Portoguese and Brazilian Literature

The course is titled Thinking Brazil, thinking Portugal: an essayistic journey in the 20th and 21st centuries
and consists of the following three parts:

Part A (20 hours): The un-thought of Portoghese colonialism and the Portuguese-Brazilian relationship (Eduardo Lourenço)
Part B (20 hours): Interpreting Brazil: Formation, Legacy, and Deconstructions
Part C (20 hours): African Theory between Anti-Colonialism and Decolonial Thought
The course provides 9 credits. It is not possible to acquire only 6. The course program is valid until September 2027.
From the summer session 2027 it will be possible to apply only on the program of a.a. 2026-27.

The course aims to analyze some of the canonical essays of both Portuguese and Brazilian culture, as well as of the Portuguese-speaking African thought, which contribute to interpreting society and literature of these two nations, also in light of a colonial bond that turns into an hermeneutic challenge for both European and Latin American thinkers.
The course will be divided into three parts: in the first part, we will explore how Eduardo Lourenço's thought has influenced the interpretation of Portugal in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, also through reflections on the legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa and the complex, unresolved relationship between Brazil and Portugal as cultures.
In the second part, we will analyze how Brazil structured its identity discourse not only through anti-Portugueseness and a misunderstood anti-colonialism, but also how the twentieth century served as a laboratory for representations and counter-representations of Brazilian culture and society, which various traditions of thought glossed, paving the way for the claims of other voices (Afro-Brazilian women, indigenous thought, subaltern groups) and other spaces (urban peripheries, the Amazon, etc.).
The third part will focus on the contribution that Portuguese-speaking African thought has given to the deconstruction of colonialist ideology and practice, through the twentieth-century emergence of a constellation of essays that rewrite and update the theories of Pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism, and the so-called Black Radical Tradition, of which Amílcar Cabral is the leading African critic.