The graduate Program in Letras (PPGL) of the State University of Rio Grande do Norte (UERN) started its activities on June 10, 2008. It offers master and doctoral academic courses in Letras, both with Concentration Area in “Discourse and Text Studies” and three lines of research: (i) Discourse, Memory and Identity; (ii) Text and Construction of Senses; and (iii) Literary Text, Criticism and Culture. The PPGL has its headquarters at the Pau dos Ferros Campus (CAPF), located in the city of Pau dos Ferros, in Rio Grande do Norte State (RN).

The UERN, IES responsible for PPGL, is a multicampi public university, with academic and administrative structures in six municipalities of Rio Grande do Norte: Assu, Caicó, Mossoró, Natal, Patu and Pau dos Ferros. In Mossoró, the central administration of UERN works, with rectory, pro-rectories and complementary institution of higher management. The UERN serves more than 13,000 undergraduate and graduate students. At the Pau dos Ferros Campus regularly are offered nine undergraduate courses and four master's courses (Academic Master in Letras, Professional Master in Letras in the National Network, Academic Master in Teaching and Academic Master in Planning and Territorial Dynamics in the Semi-Arid). One doctorate in Letras and an Interinstitutional Doctorate in Letras, and it has the receiving institution, the Instituto Federal Sertão Pernambucano, in addition to specialization and undergraduate courses, with special offers on programs like PARFOR (National Plan for the Training of Basic Education Teachers), and others.

The PPGL was designed and had its pedagogical proposal elaborated over a few years, with systematic and articulated actions between professors from UERN, from different campus and departments. The planning and proposal preparation meetings took place between October 2005 and May 2007, the period in which the APCN was filled out and sent to CAPES.

With the offer of the Master and Doctorate course in Letras, UERN's PPGL aims to train professionals capable to understand discursive practices in different areas of human communication, building knowledge, in an interdisciplinary perspective, about the construction of the senses and the relationship between speech and society, speech and text. The profile of the graduate formed in these courses should, therefore, be that of a professional capable of understanding how the construction of meanings occurs in different discursive practices and fields. Someone who can analyze the production, organization, and circulation of speeches and texts, considering their socio-historical conditions of production, as well as conceiving the text as an object of teaching-learning of the language, being able to act in research, teaching and scientific production in the area of language studies.