Contemporary French Culture
Code
722111065
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Línguas, Culturas e Literaturas Modernas, Secção de Estudos Espanhóis, Franceses e Italianos
Credits
10
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
1. To improve one´s knowledge on the cultural and artistic production of contemporary France;
2. To develop the capacity of analysisng philosophical, sociological and historical texts in an interdisciplinary
perspective;
3. To identify and critically analyse the contemporary artistic production;
4. To be aware of the complex relationship between French history and culture, throughout XX c.
5. To handle operative concepts from this area of study, using reference bibliography;
6. To use the acquired knowledge, concepts and methodologies to solve new problems in new and unfamiliar
contexts related with the area of Contemporary French Culture;
7. To gain knowledge and competencies to elaborate and present, orally and in written form, a scientific paper,
according to academic standards.
Prerequisites
Subject matter
1. History and Culture during the first half of the twentieth century
1.1. World War I
1.2. The artistic vanguards
1.3.The economic crisis of the thirties
1.4. World War II: the Nazi occupation
1.5. The intellectuals and the occupation: colaborationist and anti-colaborationist writers
2. Society and culture after World War II
2.1. The Constitution of 1946
2.2. Existentialism
2.3. Feminism: «The Second Sex» by Simone de Beauvoir
2.4. Algerian War of Independence
2.5. The Intellectuals and May 1968
2.6. The birth of «Mouvement de Libération des Femmes»
2.7. The «Nouvelle Vague» cinema movement
2.8. Structuralism and new paradigms in social and human sciences
3. Challenges and debates in the first decade of the twenty-first century
3.1. Immigration
3.2. French identity crisis
3.3. French laïque school
3.4. The phenomenon of immigrant writers who produce literary texts in French
Bibliography
AA.VV., Nouvelle Histoire de la France Contemporaine, 10-20, Seuil, 2009.
The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture, (Nicholas Hewitt ed.), Cambridge University Press,
2003.
Contemporary French Cultural Studies (W. Kid, S. Reynolds eds.),Routledge, 2000.
Enciclopedia of Contemporary French Culture, (A. Hughes, A. Hughes, K. Reader eds.), Routledge, 1998 (2nd ed. 2002).
Dictionnaire dhistoire culturelle de la France contemporaine (C. Delporte, J. Mollier, Jean-François Sirinelli
eds.), PUF, 2010.
Histoire culturelle de la France, 4, le temps des masses : le vingtième siècle, (Jean-Pierre Rioux, Jean-
François Sirinelli eds.), Seuil, 2009.
Sirinelli, Jean-François Sirinelli, Ory, Pascal, Les intellectuels en France: de lafaire Dreyfus à nos jours,
Armand Colin, 2002 (3e. édition).
Winock, Michel, Le siècle des intellectuels, Seuil, Points, 2006.
Winock, Michel, Julliard, Jacques Dictionnaire des intellectuels Français, Seuil, nouvelle édition, 2009.
Teaching method
A avaliação de conhecimentos implica a presença em 2/3 das sessões realizadas e faz-se mediante a
apresentação de um trabalho de investigação que deverá provar o conhecimento dos pontos tratados bem
como a capacidade para lidar, de uma forma crítica, com os conceitos estudados.
Evaluation method
Evaluation of knowledge implies being present for 2/3 of the sessions held as well as the submission of a
research paper which should show knowledge of the issues covered as well as the ability to deal in a critical
manner with the concepts covered in the course.