The Department of World Languages and Literatures is vital to the social and intellectual life of the College of Liberal Arts and the University of Nevada. We contribute a crucial component to the university's efforts to prepare undergraduate and graduate students for an increasingly diverse world in which communicating well across cultures and competing globally determine success. The quality and effectiveness of the department's programs are essential to the success of the university, both locally, in an increasingly multilingual State, and globally, in an increasingly networked world.

The department provides students with the cultural background, critical thinking skills, and communicative proficiency they need to navigate in a complex global environment. The department offers undergraduate students rigorous, innovative programs of study in their chosen fields, from basic courses in a variety of foreign languages to advanced courses in literature, film, culture, critical theory, translation, and linguistics. The department offers a Master of Arts degree program in Spanish that aims to provide students with a broad knowledge base from which to pursue more-specialized studies, to offer a depth of experience in scholarship, and, for graduate assistants, student teaching and research that will advance their future professional activities. The department's excellent placement record attests to its commitment to the intellectual and professional formation of its graduate and undergraduate students.

The department promotes discovery, creativity, and the advancement of knowledge and mutual understanding. Our faculty is composed of active, engaged teachers and scholars who present their research and creative work in major venues, from respected journals and leading scholarly presses to regional, national, and international conferences. Our language teachers use the latest methodologies and teaching technologies, including the foreign language multimedia facility, smart classrooms, and the Internet. The department supports the scholarly and creative work of its faculty and students at home and abroad, and recognizes that truly innovative work often changes how we view our own and other fields of knowledge.