1st Cycle

Aims to endow students with the necessary technical and philosophical skills for the study of argumentation, particularly when argumentation is used in the context of major issues that currently attract the attention of Portuguese society and of the modern world in general (e.g. the legitimacy of euthanasia, gender issues, issues concerning human sexuality, etc.).

Students must be capable of:

• Suitably analysing and assessing arguments from several fields of knowledge and human activity and representing such arguments through diagrams.
• Counterarguing, or devising appropriate strategies for doing so, in a pertinent manner.
• Applying these skills more generally to the issues mentioned above.

This curricular unit aims to provide students with basic theoretical and conceptual tools that will enable them to search for information, select it, and structure and present the academic papers they will be required to write for their courses. Starting from structures that students already know or are familiar with – research, writing and presenting academic papers – the curricular unit will introduce them to formal structures that provide a rigorous approach to academic writing.

At the end of the curricular unit students should be able to:

• Research and identify the most appropriate sources of information for a given subject.

• Understand the structure of an academic paper and apply it.

• Understand the importance of bibliographical documentation and the need to produce correct and accurate citations.

• Understand and apply the most common citation styles in the areas of the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

• - Understand the importance of bibliographical documentation and the need to produce correct and accurate citations.

  - Understand and apply the most common citation styles in the areas of the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

  - Use bibliographic reference managers.

Students should be able to: understand and question the concept of culture; view culture as a group of systems of representation and structural discourses of a society in a specific historical moment; identify and use relevant concepts in the context of cultural studies; identify social markers and markers of power relations - such as sex, race, ethnicity, nation and class - in literary texts and other cultural artefacts; and develop analytical and reflective tools applicable to other curricular units in their academic paths.

Students are expected to correctly identify and use key concepts in the context of cultural studies. They should also develop analytical and reflective tools for later use in the curricular units of culture of their curricular paths (and others).

The syllabus of this curricular unit includes two modules. The first addresses the interpretative dimension of art throughout the ages, focusing on some of its important moments, whilst at the same time relating it to contemporaneity and its challenges – beginning with the issue of what is actually understood as art at present.

The second module extends the discussion raised in the first module by seeking to develop ways of thinking about contemporary artistic production, particularly in the fields of theatre and performance, cinema and music.

Objectives of the curricular unit and skills to be developed:

• Understand the importance of how the international system operates and the role of the EU within this system.
• Identify some of the key concepts and theoretical frameworks used in the analysis of the international system.
• Identify some of the major actors and procedures of the international system and understand the complexity of world politics.
• Understand the uniqueness of the European Union as a political system in the making.
• Critically reflect on some of the major problems on the global agenda, assessing the solutions proposed by the political leaderships.

This curricular unit aims to provide students with an overarching introduction to Digital Humanities as a set of research methods, projects and practices shared across the humanities. It also provides exploratory contact with representative projects and initiatives in the field of Digital Humanities.

At the end of the curricular unit students should be able to:

• Understand the relationship between computational methods and humanistic knowledge practices in several disciplinary fields (history, art history, archaeology, literary and linguistic studies, information science, etc.).
• Describe and analyse, in generic form, a relevant Digital Humanities project.
• Use digital tools and methods in an exploratory Digital Humanities project.

The main goal of this curricular unit is to become familiar with the different cartographic representations and to view maps as a universal visual language based on specific symbols, codes, and conventions.

Students are expected to develop skills in the reading, analysis and interpretation of maps with different themes and scales. They should also become familiar with the main stages of the cartographic process, from data gathering to the planning and creation of thematic maps.

At the end of the semester, students should be able to:

• Analyse and explain communicative situations, according to basic notions learned in class.
• Communicate within academic contexts by producing oral and written presentations in their field of knowledge.

Taught by the Section of Communication, the curricular unit Media and Society is aimed at providing students with the necessary theoretical and conceptual foundations for a critical reflection on the role of the media in contemporary societies. Therefore, this introductory curricular unit intends to question common sense ideas about the media and the uses of online resources. The curricular unit will develop tools that enable students to construct an autonomous and critical knowledge of how the media function in society, as well as their interdependencies at national, regional and global scale.

Case studies and national and international examples from the fields of Media Studies, Journalism and Communication will be used to help students better understand the issues discussed. The particularities of the media in Portugal, Europe and the Lusophone world will also be considered, thus providing means for understanding global and regional phenomena.

This curricular unit pursues objectives in two distinct areas. From a theoretical perspective, it aims to provide students with tools that help them understand the nature of cultural dynamics in our society by tracing their historical origins and characterising their current circumstances. At the same time, this will serve as a basis for reconceptualising the concept of culture, without neglecting the epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic values involved in multiculturalism. From a practical perspective, this curricular unit seeks to raise the students’ awareness of good practices in intercultural dialogue in a Faculty profoundly shaped by interculturality. By simultaneously adopting a historical, political, sociological, anthropological, aesthetic and philosophical perspective, this curricular unit fulfils the requirements of a curricular unit from the core curriculum open to all 1st cycle students.

This curricular unit aims to foster a reflection on fundamental themes of classical and Judeo-Christian cultures, which constitute the foundations of western culture. Given that this is an introductory-level curricular unit, its goal is to prepare students at a university level, thus providing them with the critical instruments needed to succeed in the higher education setting. Students will be able to recognise the cultural foundations of European culture, interpret the major western cultural productions and establish a dialogue with the different cultures that surround them in a globalised world.

Students will be able to understand the present in light of the past and develop an informed and critical perspective that will enable them to project the future. In the plural and diverse context in which we live, this curricular unit not only contributes to overcoming a fragmentary view of knowledge but also prepares humanities students to become future agents of culture, equipped with the tools necessary for dialogue with the other.

Objectives and skills to be developed:

• Critically reflect on the different rates of population growth observed at different scales.
• Use the terminology and concepts of research in the field of population geography.
• Understand the relationship between the evolution of demographic dynamics and social and political dynamics.
• Develop organisational and research skills related to population studies.
• Critically analyse the different theories and models of population evolution.

This is a core curricular unit available to all FLUC students which aims to provide guidelines for historical thinking in its many aspects and diverse dimensions.

• Understand essential concepts related to time, space and memory.
• Acquire key frameworks for the perception and representation of temporalities.
• Define scales of spatiality, from local to global.
• Understand the conflicts and complementarities between History and Memory.
• Understand both the materialities and immaterialities of historical knowledge.
• Become aware of the historical roots of the major contemporary issues.
• Develop a critical understanding of the intersection between history and media discourses.
• Understand the relationship between History and other fields and practices (Philosophy, Literature, Archaeology, Arts, etc.)
• Recognise the social value and the public interest of History.

Objectives of the curricular unit and skills to be developed:

Students are expected to acquire concepts related to the evolution of the Earth over time and, in particular, the causes of landscape differentiation on the planet’s surface and its transformations. Specifically, they will:

• Understand the concepts of space and time in Physical Geography by describing the Earth's surface and the dimensions of the globe, as well as the temporal dimension of geographical and geological phenomena and their interrelationships.

• Understand landscape differentiation depending on the latitude.

• Reflect on the planet’s evolution under the influence of (internal and external) geodynamics.

The aim of this curricular unit is to create conditions for a transforming encounter with the fundamental texts of western literature, from Homer to the 20th century. Students will become acquainted with a corpus of works that have shaped western literature, as well as with key concepts such as “classic”, “canon” and “western literature”. They will also explore some of the reasons why these works continue to be read, and the criteria for their legitimation (including the absence of consensus regarding some of them). Finally, students will be able to present arguments regarding the value of the texts and the interpretations that have been made of them.

Objectives of the curricular unit and skills to be developed:

• Understand the conceptual framework of tourism.
• Analyse the development of tourism on a global scale in relation to other systems.
• Understand the impact of tourism on development and be able to differentiate between developed and developing countries.
• Understand the regional dynamics of global tourism.
• Critically analyse future trends for tourism and identify factors of change, as well as their underlying challenges.
• Identify the major international tourism organisations and the role they play in tourism knowledge, development and regulation.