Since language is the key to culture and the more in-depth study of the Portuguese-speaking world in all of its diversity, the program offers a variety of courses that develop the student’s language skills and cross-cultural competency through diverse perspectives, such as literary and cultural studies, environmental humanities, film, gender and sexuality, the arts.
Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
Undergraduate Program
A Range of Learning
On any given week, students from all levels could be working with digital narratives, creative writing, literary analysis, performances, the making of micro-documentaries and visual arts projects and on individual and group research projects.
Another key element to the program is the Clube da escrita, an in-department writing center in which Graduate Writing Fellows work with each student individually.
At the end of each semester, as a means of honoring student work and sharing with a larger community, undergraduates from all courses perform or show their work at Performance and Exhibit evening. The evening highlights the quality of undergraduate work in the program and underscores the importance of community.
Our engaging and comprehensive language courses allow undergraduate students from different backgrounds and at different stages in their studies to become concentrators. In fact, many Portuguese and Brazilian Studies concentrators begin studying Portuguese as freshmen or sophomores.
The undergraduate experience in the department is shaped by the lively and active participation of students from concentration programs throughout the university. Many students who ultimately decide to concentrate in other departments choose to integrate Portuguese into their courses of study and continue to take courses or develop projects related to Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
Director of Undergraduate Studies
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Patricia Sobral
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of the Undergraduate Honors Program, Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Portuguese & Brazilian StudiesOffice Hours Tues 2:30 - 4pm or by appointment
Additional Information
The concentration in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies focuses on the study of the Portuguese-speaking world, a large and diverse geographical and cultural area spread over five continents, including Brazil, Continental and Insular Portugal, Lusophone Africa and Luso-America, and inhabited by two hundred million people.
Study either in Brazil or in Portugal (usually in the junior year or during the summer) is strongly encouraged as an important part of the concentration. Up to four credits from participation in foreign-study programs can be applied towards the concentration in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
Various prizes, fellowships, and research funds are available to undergraduate students in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.