The Border Studies concentration within the Department of Spanish and Portuguese investigates the heterogeneity and hybridity that both emerge from and shape the cultural and linguistic practices and production of borderlands. Inherently interdisciplinary, Border Studies emphasizes the need for enlisting and developing analytic frameworks from various fields to evaluate the complexity that defines these physical and symbolic spaces. Our location at the University of Arizona offers students the opportunity to combine this rigorous interdisciplinary academic training with onsite learning that is rooted in, though not limited to, our positionality along the border between the United States and Mexico. 

This interdisciplinary concentration is open to graduate students who have been admitted into the PhD program in Linguistics or Literature. Students may choose Border Studies as either their major or minor concentration.