French is a small but vigorous program that combines the acquisition of language skills with a wide-ranging study of French culture. We look at France in the various stages of its development, as the "eldest daughter of the Church," the child of Marianne, and a dynamic member of the transnational community of the twenty-first century.

We offer an academically challenging and energetic course of studies in German language, literature and culture. Those who learn German gain access to an important intellectual, economic and culturally historic area of Central Europe.

The Italian language is not only a means of communication, but it also expresses the soul of a people, its roots, its history, its culture. In the modern world where globalization tends to level and homogenize different cultures, it is vital to keep alive, through the study of the Italian language, a culture that has always played a prominent role in the Western culture. Italian is a field of study whose language, literature, and culture are among the primary sources of the Western Intellectual Tradition. It focuses on the great and the beautiful, and on the poetic, sacred, artistic, and musical legacies of Italy, offering an innovative and interdisciplinary approach grounded in tradition, with courses in Italian language, literature, history, linguistics, and art history. Throughout the major we examine the paradox of modern Italy, a new country with ancient customs. As Prince Tancredi Falconeri put it in the classic novel The Leopard, a country in which “if we want everything to stay the same, everything must change.” The Italian Program offers both a B.A. and a Concentration in Italian. 

UD's Spanish Program celebrates the splendor of the Hispanic World, of Hispanidad, concentrating on the grand, the heroic, the poetic, the creative, the artistic, the holy, the stoic and other admirable facets of the legacy and contemporary reality of Spain and Spanish America. The Program also offers an interdisciplinary approach to Hispanidad through courses in Spanish language, literature, history, linguistics, and art history. Finally, the courses examine the tension between the unity and the rich diversity within the Hispanic world.

Comparative Literature is dedicated to the study of literature in the broadest possible framework – interlinguistic, intercultural, and interdisciplinary. Defined broadly, it is the study of "literature without walls." So it’s about making comparisons and connections between all sorts of literary and cultural realms.For details on our major programs in French, German, Spanish, and Comparative Literary Traditions, click on the above links.