HPOK13001U Brazil - Language and culture

This new elective module has been designed for students of all faculties who wish to get a compact and solid expertise on the World’s 5th largest country and 8th economy, its legendary diversity, thrilling culture, but also its challenges with universal impact. In addition, students will acquire basic reading and communication skills in Brazilian Portuguese, the third most spoken European language in the World. The module targets at students who already studied the Spanish-speaking part of Latin America and wish to extend this knowledge to the continents biggest power, but also at those who are interested in studying global challenges and tendencies, especially with regard to problem-solving strategies in developing countries and North-South relations, for all of which Brazil is a show case. Furthermore, it is an offer for those who wish to build competences in a truly interdisciplinary approach of Area Studies, learning to command a broad range of theories and methods and training to take over other perspectives and to practice interculturality. Last, it is a package customized for those who plan to include a Brazilian aspect in their thesis, or even those who pretend to study, do an internship, or carry out field work in Brazil.  

The elective module consists of two courses:

Brazil – Language and Culture (Fall) 15 ECTS

This course introduces to the history of Brazil in contrast to Spanish-speaking Latin America. This provides the basis to understand the roots of the big current issues under debate in the structural formation of the country. Insights into Brazil’s rich production in music, film, and literature lead into the cultural imaginary of how to overcome these challenges and create a better “country of the future”. These topics are interwoven with targeted language preparation in Portuguese and training to read original text or to work with data samples.

Brazil – Society and Communication (Spring) 15 ECTS

In this course students work on cases which represent the core issues of Brazil today, such as Human Rights, Environment Protection, Race Relations and Multicultural Society, Reduction of Inequality, Poverty and Criminality, Strengthening of Good Governance practices, Accountability and Participatory Democracy, as well as Brazil’s role as advocate of the South and Global Player. Continued imbedded training of reading skills is supplemented with applied practice of basic oral and written communication.