Portuguese

This course provides an introduction to the Portuguese language aimed at developing intermediate reading and communication skills. Students expand their vocabulary, practice key grammatical structures, and learn to use common connectors in Portuguese. The course emphasizes comprehension of standard Portuguese texts, including literary texts of moderate difficulty, and explores important communicative features such as common expressions and forms of address. It also encourages reflection on language through comparison with other Romance languages and promotes awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity.

This course introduces students to the critical study of global cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period. The course's main materials are Portuguese travel narratives, geographical and ethnographic texts produced between c.1450 and 1650. Students read a selection of translated primary texts narrating travels, encounters, and confrontations with extra-European cultures, accompanied by a selection of secondary literature highlighting the quandaries of the genre’s intertwinements with imperial expansion and the making of colonial societies in Brazil, Africa and Asia. To highlight the unique characteristics of Portuguese travel writing, the course covers the entire globe, but some emphasis is placed on early colonial Brazil, West and South Africa, and the so-called East Indies. 

The course introduces the Portuguese language and its global cultural context. Students develop basic communicative skills through the study of pronunciation, spelling, essential vocabulary, and core grammatical structures. The course also explores the presence of Portuguese in the world, fostering awareness of linguistic diversity, cultural practices, and fundamental pragmatic norms.

This course is a beginner level course taught in a bilingual environment of Spanish and Portuguese. The course covers basic vocabulary and grammar with the goal of building the capacity to talk about the learner´s daily activities and physical and psychological characteristics, while asking simple questions and conducting small conversations. The course also presents the general geography and cultural-historical information of Portuguese-speaking countries (Brasil, Portugal, Angola, etc.).

Two (week-long) sessions of intermediate Portuguese language instruction bookend the summer seminars. Instruction emphasizes the development of intermediate Portuguese language structures, as well as oral and written practice.

This is an independent research course with research arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific research topics vary each term and are described on a special project form for each student. A substantial paper is required. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

This A1 level Portuguese course involves understanding texts and very simple communication situations to be able to communicate in Portuguese based on real, daily life situations. Through interactive sessions, students acquire specific vocabulary relevant to the topics under study while grasping the foundational structures of the Portuguese language.

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 focuses on the development of Portuguese language basic structures, as well as oral and written practice based on selected texts and Brazilian popular music songs. Consistent with intensive Portuguese courses at UC campuses, this course is upper division.