PT|EN
Culture Themes
Courses Degree in History
Cod: 31120
Department: DCSG
ECTS: 6
Scientific area: History
Total working hours: 156
Total contact time: 15

This course unit approaches the genesis and development of the concept of culture and its relation to social identity and hierarchies. Therefore, it introduces students to cultural issues, according to a simultaneously diachronic and critic point of view on cultural matters. It provides the necessary tools to understand the several social uses of the notion of culture and its appropriation of reality and it introduces the several cultural forms related to civilizations, idioms and languages.

  1. Culture
  2. Civilization
  3. Renaissance
  4. Enlightenment

• Identifying the several concepts and notions of culture.
• Understanding the cultural dynamics in societies throughout the times.
• Analysing some of the main cultural issues of history and humanity.

1. Culture and cultures: the ‘birth’ of the concept and its social statement. The several ‘types’ and notions of culture (political culture, business culture, intellectual culture, mass culture).
2. Cultural debates in Medieval Times (classical culture and Christianity; written and oral culture; intellectual debates and heresy).
3. Humanism and Reformations (issues between Renaissance humanist and the Church; Divergences and reformist suggestions).
4. Modern rationalism (from Descartes to the enlightenment philosophers: the role of reason, to school and debate).
5. The reason crisis and the laicization of thought.

CHAUNU, Pierre, A Civilização da Europa das Luzes, 2 vols., Lisboa, Estampa, 1985.
CUCHE, Denys, A noção de cultura nas ciências sociais, 2ª edição, Lisboa, Fim de século, 2003.
DELUMEAU, J., A civilização do Renascimento, 2 volumes, Lisboa, Estampa, 1984.
HAZARD, Paul, O pensamento europeu no século XVIII, Lisboa, Presença, 1974.
SCHWANITZ, Dietrich, Cultura: tudo o que é preciso saber, 6ª edição, Lisboa, Pub. D. Quixote, 2006.
 

Online learning with continuous supervision favoring asynchronous communication (Moodle platform).
Students have to perform the tasks requested by the teacher: essays, critical recensions, reports, protocols, etc. All works will be evaluated and/or classified.

Continuous assessment is privileged: 2 digital written documents (e-folios) during the semester (40%) and a final digital test, Global e-folio (e-folio G) at the end of the semester (60%). In due time, students can alternatively choose to perform one final exam (100%).

Students are required to have access to a computer with Internet connection and an e-mail address as well as to have computer literacy from the users' perspective.