Modern History (Culture and Mentalities)
Courses
Cod: 31042
Department: DCSG
ECTS: 6
Scientific area: History
Total working hours: 156
Total contact time: 15

This course unit introduces the main frames of cultural transformation that features Portuguese society from its formation to the present. The course unit begins by studying central concepts, such as the idea of culture and the intellectual and their construction in different historical contexts. Thus, students are able to look at the cultural and mentalities changes which Portuguese society was subject to throughout the centuries.

Considering the large period of time studied, students are expected to be able to
• understand the political culture, from the formation of its agents and practices, discourse and spaces of representation;
• explaining artistic contexts and fashion changes, cultural and generational movements, productive and propagating circles of knowledge, and the production and reception of new ideas;
• designing hypotheses of explaining various different historical contexts;
• developing critical capacities through the perception of how cultural and intellectual ideas were constructed;
• understanding various cultural contexts which feature the Portuguese society identity across the centuries.

1. Culture and intellectual notions: structures, contexts and historicity
2. The respublica and a culture of the court: images and mutations
3. Renaissance Portugal: movements, agents and institutions
4. Portugal during the Trent Council and the Baroque: reflections on various forms of artistic expression
5. From Enlightenment Portugal to Romantic Portugal: discourses of permanence and discourses of change

Mattoso, José (dir.), História de Portugal, 8 vols, Lisboa, Círculo dos Leitores, 1993.
Medina, João (dir.), História de Portugal dos tempos pré-históricos aos nossos dias, 15 vols, Alfragide, Clube Internacional do Livro, 1994.
Serrão, Joaquim Veríssimo, História de Portugal, 10 vols, Lisboa, Editorial Verbo, 1978.
Tavares, Maria José Ferro (coord.), Sociedade e Cultura Portuguesas 2, Lisboa, Universidade Aberta, 1990.

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 or 3 digital written documents (e-folios) during the semester (40%) and a presence-based final exam (p-folio) in the end of the semester (60%).
In due time, students can alternatively choose to perform one final presence-based exam (100%).

Students are required to have access to a computer with Internet connection and an e-mail address.