Study Programme

Themes of Greek literature (10 ECTS)

Instructor: Cláudia Silva

Through the reading and analysis of texts of classical antiquity, this subject proposes a reflection on the role of literature as a means of representation and transmission of behaviours and social values.

Themes of Latin literature (10 ECTS)

Instructor: Paulo Sérgio Ferreira

This seminar will seek to familiarize the students with the theme of time and space, which, considered from a philosophical and literary perspective, unfolds in other subthemes: time, with its linear or cyclical character, as something dependent or independent of human understanding, is closely associated with the myth of ages, the phases of human life, Fortune and Fatum and astrologers and sorceresses. As for space, often loaded with symbolism, of aggregator, propagandistic or moralizing purpose, it is the object of important literary ekphrasis, such as the loci amoeni and the loci horridi, and can be one of the factors that generate war or reveal human vices. Latin texts will be made available to the students with their Portuguese translation, properly contextualized in the ideas and style of the authors.

Study and Edition of Greek and Latin Texts (10 ECTS)*

Instructor: António Rebelo and Brian Kibuuka

The aims of the course are to provide students with basic knowledge in the area of Greek and Latin manuscripts, in order to give them the necessary training to undertake the critical editing of texts and authors from Classical Antiquity and Neo-Latin literary production. The aim is for students to acquire the science behind comparing manuscripts and building up a critical apparatus. By the end of the course, they should be able to paleographically identify the period (and assess the contribution to a critical edition) of some Greek and Latin manuscripts.

Classical Historiography (10 ECTS)*

Instructor: José Luís Brandão e Martinho Soares

Learn about the origins and development of Greek historiographical discourse.

1. Origin and development of Greek historiography
1.1 Introduction: what is historiography: conceptual clarification. The writing of history from antiquity to
the present day: main currents, problems and protagonists.
1.2 Hecateus of Miletus and the origins of historiographical thought and discourse in the Greek world.
1.3 Herodotus: life and work. Methodological reflections. The meaning of history and the role of the historian as
master of truth.
1.4 Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War": a political and methodological historiography.
Confrontation with Herodotus.
1.5 Metahistorical reflection in other Greek-language authors: Xenophon, Ephorus of Scythia, Aristotle and
Plutarch.

2. The development of Roman historiography
2.1 From the Annales of the pontiffs to republican historiography in Greek and Latin
2.2 Historiography at the end of the Republic. Retrojection and moralising discourse
2.3 The emergence of biography and autobiography: comentarii de vita sua, res gestae
2.4 Writing the history of the empire: imperial historiography and biography of emperors and other major figures.
figures.

*The optional course units are offered on a yearly basis, depending on the availability of the Organic Unit

Classical Tradition (10 ECTS)

[Religious Literature and Cultural Pluralism]

I. Knowledge Networks across Religious Political & Cultural Communities [ReD Global Course Title]

Sinners and Saints: Revolutions in Hagiography, narrative and what it means to be human

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Instructors: Carlota Miranda Urbano and Brian Kibuuka

Topics:

• Confrontation between Greek-Latin antiquity texts and their reception, aiming at critically reflect on the presence and relevance of classical culture in western culture, highlighting issues such as the vitality and plasticity of myth, the intercultural crossings based on the classical tradition, the modern expression of ancient themes – continuity and rupture;
• Important literary traditions or genres, traceable to classical literature, embodying religious literature, such as Christian hagiography, that dealt with the dialogue or the clash of cultures over the centuries;
• Different perspectives to read hagiography, depending on a multiplicity of interests and contexts, and its active reception as cultural performances inspired by these works through the ages in different geographic and cultural settings;
• Traces of political, geographical, ethnic and religious tensions in religious literature, and ways to overcome those tensions.

Learning Outcomes: After successfully completing this course, students will…

• Know how to analyse the presence of Classical Culture under several forms of expression in occidental culture throughout the centuriesM
• Understand new themes and genres that emerged from classical subjects and literary genres and were continued by latin and vernacular authors of later centuries;
• Identify literary codes of the authors of the Middle Ages and Renaissance;
• Understand the literary pragmatics of those works and how to appreciate the aesthetics of the literary production during those periods, especially in their religious context.

Greek and Latin Cultures (10 ECTS)

[Religious Dialogue and its Limits in Late Antiquity]

II. The Construction of Religious Identities in Europe [ReD Global Course Title]

Interreligious Dialogue and its limits in Late Antiquity and the Medieval world (UC)

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Instructor: Paula Barata Dias

Topics:

• The complexity of the religious phenomenon in Late Antiquity, its connection with social, political, economic and cultural changes in a turbulent world;
• The panorama between different religious languages, in their overlapping, inter-influences and tensions, particularly regarding boundaries between polytheisms and monotheisms;
• The new leadership and protagonists associated with the transition from religious dominance (emperors, bishops, monastic leaders, female aristocracy);
• The intense religious communication system in LA and High MW in it’s capacity to, trough controversies and argumentative texts, create new spiritual values and new models for human excellence.

Learning Outcomes: After successfully completing this course, students will…

• Locate the institutional and cultural historic episodes for the transformation of the polytheistic religious model into the monotheistic religious model;
• Understand, trough reading and analysing texts of religious controversy literature - Apologetics and Invective- rhetorical tools and their pragmatic efficacy;
• Identify, in the normative and legal texts of the ecclesiastical and political authorities, the negotiation and struggle for unanimity;
• Know the religious discourses that, with the construction of unanimity, have been displaced to the periphery of the religious communication system.

Renaissance Humanism (10 ECTS)

[The Jesuits and Religious Controversies of the 16th and 17th century]

III. Growth and Expansion of Religious Identities [ReD Global Course Title]

The Jesuits and Religious Controversies across Cultures in a Globalizing World

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Instructors: Margarida Miranda and Carlota Miranda Urbano

Topics:

• Jesuit colleges and the teaching of humanism, in Europe and in the New World: The pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning;
• The configuration of the Jesuits' intellectual framework and the creation of the first global school network. The unity and diversity of knowledge: the Ratio Studiorum;The place of the humanities, sciences and natural philosophy in the Jesuit curriculum;
• Jesuits as protagonists of religious controversy, in Europe or in the Far East, in India, or in Brazil. Jesuit rhetorical doctrine and action; Literary production and religious controversy, the hallmark of modern Europe: theology, philosophy, oratory, poetry, theater and music as instruments of religious controversy.

Learning Outcomes:

• After successfully completing this course, on Jesuit Religious and Cultural experience across cultures, students will take the opportunity for original research, developing new issues on the large Jesuit experience in dealing with different cultures and religions across the world, in Europe or in the Far East, in India, in Africa or in Brazil. Students will know religious diversity not only as an academic issue but as a human achievement; they are able to value procedures and experiments of coexistence as real encounter and relationship and to seek of understanding across lines of difference, rather than just tolerance. Bearing in mind the Jesuit experience across cultures, students can develop skills of dialogue and encounter, criticism and self-criticism, in order to reveal both common understanding and real differences between people and cultures, and in order to promote respect for one’s commitements, instead of leaving identities and commitements behind.

Follow-up seminar (15 ECTS)
[Master’s supervisor]

Dissertation | Internship + Report | Project (45 ECTS)