Literature, Art and Transcultures
Cod: 53041
Department: DH
ECTS: 7.5
Scientific area: Humanities
Total working hours: 195
Total contact time: 30

This seminar starts from a humanistic vision of the world and of globalization, focusing on transnational cultural phenomena. It aims to provide in-depth theoretical and empirical knowledge and core competencies for the analysis of cross-cultural phenomena. The syllabus contents provide, in a first moment, the theoretical-conceptual instruments necessary to understand the main theoretical perspectives and debates on aspects of intercultural communication and artistic circulation in the current society within the methodology of comparative studies. The artistic phenomenon is thus pursued from multiple approaches and disciplinary areas in order to grasp the transnational patterns of cultural influence. In a second moment, cultural and aesthetic practices are treated, deepening the relationship between literature and society. Topics and themes are selected that provide a better understanding of the mechanisms by which culture is produced and reproduced in today's society and also narratives of great transcultural circulation embodied in ethics and social organization such as myths.

Transculturation
Hybridization
World Literature
Intercultural Communication

- Identify cultural and symbolic practices of contemporary society.
- Recognize the transdisciplinary value of knowledge from a holistic view and integrative reading, knowing how to deal with difference and with the conflict of interpretations and disciplinary knowledge.
- Apprehend global cultural issues, exercising a critical and intervening attitude towards them.
- Understand the role of codes and their uses in their inter-semiotic relation.
- Identify means by which literature and art create or a sense of transgression between ontological barriers and recreate a third space or new world.
- Reassess assumptions and power relations in the relationship between underrepresented or marginalized social groups in relation to mainstream culture.

1. Comparative Studies: themes, problems and methodological issues
1.1. Transculturation and hybridization
1.2. World literature
1.3. Inter arts
1.4. Identities, ethnicity and cultural belonging
1.5. Transnational imaginary and intercultural communication
1.6. Nomadism and Hybridism
1.7. Peripheries and marginalities

2. Art, literature and society
2.1. The cultural circulation
2.1.1. Polysystems Theory 
2.1.2. Literary field
2.1.3. Cultural industry and commodification
2.1.4. Universality and globalization
2.2. Digital Humanities
2.2.1. Textuality and hypermedia in the digital age
2.2.2. "Intercultural Media Studies"
2.2.3. Electro Modernity 

3. Aesthetic and cultural practices
3.1. Intercultural Literature, Migration and Exile
3.2. The Arab-Islamic heritage and the West
3.3. Gender studies
3.4. Postcolonial Studies
3.5. Youth culture

4. Myth and narration
4.1. Mythology and social world
4.3. Myth and identities
4.4. Myths of the world
4.2. Interssemiotic relations of the myth

Bessière, J., 2001, “How to reform comparative literature`s paradigms in the age of globalization, Neohellicon XVIII/1, pp. 13-24.

Gough, N, 2014, “Globalization and Curriculum Inquiry: Performing Transnational Imaginaries”, Stromquist, N. e Monkman, K. (ed.s), Globalization and Education. Integration and contestation across cultures, Lanham /Boulder / New York / Tronto / Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield Education, pp. 87-100.

Küpper, J., 2013, “Some Remarks on World Literature”, Approaches to World Literature, Akademy Verlag, pp. 167-180.

Harvey, D., 2002, “The Art of Rent: Globalization, monopoly and the commodification of culture”, Socialist Register, 38, pp. 93-110.

García Canclini, N., 2009, Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, México: Debolsillo.

Seyhan, A., 2000, Writing Outside the Nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Saint-Jacques, B., 2014, “Intercultural Communication in a Globalized World”, in Samovar et al., Intercultural Communication: A Reader, Boston: Cengage Learning, pp. 45-56.In:  https://www.google.pt/search?q=intercultural+communication+samovar+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=9BFSWtXJCbKaX5GUtYgK
Spivak, G., 2012, An aesthetic education in the era of globalization, Cambridge / Mass.: Harvard University Press. 
 
Zepetnek, T., 2013, Digital Humanities and the study of Intermediality in Comparative Cultural Studies, Perdue Scholarly Publishing Services.

The work methodology is based on the pedagogical model of the UAb for the 3rd cycle in the virtual class variant. Teaching learning activities take place on the e-learning platform, where asynchronous communication is privileged. Individual autonomous work (reading, reflection, research) and collaborative learning (group work, discussion and discussion in forums) are encouraged, allowing the joint development of knowledge. These 2 activities allow both the acquisition of knowledge and the development of tasks and analytical capacities.