 My name is José del Valle, I'm the Executive Officer in the PhD Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages. What makes us unique in a sense is that we are forward looking because we are engaged in current debates on the status of language, culture and literature in the humanities. Yet we remain faithful to tradition, we remain aware to the disciplines in which most of us were trained. So increasing the emphasis on the interrelationships between Spain, or pronunciation or literature, philology, the history of the Spanish language and contemporary issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. So this has given us a very cutting edge, forward looking, unique identity with regards to the rest of the Spanish departments in the United States today. For example we have a renowned authority on Golden Age Peninsular Studies, an expert in Quevedo, and Professor Leah Schwartz. We have the recent hire of Professor Fernando de Giovanni, who is an expert himself in the construction of nationalism in 19th century Argentina. There's Professor Alicia Fiolmata, who has herself explored the recent cultural productions in the Caribbean. You can approach different teachers and they will be really open and flexible for you to mix and match different frameworks of analysis, they're open to that and it's not something that is easy to find in more traditional institutions. I have an undergraduate degree in art history, we are such an inclusive program that coming from a multidisciplinary perspective is very much what we're after. I'm writing a dissertation that it's about linguistics and it's about language, so it's truthful interdisciplinary and I think I could only do it here. The students are very diverse and so I really love that, we're a public university dedicated to New York City and then we have students from all over the world and so it's great to see the interaction between those different kinds of students. Students have the opportunity to do the courses through our consortium which unites Columbia University, New York University, Princeton and Rutgers University also. One of the aspects of the life of the program that I feel most proud of is our student conference. It's been happening for almost 20 years and it has reached a level of professionalism that is the envy of many other departments. It allows us to be visible within the academic context of the United States and overseas too. Many of the papers that we consider that are strong and solid and interesting can be published in the LL Journal and that also boosts more visibility to our program. We have a really wonderful program, I think there were a lot of fun in general. The students and the professors get along great. We have the highest incidence of complaints from the maintenance department for spilled wine on the rug. I find that there's a lot of a kind of a mentoring collaborative aspect in my program. We're people from Spain, from the United States, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico and the whole map. It's a real intellectual community. I've learned so much from the students, both the New York natives, me being a foreigner and immigrant here and from the international students. I'm very happy with the people I study with and I'm very happy with the professors I can reach. This department has a very strong group of students. All of the professors, whether they are having a hand in your personal work, are more than willing to assist with your interests. They're incredibly supportive. We have people with very different interests that are actors, that are poets, that are playwrights, that are folks who've been working on documentary filmmaking, which has become sort of a hub for translators in the New York City area. So our department takes full advantage of the fact that we are, in a Spanish-speaking city, that New York City is one of the central capitals of culture in Spanish language in the Americas. I feel really fortunate living in New York and getting to continue my scholarly work here. It's a graduate center because it's academically, it's a fantastic place, but being in the city I think is hugely stimulating and New York City is a center of film culture globally. Our program is very much aware of the different cultural institutions operating in New York City such as the Instituto Cervantes and we have been able to develop in time a very strong, solid relationship with all those institutions. I just love it here. It's like I was born to live in New York City. This is absolutely incredible. I live in one of the biggest embassies in the world and sometimes it's surprising, but it's always this amazing experience that you can't get anywhere else.