PORT301

PORT392

Introduction to Brazilian Literature and Culture

Cross-listed with RMST361

This course offers an introduction to Brazilian Literature and Cinema. It seeks to give you a panoramic view of modern and contemporary Brazilian cinema and literature in relation to history, social dynamics, diversity, politics, and language. You will read short literary texts and watch films throughout the term. You will discuss drastic changes in Brazil, examining Brazilian culture within a larger Latin American and world contexts. The course will also explore different critical approaches to the works under scrutiny.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

The assessment for this course is gently distributed and in a balanced way, with diverse activities throughout the term. There are no scary, long, stressing, and tedious midterms or final exams for you in this course.

Assignments and Evaluations Breakdown:
Active Participation, attendance, homework, and preparation 15%
Short response paper (at home) 15%
Short presentation 15%
Movie critique (at home) 15%
Reflection assignment (at home) 15%
Written end-of-term assessment 25%
Total = 100%

All needed materials will be provided via Canvas by the instructor.

PORT222

Introduction to the Analysis of Portuguese and Brazilian Cultures

Cross-listed with RMST260

Welcome to the study of Lusophone Cultures! Lusophone cultures are the cultures of places where Portuguese is spoken. In this course, we will focus on the cultures of Portugal, the cradle of Lusophone Culture, and Brazil, the country with the largest Lusophone population. You will do a critical analysis of different cultural genres, including music, film and visual art through the study of selected Portuguese and Brazilian texts. You will also learn about the origins of Portugal, the influences on the country and the Portuguese language, and the main cultural aspects of Brazilian culture. You will go beyond fado, soccer/futebol and samba, and get to know other cultural expressions, such as the Portuguese cuisine and the Brazilian capoeira and telenovelas. The course is organized in thematic units with texts, videos, and specific critical perspectives, and will emphasize questions pertaining to the culture of everyday life, both rural and urban, including folklore, popular fiction, ritual, arts and crafts, music, television, film, and sports.

Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able to identify, analyse and understand the basic layers and the most relevant aspects of Lusophone cultures present in Portugal and Brazil.

Language of Instruction: English

Prerequisites: No prerequisites.
Credit will be granted for only one of PORT 222 or RMST 260.

Assignments and Evaluations Breakdown:
Active Participation, attendance, homework, and preparation 15%
Short response paper 15%
Two short presentations (15% each) 30%
Reflection assignment (at home) 15%
Written end-of-term assessment 25%
Total = 100%

All needed materials will be provided via Canvas by the instructor.

PORT210

Intermediate Portuguese for Romance Language Speakers

PORT 210 is part 2 of a course for students who already have a heritage background in Portuguese or who have a native or excellent command of another Romance language and who wish to acquire an intermediate knowledge of Portuguese in an efficient time frame. The course offers development of comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing skills, and offers to meet special needs of beginning and advanced undergraduate as well as graduate students. The course also provides students with knowledge of the life and culture of the Portuguese-speaking countries, with emphasis on Brazil.

Upon successful completion of PORT 210, students will be able to sustain communication about everyday life and complex situations in oral and written form, and will be prepared to study advanced Portuguese.

Required text:
Anna Klobucka et al., Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language package (Ponto de Encontro text, Brazilian Activities Manual and audio CDs), 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 2013.

Prerequisite: PORT 110 or equivalent

Language of Instruction: Portuguese

PORT202

Second-Year Portuguese II

Welcome to the Lusophone world, the world of the Portuguese-speaking countries! Study the most widely spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere and the 5th most spoken native language in the world! PORT 202 is the second half of second-year Portuguese language learning through a culture-oriented and interactive course. The rich cultures of Brazil, Portugal and other Lusophone countries are incorporated in all materials used in class, providing students with an opportunity to immerse in authentic socio-cultural situations. Students participate in communicative activities that will help them develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

Upon successful completion of Port 202, students will be able to: manipulate grammar structures of increased complexity to engage in meaningful social interactions; use culturally appropriate forms; and understand written and spoken language on a variety of topics.

Language of instruction: Portuguese

Recommended prerequisite: PORT 201

Note: Credit may be granted for only one of PORT 202 or PORT 210

The assessment for this course is gently distributed and in a balanced way, with diverse activities throughout the term. There are no scary, long, stressing and tedious midterms or final exams for you in this course.

Assignments and Evaluations Breakdown:
Active Participation, oral proficiency in class, and preparation 10%
Video assignment 10%
MyLab Portuguese Activities 15%
Chapter check-ins (1 online quiz at home, 1 short tests in class, 10% each) 20%
Listening comprehension challenges (2 x 5% each) 10%
Oral interview 15%
Reading comprehension challenge 5%
Written end-of-term assessment 15%
Total = 100%

Pkg Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language 2/E W /
Author: JOUET-PASTRE
ISBN 9780133557138 or 9780205981120

PORT201

Second-Year Portuguese I

Welcome to the Lusophone world, the world of the Portuguese-speaking countries! Study the most widely spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere and the 5^th most spoken native language in the world! PORT 201 is the first half of second-year Portuguese language learning through a culture-oriented and interactive course. The rich cultures of Brazil, Portugal and other Lusophone countries are incorporated in all materials used in class, providing students with an opportunity to immerse in authentic socio-cultural situations. Students participate in communicative activities that will help them develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Portuguese 201 further develops the fundamentals learned in PORT 101 and 102. Lessons are focused on slightly more complex grammar structures that enhance the skills acquired. Upon successful completion of PORT 201, students will be able to: engage in interactions using culturally appropriate forms; and understand and produce written and spoken language on a variety of topics.

Language of instruction: Portuguese

Recommended prerequisites: One of PORT 102, PORT 110

Note: Credit will be granted for only one of PORT 201 or PORT 210

Pkg Ponto De Encontro: Portguese As A World Language 2/E W /
Author: JOUET-PASTRE
ISBN 9780133557138 or 9780205981120

PORT110

Elementary Portuguese for Romance Language Speakers

PORT 110 is offered for students who already have a heritage background in Portuguese or who have a native or excellent command of another Romance language and who wish to acquire a basic knowledge of Portuguese in an efficient time frame. Students who do not have the appropriate knowledge of a Romance language should register in PORT101. The course offers development of comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing skills, and offers to meet special needs of beginning and advanced undergraduate as well as graduate students. The course also provides students with knowledge of the life and culture of the Portuguese-speaking countries, with emphasis on Brazil.

Upon successful completion of PORT 110, students will be able to sustain basic communication about everyday life situations in oral and written form, and will be prepared to study intermediate Portuguese.

Required Text:
Clémence de Jouët-Pastré, Anna Klobucka, et al.: Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language package, 2nd Edition, Pearson Canada, 2013. (Ponto de Encontro package includes: Ponto de Encontro textbook [Brazilian Portuguese] and MyPortugueseLab [24 months access].)

Recommended text:
Alexandre da Prista, Essential Portuguese Grammar, Dover.

Prerequisite:
Heritage background in Portuguese or native/excellent command of another Romance language

Language of Instruction: Portuguese

PORT102

First-Year Portuguese II

PORT 102 is an interactive course that builds upon the basics you learned in PORT 101, following a culture-oriented, interactive approach to learning a foreign language. The material used in class incorporates cultural aspects of Brazil and Portugal, designed for the Portuguese 102 level of linguistic comprehension. The activities include role-play, group tasks, writing texts, reading and talking about simple articles on topics of interest, watching and talking about movies, short clips, and music videos. The principal objective of this course is to deepen students’ skills for communicating in Portuguese by providing extensive opportunities to use the language as a vehicle for information interchange and for developing cross-cultural awareness, as well as strengthening listening, reading, writing and grammatical skills.

Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able to sustain basic communication about everyday life situations, such as expressing personal interests and hobbies, talking about routines, clothing, sports, special dates, asking for information, ordering food, etc., and be able to apply new communicative skills such as talking about the future and narrating events in the past.

Language of instruction: Portuguese

Recommended prerequisite: PORT 101

Note: Credit will be granted for only one of PORT 102 or PORT 110

Midterm = 15%
Listening Activity = 10%
Composition = 10%
Oral Interview = 15%
Final Exam = 25%
MyLab Portuguese (online exercises) = 10%
Active Participation, Attendance, Oral Proficiency, Preparation = 15%
Total = 100%

Pkg Ponto De Encontro: Portguese As A World Language 2/E W /
Author: JOUET-PASTRE
ISBN 9780133557138 or 9780205981120

ITAL420H

[Cross-listed with Italian Studies 421H]

Cultural Crossings Between Italy and China

Over the centuries, crossings between Italy and China have produced the most sustained, and arguably the most influential, strand of cultural texts on East-West borrowings. France and Britain also contributed significantly to European understandings and imagination of modern China. This course examines the evolution of Italian perspectives on China through significant literary, cinematic, and media texts of Italians’ real and fantastical travels in China and of Chinese immigration to Italy. French and British sources will also be studied mainly for comparative purposes.

The aim of the course is to analyze the contexts, ways, and reasons for which specific knowledge about China was produced, interpreted, and negotiated in Italy. Central themes we consider include the notions of the other and the self, the center and the border, boundary space, hybrid cultural identities, ethnic essentialism, and intercultural communication. To this end, we journey through four thematic clusters, including “Marco Polo and His Legacy in Italy,” “The Cultural Revolution in Italian and French Representations,” “Chinese, Italian, British, and American Cinematic Exchanges,” and “Chinese Immigration to Italy.” Theories about mobility (e.g., James Clifford, Michel De Certeau, and Edward Said) accompany specific primary texts.

This course will appeal to students who are interested in the fields of Italian, transnationalism, globalization, and intercultural studies. Ultimately, they will learn to put Italian and European interpretations of contemporary China as a rising superpower in perspective.

Primary texts include excerpts from the following list:
Marco Polo, Il Milione (1298-99)
Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili (1972)
Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Adami, and Renato Simoni, Turandot (1924)
Bernardo Bertolucci, L’ultimo imperatore (1987)
Michelangelo Antonioni, Chung Kuo Cina (1972)
Alberto Moravia, La rivoluzione culturale in Cina (1967)
Julia Kristeva, Des Chinoises (1977)
Vittorio De Sica, Ladri di biciclette (1948)
Wang Xiaoshuai, Shi Qi Sui de Danche/Beijing Bicycle (2001)
Charles Brabin, The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Mario Caiano, Il mio nome è Shangai Joe (1972)
Roberto Saviano, Gomorra (2006)
Matteo Garrone, Gomorra (2008)
Sergio Basso, Giallo a Milano: Made in Chinatown (2008)
Andrea Segre, Io sono Li (2011)
Edoardo Nesi, Storia della mia gente (2010)
Yang Xiaping, Come due farfalle in volo sulla Grande Muraglia (2011)

Prerequisite: ITAL 302

Note:
Precludes credit for ITST 421H and vice versa.
Students who plan to minor in Italian must take this course as ITAL and will be expected to do part of their reading and assignments in the Italian language.
ITAL 420 may be taken twice, with different content, for a total of 6 credits.

Language of instruction: English

View article about this course

RMST420C

[Cross-listed with Italian 404 and Italian Studies 414]

Think Like a Forest: A Dialogue Between Pre-Modern Worldviews, Environmental Humanities, Indigenous Knowledge

How do we think? Are we aware of the kind of thinking we entertain? What kind of world do our individual and collective, conscious or unconscious thought-processes generate? Do we even have a choice in the orientation of our thinking patterns, and if we do, does it matter to know we can choose how to think?

Recent scientific research on plants and forests has shown that plants are dynamic, ever-evolving creatures that know how simultaneously to respond to their own inner pattern while remaining adaptive to the environment; that know how to grow in resilience and flexibility by developing a vast web of relations, both visible and invisible. In becoming who they are, plants also generate and foster complex ecosystems around them: they support communities of deeply interconnected yet also wildly diverse living species, including our own. In other words: plants know how to give to life infinitely more than they take from it. Without plants and their way of living/thinking, we humans would simply not exist.

Somewhat like an old-growth forest, pre-modern Europe produced a vast corpus of texts and images that mirror and teach an organic way of thinking and of becoming. In this course we will deepen our understanding of these expressions of ecologically-oriented, transformative worldviews. Our approach will be complemented and supported by select readings in contemporary environmental humanities, and in North-American Indigenous perspectives on education as the human path to wholeness.

We will discuss:

The Romance of the Rose (excerpts); Tristan and Isolde; The Grail Legend (excerpts);
Lady Philosophy and/as Mother Nature embodying feminine wisdom from Antiquity to the Middle Ages;
St Francis, Hildegard of Bingen, Dante Alighieri;
Botticelli’s mythological paintings; Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and other paintings;
Montaigne’s education of the mind through rootedness in the body and the heart.

Required Texts:

All texts for this course will be made available through Canvas and/or UBC library.

Language of instruction: English

Note:
Students who plan to minor in Italian must take this course as ITAL and will be expected to do part of their reading and assignments in the Italian language.