The Department of Spanish at Bates College responds to the cultural richness and diversity of the peoples who speak Spanish as well as to the obligations and opportunities of a globalized world through a threefold mission: we enable students to acquire a strong and useful proficiency in Spanish that allows them to navigate cultural spaces in which over 500 million people interact worldwide; we foster the development of interpretative skills and contextual knowledge to engage critically a broad range of cultural productions originating in the Spanish-speaking world; we contribute to the study of the humanities through a curriculum of courses taught in Spanish that includes studies of Latin American, Spanish and US/Latino literature, media and visual arts covering an array of historical periods, and is informed by diverse and varied theoretical approaches.