1st year

1st Semester

Seminar in American Studies (10 ECTS): Maria José Canelo: American Culture A - “The Americas: Mutual Perspectives”

This seminar proposes to follow the methodologies and theoretical frames subscribed by the emergent field of interamerican studies, with an emphasis on transnationalism. Its main goal is to raise awareness about the inevitable interdependency of the histories and cultures of the varied regions that comprise the Americas. We will first examine the construction and the critique of U.S. hegemony (and exceptionalism), to consider, next, how the deep inequality that was always a hallmark in North/South comparisons, especially in economic and political terms, created a particular cultural imaginary (progress/backwardness, wealth/poverty, artificiality/authenticity) that contributed to that inequality by reinforcing it. At the same time, it affected notions of belonging and identity that still hover over those who move between the borders of the geopolitical space of the Americas. In other words, we are particularly interested in understanding to what extent the Americas are an invention, as historians and critics such as Edmundo O’Gorman and Walter Mignolo have argued. It will therefore be in the terrain of that invention, its making and unmaking, that we will be moving, while seeking to peruse the interamerican dimensions of this imaginary by way of juxtaposing and analyzing cultural documents that have attempted to define and explain the relations between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ of the Americas. Our study material will include film, documentaries, photography, and literary and theoretical texts.

Bibliography
Berger, M. T. (1995) Under Northern Eyes. Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas 1898-1990.
Bolton, H. (1979; [1933]). “The Epic of Greater America”. Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands.
Darío, R. (2006). Selected Writings.
Dorfman, A. (2004). Other Septembers, Many Americas: Selected Provocations 1980-2004.
Galeano, E. (1997). Open Veins of Latin America. Five centuries of the pillage of a continent.
Kaplan, A. & D. Pease eds. (1994) Cultures of United States Imperialism.
Levander, C. F. & R. S. Levine eds. (2007). Hemispheric American Studies.
Martí, J. (2002) Selected Writings.
Mignolo, W. (2005). The Idea of America.
Moraña, M., et al. eds. (2008) Coloniality at Large. Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate.
O’Gorman, E. (2003; [1958]). La invención de América : investigación acerca de la estructura histórica del Nuevo Mundo y del sentido de su devenir.
Retamar, R. F. (1989). Caliban And Other Essays.
Saldívar, J. D. (1991). Dialectics of Our America. Genealogy, Cultural Critique and Literary History.
Santiago, S. (1978). “O Entre-Lugar do Discurso Latino-Americano”. Uma Literatura nos Trópicos.

Seminar in American Studies (10 ECTS): Isabel Caldeira: American Literature A -  "Voices of the African Diaspora in the Americas"

This seminar proposes to identify and analyze forms of representation of the violence of deprivation of freedom, history, memory, and voice in literary texts produced by women writers of African descent in the United States and the Caribbean. Through a historical contextualization and using a postcolonial theoretical frame, underlining fundamental concepts such as trauma, memory and identity, students will acquire the necessary instruments to approach the selected literary texts. The analysis will focus on different ways to represent life experiences in racialized societies, the relation between individual and group identity, the connection established with the past and history, and the various stategies to acquire a distinctive voice.

Reading List:
Condé, Maryse. Tituba. 1992 (Guadalupe)
Kinkaid, Jamaica. Annie John. London: Picador, 1983 (Antigua)
Melville, Pauline. The Ventriloquist's Tale. London: Bloomsbury, 1997 (Guiana)
Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. 2008 (EUA)
NourbeSe Philip. She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks. 1988 (Trinidad Tobago/Canada)
Santiago, Esmeralda. When I Was Puerto Rican. 1994 (Puerto Rico)

General Bibliography:
ASHCROFT, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. New York: Routledge, 1989.
BENITEZ-ROJO, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Post-Modern Perspective, 2nd ed. Trans. James E. Maraniss. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
BHABHA, Homi K. Locations of Culture. London: Routledge, 1995.
GILROY, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London, Verso, 1993.
HALL, Stuart “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. In Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Columbia UP, 1994.
JONAS, Joyce. Anancy in the Great House: Ways of Reading West Indian Fiction. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
O'CALLAGHAN, Evelyn. Woman Version: Theoretical Approaches to West Indian Fiction by Women. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
OKPEWHO, Carole Boyce-Davies and Ali A. Mazrui, eds. The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
RODY, Caroline. The Daughter’s Return. African-American and Caribbean Women’s Fictions of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
SHEPHERD, Verene, et al. eds. Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Seminar in Social Sciences I (10 ECTS): José Manuel Pureza - "Theoretical Constructions of Peace"

2nd Semester

Theories (10 ECTS): Isabel Caldeira and Maria Irene Ramalho - "Theories of American Studies"

Research and Discussion Seminar (10 ECTS): Isabel Caldeira e Maria José Canelo

Seminar in Social Sciences II (10 ECTS): António Sousa Ribeiro: "Representations of Violence"

O seminário visa uma abordagem aprofundada da questão da relação entre cultura e violência, em particular no que concerne à problemática da representação. Começando pelo problema central do lugar da violência na modernidade, proceder-se-á a um levantamento dos lugares teóricos fundamentais, percorrendo-se­ alguns dos autores que ofereceram contributos essenciais para uma reflexão neste âmbito. Concluir-se-á com o traçado tão exaustivo quanto possível de um mapa conceptual que permita uma orientação segura num campo marcado por decisivas ambivalências.

A unidade curricular visa fornecer referências teóricas e elementos de análise que permitam uma orientação segura relativamente ao lugar da violência na cultura da modernidade de uma perspectiva contemporânea. Espera-se que os estudantes adquiram uma melhor competência no manejo de conceitos centrais, se familiarizem com as referências mais relevantes e desenvolvam uma capacidade autónoma de investigação conducente à formulação e execução de projectos consistentes.

Bibliografia
Aijmer, Göran; Abbink, Jon (orgs.) (2000), The Meanings of Violence. A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Oxford: Berg.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1989), O poder simbólico. Lisboa: Difel, 1989.
Chew, Pat K. (2001), The Conflict and Culture Reader. New York: New York UP.
Girard, René (1972), La violence et le sacré. Paris: Bernard Grasset.
Hüppauf, Bernd (org.) (1997), War, Violence and the Modern Condition. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Ribeiro, António Sousa (org.) (2010), Representações da violência. Coimbra: Almedina.
Scarry, Elaine (1985), The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World. NY / Oxford: Oxford UP.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Bourgeois, Philippe (orgs.) (2004), Violence in War and Peace. Oxford: Blackwel.
Sofsky, Wolfgang (2002), Traité de la violence. Paris: Gallimard.
Sontag, Susan (2003), Olhando o sofrimento dos outros. Lisboa: Gótica.
Whitmer, Barbara (1997), The Violence Mythos. State Univ. of New York Pr.
Wieviorka, Michel (2004), La violence. Voix et regards. Paris: Balland.

2nd year

Project elaboration, Defense of Project and Research and Discussion Seminar (20 ECTS  x 3).

3rd and 4th year

2 plurianual seminars:
Seminário de Orientação da Tese (Dissertation supervision) (40 ECTS) e Tese (Dissertation) (80 ECTS).