The RLL program was founded in 1926 as an interdepartmental Ph.D. program by the departments of French, Italian and Spanish. Until the middle 1960s the RLL degree was the only Ph.D. offered by the three departments. At some point before 1948 (the earliest date from which documentation survives), the program was structured along two tracks, one for students whose principal interest was literary, the other for students focused on philology. Later still, when the Graduate Group in Romance Philology was established, the philology track in RLL was removed and students could opt between Plan I (Literature) and Plan II (Linguistics) as they exist today.
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Welcome
Wednesday, March 27th, 2013Welcome to the website of the interdepartmental Ph.D. program in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley! This joint venture by the Departments of French, Italian Studies, and Spanish & Portuguese offers students a unique opportunity to work with distinguished faculty in all three departments, as they take advantage of Berkeley’s unmatched resources for comparative study of the literatures and linguistics of the Romance language family. We welcome applications from interested and highly qualified students. You will find a wealth of information about the program on this site; please feel free to contact us with any further questions you may have.