Contemporary Portugal: Literature and Society

The course contains the study of works of fiction and non-fiction, film adaptations and other contemporary material that sheds light on developments in Portuguese society from the beginning of the 1900s to the present day. We will focus on the close study of a selection of representative works of fiction whose content is related to important historical and sociopolitical phenomenons, such as monarchy, republic, colonial power, dictatorship, democracy and membership of the EU. We also discuss developments in society from the perspective of a number of issues from postcolonial and gender theory. Students get further training in language proficiency by focusing on reading works of fiction and presenting their analyses orally and in writing.