About Us
Welcome to the Department of French and Italian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where faculty and students specialize in the oral, written and visual cultures of France, Italy, Francophone, and Italophone worlds.
In 2018, Zippia (a career and recruiting website) named UCSB #5 in their top ten list of colleges in California for Romance languages and linguistics, based on mean career earnings for graduates, percentage of graduating class that were Romance language and linguistics majors, and university admissions and cost. More information can be found here.
Our faculty, comprised of 7 professors, one senior lecturer and 3 lecturers in French, and 2 professors and 6 lecturers in Italian, is deeply committed to both research and teaching.
Our faculty is recognized nationally and internationally, and we invite you to learn about their research by visiting their personal pages. Our French program focuses on three major areas: French and Francophone literature and culture, ranging from medieval fiction, poetry and drama to contemporary literature, literary theory and intellectual history, French language and linguistics, including language pedagogy and second-language acquisition. In addition, we offer French courses designed to address professional interests, including business, biology and bioethics, law, international relations and globalization. Our Italian program is focued on the cultural history of the modern Italian nation seen from a global perspective. Besides the traditional Italian Studies major, with courses taught in both Italian and English focusing on both Italian high arts and mass culture, our program offers the first Transnational Italian Studies emphasis, taught entirely in English, and exploring the "making of Italians" from a postcolonial and global perspective. By contrast, the Italian minor is taught entirely in Italian and focuses on linguistic competency and translation.
We provide our students with extensive training in French and Italian language and culture, literary history, theory and criticism. As a part of the College of Letters and Science, our faculty is dedicated to interdisciplinary work and has close affiliations with other departments and programs, such as Comparative Literature, Film Studies, Theater and Dance, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Religious Studies, Sociology, Global Studies and Feminist Studies.
Our Department offers undergraduate programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts in French and in Italian Studies. We also support the Doctorate and the Master of Arts in Comparative Literature, through a new specialization called "French in Comparative Literature." Doctoral students may also declare a special emphasis in Applied Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Translation Studies, and/or Feminist Studies. Our web pages will guide you to the requirements as well as to the goals and objectives of our various degrees.
With the goal of a global education in mind, our Department strongly encourages study abroad in Italy or in a French-speaking country with any UC-approved program or with the many UC-affiliated programs in Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Bologna, Milan, Rome, and Florence. Click here to learn more about the Education Abroad Program in France and Italy.
We invite you to navigate our website, which will give you a detailed picture of our Department as you learn more about our research, courses, undergraduate and graduate programs, and contact information.
Jean Marie Schultz, Chair
chair@frit.ucsb.edu
DEPARTMENTAL HIGHLIGHTS
Prof. Fogu's book explores the role of the Mediterranean in the 'making of' Italians. Reinterpreting key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, the book challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete highlighting the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. Mediterranean imaginaries, Fogu argues, acted as counterweights to the solidification of a national form of identity by offering alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.
