The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures invites you to explore the academic possibilities that will expand your professional, intellectual and personal horizons. We offer majors, ID majors, and/or minors in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and selected courses in Arabic, Hebrew, Italian and Portuguese.
Hear from alumni who share their experiences about learning a new language while at Union College.
In the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, we understand that culture begins with language. By living language in and beyond the classroom, our students cross borders and discover intersections that enrich their lives and environments. They learn not only the integral role languages play in shaping cultures of others as well as their own, but how immersion in other cultures through language unlocks aspects of their own lives they did not imagine existed. Our faculty are experts in face-to-face, technology-supported, immersive learning, and practitioners of interdisciplinary study. As a result, our students have the unique opportunity to pursue rigorous research projects in the target language that traverse arts and humanities, social sciences, science and engineering. With emphasis on critical analysis across a wide array of fields, our language programs expand students’ ethical and intercultural values through experiences that prepare them to negotiate a diverse range of perspectives and situations in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities, both local and global. Studies in Modern Languages and Literatures train students from day one in skills of adaptability, flexibility, and mobility, thus significantly broadening their opportunities on the world job market and for competitive graduate studies, while enhancing their sensitivity to realities of a shared life.
Please contact us for more information about our programs and offerings.
As the mission of the Modern Languages and Literatures department indicates, our students expand their “ethical and intercultural values through experiences that prepare them to negotiate a diverse range of perspectives and situations in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities, both local and global.” Echoing these aspirations, the department would like to recognize and celebrate some of our students’ accomplishments this year (2023). Majoring or minoring in languages while pursuing other careers, these students used their interdisciplinary interests and skills to realize their visions and get the following distinctions:
Ebyan Abshir ’24 (Spanish/English minors & Africana Studies). selected for the Judge Reginald C. Lindsay Fellowship by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts)
Caitlin Boice ’23 (Japanese/English ID. selected for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. She will help teach English in a Japanese school)
Morgan Duffany ’23 (Spanish/Biochemistry double Major. Morgan received a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to teach English in the Canary Islands, Spain)
Sebastian Koch ’23 (German minor/Electrical Engineering/Chemical Engineering). Sebastian was selected for the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX) Fellowship)
Caroline Monaco ’25 (French/Environmental Science Double major. Caroline was selected for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship)
Read the article on our news site for more information on these students
Graphic: career paths of Union language majors
