Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

This course fosters critical thinking by discussing key philosophical questions and encouraging reflection upon the connections between the ontological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of those questions. The course follows a thematic approach, going back and forward in the history of thought. Different thinkers, such as Arendt, Benjamin, Heidegger, Kant, and Hadot, guide our discussions.

This course provides an exploration of contemporary urban social movements. It examines this topic through concepts such as human rights, re-democratization, structural inequalities in Brazil, and collective mobilization. The course also explores the theory related to social movements, including conflict, collective identity, social actor, repertoires, national and transnational networks, and recognition theory.

This course provides a study of deafness. It looks at the development of Brazilian sign language as the primary language of the deaf community and explores signs as a natural alternative for linguistic expression. 

This course provides a study of communication from a socioeconomic perspective. It covers the basic concepts of micro and macroeconomics, including supply and demand, competitive and monopolistic markets, international trade, exchange rate, interest, inflation, GDP, unemployment, public policies, and the financial market. It also explores global crises of capitalism, role of the state, globalization, competitiveness, and technology. 

This course provides an overview of contemporary literature in Portuguese-speaking African countries. It explores poetry and prose in colonial and post-colonial contexts, writing and orality, ancestry, tradition, modernity, appropriation of the colonizer's language, local variants, and cultural resistance movements.

This course provides philosophical support for understanding the present technological ubiquity and contemporary discourses about technology. It explores topics linked to contemporary technological development, especially its ethical dimensions. 

This course provides an introduction to geotechnics. Topics include physical indexes, soil classification, notions of sampling and surveying, tensions in the soil, resistance wraps, compressibility, and shear strength, stability analysis (slopes, embankments, and excavations), thrusts at rest, retaining structures, gravity walls, direct and deep foundations, drainage, and lowering of the water table.