Romance Languages & Literatures
The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (RL&L) is a cornerstone of the Humanities at Wesleyan and the university’s gateway to the French-, Italian-, Portuguese-, and Spanish-speaking worlds. We represent literary and cultural traditions that extend from the Middle Ages to the present. We teach languages, literatures and cultures that span Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Our students develop and apply their knowledge and skills through the extracurricular activities and study abroad opportunities that we promote. Through a network of collaborations across departments and divisions, we support a wide array of majors, academic programs and initiatives.
Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson is an engaging investigation that retraces the misunderstood history of the birth of race through the lives and ideas of thirteen pivotal figures. Moving from the gilded halls of Versailles to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, from the ... Read more
Only a Little While Here, winner of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (2023) and Colombia’s National Novel Award (2024) has been translated from the Spanish by award winning translator Heather Cleary and published by Scribner.
Students enrolled in ITAL225: Italian/Middletown: Podcasting Middletown’s Italian Treasures, a course taught by Professor Ellen Nerenberg in Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 learned about the history of Middletown’s Italian community and conducted a hunt for Italian treasures to explore and study. As a result they have produced a wonderful podcast about how Middletown’s Italian past is related ... Read more
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