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Iberian Political Cultures: The Portuguese Case

Overview

  • Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
  • Convenor: to be confirmed
  • Assessment: a 10-minute class presentation (20%) and a 3500-word essay (80%)

Module description

This course establishes a wide set of relations between culture, politics and history, taking the case of twentieth-century Portugal as its point of departure, but with the aim of exploring its relations in an international context, by using a chronological and thematic criteria that is also valid to the Spanish case (students who also take Iberian Political Cultures: the Spanish Case, will be able to confront the two national cases within the same coherent corpus of cultural objects).

The course will address major historical periods and political phenomena (dictatorship, revolution, democratisation) through different cultural artefacts, such as iconography, literature, music and film.

Indicative module content

  • Introduction to twentieth-century Portuguese history and culture
  • Liberalism and progress
  • Fascism as modernisation
  • Revolution as 'leap forward'
  • Democracy and Europeanisation
  • Revisions

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • identify and analyse key moments and spaces of the Portuguese-speaking world through cultural artefacts
  • demonstrate awareness of the complex relations between culture, history and politics
  • recognise the diversity and particularities of different historical moments and geographical spaces
  • situate the Portuguese-speaking world and cultures in wider contexts
  • demonstrate the ability to understand cultural forms within their socio-historical context
  • apply interdisciplinary practices in the study of concepts, works and authors.