Irish Studies

Code:

LLC033

Acronym:

EIRL

Instance: 2015/2016 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Anglo-American Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	Bachelor in Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
LLC	47	Plano Oficial do ano letivo 2013_2014	2	-	6	52	162
			3

Teaching language

English

Objectives

The aim of this course is to help students become familiar with some aspects of a literature and culture that, in spite of being widely and increasingly an object of attention and study, only exceptionally have been included in the Portuguese academic curricula. The scope of the course will correspond to the curricular areas of 'Culture' and 'Literature' as they have traditionally been taught at the Department of Anglo-American Studies.

Learning outcomes and competences

Through this course, students will be confonted with the case of an historical experience strongly defined by a sense of trauma - as well as with the abundant imaginative production fostered by that experience, often with a compensatory import. The combined study of historical vicissitudes and their consequence in a broad range of cultural forms will endow students with an enhanced capacity for a critical and self-aware assessment of the experience of other national communities in Europe - including Portugal.

Working method

Presencial

Program

Students will be introduced to the study of texts (not exclusively literary) from a variety of sources and areas of interest, so as to highlight the mutual influences of social, economic and political processes in the determination of Irish identity/ies. In this regard, special attention will be given to the representations of decisive, so often traumatic, historical processes. This study will also take into consideration the impact caused by the loss of the ancestral language, and the ensuing sense of a truncated identity. Students will be therefore confronted with the ambivalence which characterises an Irish cultural conformation whose language is English, a language often denounced as a bitter colonial legacy - but that otherwise proves decisive for the global circulation of Irish cultural artefacts.

Mandatory literature

Yeats, William Butler, 1865-1939; Collected poems. ISBN: 0-330-31638-9
Joyce, James, 1882-1941; Dubliners. ISBN: 978-0-19-953643-6
Friel, Brian; Translations, Faber and Faber, 1981. ISBN: 0571117422

Teaching methods and learning activities

The fact that the literary and cultural traditions studied in this programme are mostly unknown to students at the beginning of the course may require a stronger protagonism on the part of the teacher, in particular during the preliminary stages of the course. Nonetheless, all the activities will be textually grounded, and students will be expected and encouraged actively to discuss the texts to be studied - and to do so both orally and in the form of short essays. Student participation will be duly considered for assessment.

keywords

Humanities > Literature
Social sciences > Cultural studies
Humanities > History > Social history

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	65,00
Trabalho escrito	35,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	73,00
Frequência das aulas	56,00
Trabalho de investigação	33,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

A minimum 75% attendance of all classes.

Calculation formula of final grade

The model of assessment chosen for this course relies on two different components:

a) a 2 +1/2-hour written examination on topics from the programme; this test will be taken at the end of the semester;

b) a paper (ranging in length from a minimum of 2.500 to a maximum of 4.000 words; word-processed - Times New Roman 12, double-spaced) on a well-defined topic. The topic should be chosen under the guidance and with the agreement of the course lecturer; deadline for choice of topics: 8 April. It should be sharply focused, addressing its chosen theme without lengthy introductions on contexts, etc. This should be delivered by the end of the semester, before the exam period.

Weighting:
a) = 65%
b) = 35%

Students whose essays or exam papers come to be graded below 8 (i.e., 0-7) will have to sit the exam again and/or submit a new essay or a revised version of the same.

Examinations or Special Assignments

n/a

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

the Faculty's guidelines for assessment will be thoroughly applied

Classification improvement

the Faculty's guidelines for assessment will be thoroughly applied

Observations

the course will be taught in English