Portuguese Studies
Portuguese is the official language of nine countries across four continents and is spoken by over 200 million people. Portugal, Brazil and the rest of the Lusophone world are home to a an incredible range of art, culture and traditions.
![Streets of Portugal](http://cdn.sheffield.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/mobile_single_column_1x/public/2019-05/Portugal street.JPG.jpg?itok=3OQRkAd-)
Knowledge of the Portuguese language assumes an increasing significance as the 21st century progresses. The richness of literature in Portuguese, as well as the political and cultural history of the entire Lusophone world, make Portuguese Studies an important field of academic study.
Portuguese Studies has been taught at Sheffield since the 1940s and has developed a strong record of teaching and research. Portuguese Studies is a popular choice at Sheffield, which is reflected in the lively, friendly atmosphere within the School. Students study the literature, history and culture not only of Portugal and Brazil, but also of Portuguese-speaking Africa and Portuguese-speaking Asia. Beyond the classroom, we usually hold an annual Portuguese dinner to which Portuguese speaking members of the local community are invited, and also an annual football match against Catalan Studies in which both staff and students participate.
You can study Portuguese language & culture at a beginner’s level from both the first and second year of your degree. If you already have some knowledge of Portuguese, we also welcome you onto our courses.
Undergraduate degree combinations
To see how our degrees can be structured and combined, please visit the following:
BA Modern Languages & Cultures (BAMLC) - this course allows you to choose between one and three languages to study.
Dual degrees with a non-language - these options allow you to take a language (or two, in some cases) alongside a non-language subject.
Course structure
By the end of your first year, with four hours per week of classes, you’ll be able to discuss a variety of everyday topics with native speakers (Common European Framework Reference for Languages (CEFR) A1 to A2).
After your second year, you’ll have the tools to thrive in a Portuguese-speaking country as a student, including talking about more complex, abstract topics and expressing your views and opinions (CEFR B1 to B2).
At the end of your final year, you’ll be able to tackle complex topics in speech and writing and will be familiar with social and political issues in the Portuguese-speaking world (CEFR C1).
You can also choose to write a Portuguese Studies dissertation in your final year.
Depending on your degree programme, you will be able to take optional modules each year that explore the literature, history and culture of the Portuguese-speaking world so as to reach a high level of understanding in these areas.
Modules
You will study 40 credits in language and culture at beginner's level.
Beginner's Portuguese
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Portuguese Language Beginners | 20 | Core |
An Introduction to the Social and Political History of Iberia & Latin America This module examines the historical trajectory of Spain, its emergence as a state in the Iberian Peninsula, its imperial expansion overseas into Latin America, the eventual independence of the colonies and their development and consolidation into the various modern-day states we know today. The module will explore the social, political, linguistic and cultural characteristics of these states and its peoples and highlight the importance of understanding their complex history in the formation of their identities, their languages and their cultural and political values. The module has a particular emphasis on the importance of myths and how, regardless of their historical veracity, they can condition behaviours, mould identities and shape future history. |
20 | Core |
Optional school-wide modules:
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Intersections: Text, Image, Thought in the French-speaking world This module will focus on two important French texts per semester (with 'text' taken in its largest sense of book, film, art work, piece of music, cultural product, etc.). Each text will form the basis for a close reading, followed by analyses using French cultural, historical, literary and critical theory approaches as well as adaptations into other media (such as film, art and music) where appropriate. The module will be taught and assessed in English, but the materials will be made available in both French and English, with French students required to use and cite the French materials. The aim of the module is to introduce students to significant French texts and to illustrate and explore a range of possible critical approaches to them, including cross-media or intermedial reinterpretations. |
20 | Optional |
Resist! The Art of Protest in Berlin and Amsterdam Berlin and Amsterdam: two capitals at the forefront of protest and alternative lifestyles from the early 20th century right up to the present. Where did their radical traditions spring from? What do these protests say about how the cities and nations see themselves? How does creative resistance fuel gentrification and urban tourism? This module explores the culture of resistance and protest from the first women's march for the vote and posters and activism against war and fascism, to the creative resistance of the Amsterdam PROVO movement in the 1960s to Black Lives Matter/Kick out Zwarte Piet. We will cover concepts such as populism, activism, colonial resistance, feminism, BLM, climate activism. How do these movement use art and image to press their causes? |
20 | Optional |
Comparative Visual Cultures Visual literacy is a key skill and visual culture remains one of the most accessible and important modes through which we represent, understand and critique our world. This module provides an introduction to some of the major trends within visual cultures in European languages, and the development of visual media. Students will work on a selection of visual texts across national frameworks and historical periods to examine their conditions of production, distribution and reception and to explore how meaning is constructed and critiqued in visual culture. In seminars we will engage with detailed analysis of core texts and with critical materials. Students will be encouraged to consider country-specific, transnational and comparative trends through a critical lens. |
20 | Optional |
Understanding Spanish and Latin American Culture Why has the gypsy culture of Andalucía been so crucial to ideas about Spanish identity and how and why has this changed? How did gender politics and the role of women change after the Franco dictatorship in Spain? How and why was modernity experienced as a crisis in Latin America? How does class struggle shape Latin America? What does Revolution really mean in the context of Latin America? These are just some of the questions that will be explored in this module. This course examines the literature and culture of modern Spain and modern Spanish-speaking Latin America. In each semester, three cultural products from one of these two areas are studied, and may include poetry, theatre, narrative fiction or film. We will build up a picture of the cultural history of Spain and Latin America, as well as looking at key themes to emerge from selected literary, dramatic and/or cinematic outputs. By focussing on different genres in each semester, students will be able to explore different types of cultural product and to develop analytical skills gradually by moving from shorter pieces to a larger body of writing.Students taking post-A Level or equivalent will study primary texts in their original Spanish version. Beginners will study primary texts in English translation. This module is strongly recommended as a foundational core course for further study in Spanish and Latin American Studies. |
20 | Optional |
The Soviet Union 1917-1991 Overview of the formation, development and collapse of the USSR, beginning from c.1900. Covers historiographic problems in analysing primary materials, ideological problems in dealing with the revolutionary movement and subsequent developments, debates over the nature and trajectory of the USSR and its place in the wider world. |
Optional (Autumn Semester only) |
Portuguese Language Intermediate
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Portuguese Language Intermediate |
20 | Core |
Depending on your degree programme and language combination you may also choose from:
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Portuguese Language Intermediate For those who started learning Portuguese in Level 1 If you didn’t study Portuguese in the first year, you can choose to pick up Portuguese as a beginners’ language in the second year, for 20 credits, and can even increase your exposure to the Portuguese-speaking world to 40 credits by also taking Cultural Crosscurrents in the Portuguese-speaking World |
20 | Core |
Cultural Crosscurrents in the Portuguese-speaking World This module will examine the way producers of culture (authors, filmmakers, painters, singers, etc.) from the Portuguese-speaking world dialogue with the sociocultural links and/or historical legacies in Portuguese-speaking countries. The module covers countries across the Portuguese-speaking world (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Macau, East Timor, Goa and São Tomé and Príncipe), although it may not cover all of them in a given year. Where possible, the module offers Portuguese to English translation practice. Restrictions on availability: Students must be studying Portuguese language, or in the case of exchange students be native Portuguese speakers. |
20 | The course is compulsory for students taking 40 credits of Portuguese, but it may be taken EITHER in Level 2 or Final year. |
Hispanic Spaces This module is an exploration of Hispanic spaces and their representation in various contexts. It will consider the ways in which spaces dialogue with reality or, in some cases, transform themselves in the imaginary. The case studies led by each of the tutors will consider space in the analysis of, for example, islands and/ or cities, and analyse texts (in the broadest sense, including fiction, images and films) from the Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese-speaking worlds. Topics considered may include contested space (tourism, migration, insiders and outsiders), space/place (literary constructions of place) and ideal/utopian spaces. The spaces studied may include islands such as the Balearics, the Canary Islands, and the Azores or Cape Verde, and cities such as Madrid and Lisbon. |
20 | Optional |
Optional School-wide modules:
Language and Society in Luxembourg and the French Borderlands This module introduces key issues in the field of sociolinguistics, which studies how language constructs rather than simply mirrors social reality and, more specifically, the ways in which people position themselves and others in relation to language use. With a sharp focus on the French borderlands, students will obtain an overview of the status and function of the French language in relation to its speakers and to speakers of other languages. We will begin by discussing how language works and the ways in which linguists and laypersons sometimes disagree about language issues. We will then relate aspects of these theoretical discussions to issues concerning linguistic minorities in the officially monolingual country of France, in addition to the bordering multilingual countries of Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland. We will explore the ways in which language becomes the target of struggles and debates that are embedded in broader socio-political issues. Students will have the opportunity to conduct their own small-scale analyses based on case studies. Crucially, this module underlines the necessity of questioning the presupposed homogeneity conveyed by the use of labels such as the 'French language' and 'French-speaking countries', which potentially mask the social and linguistic complexity inherent to the social world. Restrictions on availability: CEFR A2 Level French |
20 | Optional |
You will spend either one or two semester(s) in a Portuguese-speaking country and can:
Study at a university
Studying abroad at a university allows you to experience the familiarity of student life with the excitement of living in another country. University life varies enormously across the world, however wherever they go, our students develop international networks and life-long friendships. Courses at international universities expose our students to new ways of studying, learning, and interpreting the world. We have agreements with universities in both Portugal and Brazil.
Gain work experience
Work placements provide you with the opportunity of gaining employment experience as both a professional and an internationally competent graduate. Types of work experience may vary hugely, from translation to consultancy and everything in-between. Work experience may be paid or voluntary, depending on type of work, organisation and location.
Portuguese Language Advanced
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Portuguese Language Advanced | 20 | Core |
Depending on your degree programme and language combination you may also choose from:
Title | Credits | Core/Optional |
---|---|---|
Cultural Crosscurrents in the Portuguese-speaking World This module will examine the way producers of culture (authors, filmmakers, painters, singers, etc.) from the Portuguese-speaking world dialogue with the sociocultural links and/or historical legacies in Portuguese-speaking countries. The module covers countries across the Portuguese-speaking world (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Macau, East Timor, Goa and São Tomé and Príncipe), although it may not cover all of them in a given year. Where possible, the module offers Portuguese to English translation practice. Restrictions on availability: The module must be taken in conjunction with the corresponding Portuguese language module cannot be taken if students have taken MDL222 |
20 |
*This module must be taken either at level 2 or in final year to validate the Portuguese |
Optional School-wide modules:
Languages & Cultures Project Guided by individual supervision and support seminars, you will plan and execute an extended piece of independent research on a topic that complements but does not duplicate work you have done (or will do) in SLC taught modules. Alternatively, you may translate a substantial text into English accompanied by a full commentary to contextualize it. Your project must relate to at least one of the countries or cultures whose languages you are studying. As well as writing an extended piece of work, all students present their work at the end of the year. Restrictions on availability: A L2 module relevant to your proposed topic or registered on a relevant L3 module. An average of at least 62 in your optional modules at L2, with no optional module mark lower than 58. Supervisor must be agreed. |
20 | Optional |
Comparative Critique of Consumer Culture Critiques of consumer cultures are as old as capitalism itself. This module takes the long view, starting in the eighteenth century and tracing our conflicted identities as modern consumers into the present day. Especially applying German cultural theory to European cultural history, we shall ask what is meant by economic and social liberalism, and whether even culture owes a debt to consumer society. Consumerism can entail complicity in exploitative modes of production (causing poverty and displacement, and profiting from serfdom and slavery). It has been both celebrated and satirised for enabling hedonism and individual bad taste (or kitsch). And consumption has been nationalist, yet also cosmopolitan; today, it threatens our shared environment. Theory, the visual arts, and literature have all been critical of capitalism - but ironically, they can themselves be packaged as consumer goods. Examining a wide range of primary texts (including film and caricature) and critical reflections, you will translate and write a commentary on a historical source, and submit an essay on a topic of your choice. |
20 | Optional |
Social Approaches to Multilingualism This module provides students with an overview of key topics in multilingualism, with an emphasis on the ways in which issues of language are linked to broader socio-political practices and debates. It allows students to gain insights into how theories of nationalism and globalisation may be applied to the analysis of texts and images in multilingual settings - with a particular focus on those in which Romance and/or Germanic languages play a central role - and it shows how debates about language are bound up with struggles over social equality and reactions to social transformations. Restrictions on availability: Year Abroad or equivalent |
20 | Optional |
The content of our courses is reviewed annually to make sure it is up-to-date and relevant. Individual modules are occasionally updated or withdrawn. This is in response to discoveries through our world-leading research, funding changes, professional accreditation requirements, student or employer feedback, outcomes of reviews, and variations in staff or student numbers. In the event of any change we'll consult and inform students in good time and take reasonable steps to minimise disruption.
Information last updated:
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International Merit Scholarships
We offer a generous package of financial support for international students including 75 undergraduate scholarships worth £10,000 towards the annual tuition fee and 125 postgraduate taught scholarships worth £5,000 towards the tuition fee. Applications are now open for existing offer holders.