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The Spanish and Portuguese Section offers undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. It is unique in its commitment to exploring the trans-historical and cross-cultural interrelations between all these language areas and their corresponding cultural formations. The research interests of its academic staff thus span a wide range of areas including Medieval and Golden Age Spanish cultures and their consolidation in dialogue with the diverse cultures and faith systems of Africa and the 'New World' the literature, art and cinema of Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa the literature of modern Spain and its relationship with the Enlightenment, colonialism, and modernity the cinema of the Ibero-American world from early silent film through to its avant-garde, indigenous, popular, and transnational dimensions today and the culture of Catalonia from its rebirth in the Renaixença, through its resistance to Franquismo in literature and film, to its vibrant contemporary artistic, architectural and cinematographic expressions. The Section also has one of the largest contingents of Latin American specialists in the United Kingdom, whose interests span the poetry, chronicles, and indigenous cultural production of the colonial period the formation of national cultures in post-independence Spanish America and Brazil the experimental literatures of the Spanish American 'Boom' and the literature, cinema, and visual art produced in the interlocking contexts of post-dictatorship, mass urbanisation, narcotráfico and neo-liberal globalisation. The intellectual vitality of the Section is further evidenced by a dynamic research culture of public lectures, section seminars, postgraduate workshops and conferences, all of which add to a close-knit system of graduate supervision and mentoring that encourages both individual and collective endeavour within the Section. In British universities, the PhD (Doctorate of Philosophy) is traditionally awarded solely on the basis of a thesis, a substantial piece of writing in English that reports original research into a closely defined area of enquiry. The completion of the PhD thesis is generally expected to take three to four years, and most funding is based on this assumption. It's also possible to take a part-time route through research degrees, and the expected timeframe would be four to seven years. During your research, the student will have the opportunity to work closely with a Supervisor who is a specialist in the candidate's research area. In addition to the Supervisor, the candidate will normally also be able to draw on the help and support of one further academic advisor and consult other academics working in related fields. The student might reasonably expect to see their Supervisor fortnightly or at least three times per term.
