Description of the Research Area

Anglo-Portuguese Studies is one of CETAPS’s founding research areas. It was launched in 1981 under the coordination of Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa. In October 2013 Maria Zulmira Castanheira took over as coordinator of the Area. As made clear by its title, the research team focuses mainly on the study of historical, literary and cultural relations between Portugal and Great Britain from an inter- and multidisciplinary perspective, undertaking in particular the study of mutual national representations, image studies and comparative literary studies. Its work, developed over more than thirty years, is informed by the methods proper to cultural imagology studies, reception studies, comparativism and translation studies, as particularly attested to by the articles published by the team’s members in the long-established annual peer-reviewed academic journal Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses, issues 1-27, 1990-2018 (MIAR, LATINDEX and SCOPUS). The team has particularly developed pioneering work in the study of British travel writing on Portugal and the reception of British culture in the Portuguese periodical press, two extremely fertile fields for imagology studies, and will continue its research in these two areas in the future. Specifically with regard to the periodical press, a new research project was launched in 2022 entitled “Cross-Cultural Anglo-Portuguese Discourses and the Press”. The principal aim of the Project is to carry out a critical analysis of the discourse of the twentieth- century Portuguese and British press to assess how far the confrontation of different narratives and portrayal strategies can contribute towards the study of intercultural relations between the two countries as well as assisting in (de)constructing the many cultural images which have played a role in changing and hierarchising the two cultures.

The team comprises 14 integrated researchers from the areas of Literature, Culture and History, who conduct teaching activity at several Portuguese university and polytechnic institutions. A further 17 collaborators (some of whom PhDs) also conduct research, including PhD students. The team’s IP holds a PhD in Anglo-Portuguese Studies, as do a further 9 members of the group, which attests to the team’s wide-ranging experience in this research area. The remaining members hold PhDs in Hispanic Studies, Portuguese Studies, English Literature and History of Political Ideas. The diversity of these backgrounds brings added value to the group, which privileges the interdisciplinary approaches necessary for the analysis and understanding of the complex phenomena it researches. Such variety gives the members of the team the opportunity to familiarize themselves with methods of research outside their field of expertise and promotes a more fruitful approach to the investigation by providing different critical insights into how questions can be explored.

In 2024 CETAPS and IHC (NOVA FCSH) will host a conference dedicated to

Queen Elizabeth II: Life, Times, Legacies

 

The reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II (1952-2022) was the longest so far in the history of the British monarchy. Partly due, without doubt, to its exceptional duration, her seventy-year reign witnessed momentous events with far-reaching consequences, such as the end of the Empire; the decline of Britain on the international political scene; the ‘troubles’ and unrest within the British Isles and the prospect of a DisUnited Kingdom; the emergence and consolidation of popular and youth cultures and the relationship between the Crown and the media, to name but a few. The period is also of particular interest for Anglo-Portuguese Studies, as it raises issues such as the political relations between the two oldest allies during the Salazar/Caetano regime, the official visits, the impact of World War II, decolonisation, and the Revolution of the 25th April 1974, amongst others. This International Conference seeks to analyse and assess Elizabeth’s life, times, and legacies across a broad range of disciplines, themes and topics. (more)

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Research Projects

During 2008-2012, two research projects were concluded which reflect the team’s interest in also furthering in-depth knowledge of episodes and influential figures in Anglo-Portuguese relations: Portrayals of the Peninsular War: from the Novel to the Screen (a project focused on the literary and cinematographic portrayal of the Peninsular War in Portugal and which created an inventory of narratives and films set in Portugal between 1807 and 1812) and The Marquis of Pombal and his Time As Seen by British Eyes (a project focused on how Pombal was considered by British authors and Pombal’s tense relations with the British community in Portugal).

At present three research projects are active, namely Anglophone Travellers in PortugalGreat Britain in the Portuguese Periodical Pressand Portugal: Abroad – Images from British and North American Contemporary Fiction about Portugal, the latter studying novels published in English referring to Portugal as fictional scenery.

The first was launched in 1981 and remains open-ended. After having carried out in-depth studies of travel narratives produced by British authors on the subject of Portugal during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, research work which has already produced a significant number of dissertations and a vast number of articles, in the past few years researchers have begun to treat twentieth century British and North American travel accounts on Portugal. This trend opens up new prospects for this project in coming years. At the same time , the VAP Base (Viajantes Anglófonos em Portugal/ Anglophone Travellers in Portugal), an online database which brings together the bibliographic and thematic findings obtained during the course of this project and which can be accessed at no cost to the user, will continue to be updated. It has attracted interest on the part of researchers in different areas (literature, history, music, architecture, gender studies).

The project Great Britain in the Portuguese Periodical Press , which emerged from two doctoral dissertations on the reception of British culture in the Portuguese periodical press up to 1890 by two of the Group’s integrated researchers, will also have a significant boost in the coming years. The aim is now to compile a record of findings and the study of the penetration of British culture in Portugal as displayed in the periodical press from the 1890 Ultimatum until 1974. Given the vast volume of material to study, and which will be confronted with news of Portugal published in the British periodical press of the same time, this project will need to be developed in planned stages, starting with the period 1890-1918.

In the coming years the team will provide continuity to both its VAP Base and the E-Dicionário de Termos Literários and will develop two new, recently created online databases:  the E-Dictionary of Portuguese Travel Writing, an online open access dictionary on Portuguese travel writing from the Middle Ages to the present; and the E-Bibliography of Anglo-Portuguese Studies, a thematic bibliography directed at the general public and researchers interested in the relations between Anglophone and Lusophone countries. These databases represent a greater investment of the team in applied research in the near future.

Team’s goals for 2019-2022:

From 2019 to 2022 the research team’s purpose will remain the study of cultural relations between Portugal and the English-speaking world, with an emphasis on narrative cross-relations and mutual representations in English and Portuguese texts, and applying in such analysis the conceptual tools of image studies, comparative literary studies, reception studies and postcolonial studies. The work to be developed will interrogate, analyse and theorize a variety of phenomena related to identity constructs, representations of space in their relation to culture and intercultural mobility and mediation. Issues of European identity and memory will be addressed, as well as Europe’s relations with the East, thus contributing towards the aim of fostering a greater understanding of Europe.

The team will carry out basic research mainly in 5 fields:

  1. Literary representations of Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking world in 19th, 20th and 21st century British and North-American travel writing and fiction / Representations of the Anglophone world in Portuguese literature;
  2. Portrayals of British communities residing in Portugal at present, with particular incidence in the Algarve region (partnerships with local secondary schools and municipal councils to be established);
  3. The British propaganda at the time of World War II, its diffusion to the Portuguese public and reaction of the Portuguese authorities to the entrance of this material in national territory;
  4. Portuguese and British periodical press (cross-referencing Portuguese and British press discourse with a view to studying mutual perceptions and different representational strategies and analysing the centre-periphery relation);
  5. Literature and Comparative Postcolonial Studies (Macau and Goa): partnerships with University of Macau, ILMR and King’s College, London, and Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Planned international conferences, with specially invited overseas speakers:

  1. International Conference on Travel Writing (to mark the 3rd centenary of the publication of Robinson Crusoe) (2019);
  2. International Conference “Historical Fiction, Fictional History and Historical Reality”(6-8 March 2020, partnership with CHAM);
  3. International Conference to mark the 2nd centenary of the Portuguese Liberal Revolution of 1820 (2020) (possible partnerships with other research units);
  4. 3rd International Conference on Anglo-Portuguese Studies (2021);
  5. International Conference related either to the research project on the British communities currently established in Portugal or the British propaganda at the time of the Second World War and its diffusion in Portugal (2022).

 

2023

 

2022

 

 

2021

 

2020

International Conference Historical Fiction, Fictional History

 

 

 

E-Books

2016
Interpretar e traduzir o imaginário de Roald Dahl

2016
A obra e os legados de Beatrix Potter

 

Conference

2017
Long Time, No See

2016
Exposição Shakespeare 400

2014
Youth in/and Literature & Society

 

12 de Janeiro de 2017 — Maria Zulmira Castanheira, palestra, por convite, na Escola Secundária Mães d’Água, Falagueira, intitulada «William Shakespeare e o teatro do seu tempo», dirigida a alunos do 10º, 11º e 12º anos.

 

Clipping
Literatura Aqui (I), Rogério Puga (RTP 2) – 
A pequena Alice de Lewis Carroll toma para si e para o seu País das Maravilhas o papel principal neste programa | 13 Out, 2015 | Episódio 5

 

The Team (Members and Collaborators)

Ana Rita de Sá Soveral Padeira (IDI);
Carlos Ceia (IDI);
Catarina Castro (C);
Célia Branco (C);
Cláudia Maria Ferreira Faria (C);
Cristina Pimenta de Roure Roquette Castanheira (C);
Custódia Irene Vaz Magalhães (C);
David Glyn Evans (C);
David Swartz (C);
Dora Gago (C);
Dulce Margarida Guerreiro Afonso (C);
Gabriela Gândara Terenas (IDI);
Isabel Simões-Ferreira (IDI);
Isabel Oliveira  (IDI);
João Paulo Ascenso Pereira da Silva (IDI);
Jorge Bastos da Silva (IDI);
José Baptista de Sousa (IDI);
Marco António Franco Neves (IDI);
Maria da Conceição Emiliano Castel-Branco (IDI);
Maria Zulmira Castanheira (IDI);
Mariana Gonçalves (C);
Miguel Alarcão (IDI);
Rogério Miguel Puga (IDI).

(C) – Collaborator
(IDI) – Integrated Researcher Doctor

Ceremony to present an Honorary MBE (Honorary Member of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) to Professor Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa in recognition of her services to UK/Portuguese Studies and Academic Relations at the British Ambassador’s Residence.
 
 
 
The following letter justifies the importance of this award.
 
—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—♣—
 
 
His Excellency Mr. Chris Sainty

The British Ambassador to Portugal

Professor Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa is one of the most prestigious and admired scholars in the history of the Portuguese modern Academy and has devoted is entirely live, until today, to the Anglo-Portuguese studies, which she has created late in the 1970s. Like a general who never retires from his mission to rule his troops, Professor Leonor, as we still address her in great respect, never gave up until today to lead her academic disciples. She has been not just a living inspiration to young and senior scholars, but a true ambassadress to British literature and culture for the Portuguese Academy and beyond. She has been a great teacher to many of us, a true master who has earned the gratitude of her peers crossing now several generations. From the first courses in English Studies, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, established in late 1970s at Nova University, which she also helped in its foundation, to the Scopus indexed journal Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses, which she has founded 40 years ago, the range of her works and actions is impressive. Notably, she coordinated and published Camões in England and Don Sebastian in English Literature.  She was the first woman holding a professorship in English Studies in Portugal and she helped, this way, creating new opportunities to other women to start a career in this area in Portugal. She was also the first woman to chair the National Library of Portugal. She is now a distinguished member of the Portuguese Academy of History, where she keeps working on aspects of the Anglo-Portuguese relations, namely travel-writing and the Peninsular War. She also launched the English-Speaking Union in Portugal, becoming its first President. She was President of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies and Vice-President of the Byron Society in Portugal, and the first Vice-Rector of the Portuguese Open University. Finally, at NOVA FCSH, she founded the research centre that I have the honour to currently chair: CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies), today evaluated by FCT as an excellent research unit.

Professor Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa has taught several generations to read not only the books, not only to drink the information they contain so that this information can be passed on to other generations. This pedagogy of reading as an inheritance gained without work has never been an option within the tradition of Anglo-Portuguese studies. Professor Maria Leonor taught us all to “go straight to the book of nature” so that our own thinking could flourish. Professor Maria Leonor’s hand has always been a helping hand that has not prevented anyone from growing up.              

Professor Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa deserves the best tribute possible that the British Embassy can offer. She has been the best diplomat of the British culture and literature everywhere she has given us all the privilege to follow her teachings and intellectual leadership.   

Yours sincerely, 

Carlos Ceia

 

On the 8th of May of 2021, Professor Leonor Machado de Sousa received her MBE at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Lisbon.

I Seminário Internacional: Mobilidade, Memória e Imaginário nas Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa e Inglesa

O I Seminário Internacional: Mobilidade, Memória e Imaginário nas Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa e Inglesa tem o objetivo de divulgar pesquisas em literaturas de língua portuguesa e de língua inglesa entre universidades, institutos e centros de pesquisa do Brasil, Portugal, Macau e Reino Unido. Assim, questões como mobilidade em seus diversos desdobramento, representações imaginárias e questões de memória na literatura serão foco de debate desta edição inaugural do evento. Programa

 

 

asia

INTERFACE ON ORIENTALISM AND ANGLO-PORTUGUESE COLONIAL RELATIONSHIPS

This research interface is part of the Anglo-Portuguese Studies area, and its researchers study manifestations of European orientalism and the Anglo-Portuguese colonial presence and relations in India (16th-20th centuries), China (16-20th centuries) and Japan (16th-17th centuries).

Convener: Rogério Miguel Puga

 

TEAM:
  • Ana Brígida Paiva (NOVA FCSH/CETAPS)
  • Carlotta Pisano (NOVA FCSH/CETAPS)
  • Cidalia Barbosa (NOVA FCSH/CETAPS)

 

CETAPS