scope of these topics is very wide, but they generally relate to the humanities: literature, linguistics, film, theater, philosophy, history, etc.
• The topic should be approached in a critical way and include textual analysis. (Most types of texts are valid, including film and art manifestations.)

As in our own department, 300-level courses have a panoramic perspective (e.g., a course on Argentine literature from the 19th and 20th century). 400-level courses are focused on a narrower >aspect or topic (e.g., a course on the Estado Novo in contemporary Portuguese film, >or a course on multilingualism and linguistic policy in Spain. For more examples, you can check out the course descriptions for our current 400-level seminars in OPUS.

If the student has to modify their registration subsequent to arrival overseas, they must consult with the Study Abroad office and with the DUS or DPP to get pre-approval for all changes.

After Semester/Year Abroad: Final Approval

Provisional approval of courses does not guarantee final approval.

Once students return from a study abroad program, they need to meet with the DUS in Spanish or the Director of Portuguese to complete the credit approval process. The student is responsible for collecting and presenting the following materials:

1. a complete syllabus, including reading list and grade distribution, for each course;
2. the provisional approval notification from before study abroad;
3. all papers written for each course. For 300-400 level courses, only research papers with significant bibliography (similar to the ones you write in our 300-400 courses) will be accepted. Papers lacking bibliography or without evident signs of critical research will not meet this requirement. Length of the paper should be 9-12 pages for a 300-level course or 12-15 pages for a 400-level seminar. (In both cases bibliography is excluded from this page count.)

The delivery of all these materials to the DUS or DPP is a crucial step in the final accreditation process. Without them, we cannot grant Spanish or Portuguese academic credit, even if the courses were provisionally approved. It remains at the discretion of the the Spanish or Portuguese faculty director to determine whether the work done in this class merits credit in our programs.