Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

This course focuses on theories of international trade and global trade policy.

This course covers reflection and refraction, polarization, plane and spherical mirrors, thin lenses, and optical instruments. It also examines interference phenomena—including Young’s experiment, thin films, and interferometers—as well as diffraction from single slits, circular apertures, double and multiple slits, and diffraction gratings. Additional topics include lasers and optical fibers. Prerequisites: Electromagnetism and Physics III.

This course introduces the fundamentals of design history and key design concepts, along with the basics of scientific research. Students engage in research-related activities through design labs and gain experience with experimental methods. The course also provides an introduction to the structure and purpose of scientific articles.

This course examines the relationship between language and cognition, focusing on how linguistic structures shape and reflect cognitive processes. Topics include the role of language in human thought, linguistic productivity, and the debates surrounding linguistic relativism and determinism. The course explores how language interacts with conceptual systems such as semantic memory, schemas, and scripts, as well as its connection to intentional systems through its interface with pragmatics. Major linguistic paradigms are considered to highlight their perspectives on how language and cognition influence one another.

Self-identified indigenous peoples inhabit all continents except Antarctica and struggle against oppressive inequality, ethnocidal assimilation and genocidal extermination by the settler societies, colonial/neocolonial/postcolonial developmental states and national populations that surround them.  Nevertheless, the local/global contexts of their struggles differ substantially.  What are the political consequences and effects of grouping together into a global category, for example, the Saami in Scandinavia, the Yanomami of Brazil, India’s adivasi, and Australian Aborigines?  This course will survey the global history of the discourse of indigeneity and some local political contexts of indigenous peoples.  The aim will be to try to understand relevant commonalities and also important differences among indigenous struggles across the world, though our primary focus will be on indigenous peoples in Brazil and Latin America.  Themes will include racism and ethnic discrimination, extractivism and clashes over large-scale economic development projects, human rights and international organizations, and political self-determination and the politics of state recognition.  As this semester coincides with COP30 in Belém, Brazil, we will spend some weeks on questions of eco-politics and indigenous participation in climate change negotiations. 

This course covers principles of composition and specific techniques for developing language in design. Students learn representation techniques including representation in 2D, 3D, space and time. Practices include analog and digital images, photographic images, principles of audiovisual language, image creation and processing, introduction to digital sound and audio, laboratory theory and practice, and experimental processes. Students also work on their development of ethical and socio-environmental responsibility.

This course presents and deepens key ecological, spatial, and socio-historical concepts to support the understanding of Brazilian reality through the observation and analysis of Brazilian biomes (Amazon, Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pampa, and Pantanal). Other objectives include: a) presenting and discussing fundamental concepts for the study of Brazilian biomes and related themes, such as: domain, ecosystem, space, phytophysiognomy, formation, boundary, landscape, region, etc.; b) analyzing and debating what has been done in each of the Brazilian biomes over time, especially in recent decades; c) presenting and critically discussing different aspects of each of the Brazilian biomes, for example: occupation and transformation of landscapes, types of vegetation, data on biological diversity, main species of flora and fauna, conservation units, etc.

This course explores major themes in theories of meaning, including the relationships between form and meaning, meaning and truth, and meaning and praxis. Core questions in the field—such as universality, figurativeness, immanence, and compositionality—are examined through presentation and discussion. Students practice using metalanguage for analyzing signification across different levels of language.

This business course covers entrepreneurial thinking, the entrepreneurial process, theoretical models related to entrepreneurial mindset, business modeling, principles of Agile Modeling, the phenomenon of leadership, challenges of entrepreneurial leaders, and schools of leadership.

This course covers solutions to Maxwell’s equations and the wave equation, including plane waves, reflection, and refraction. Topics also include the Poynting vector, radiation–matter interactions, and models of conductivity and refractive index. The course further examines radiation from an oscillating dipole and from point charges.