Description

The Anglophone Cultures and History Research Area is devoted to the study of British and American Cultures and is divided into two complementary strands: Research Strand A) Culture, Science and the Media and Research Strand B) American Intersections.

Strand A) (convener: Gabriela Gândara Terenas) Due, in part, to the growing interest in projects involving the relationships between Life Sciences and Social Sciences, the activities of this strand address and foster the examination of the multiple links between Science and the Humanities from an intercultural perspective. On the one hand, the scientific method (empirical) has frequently been employed in humanistic studies, whilst scientific themes have always inspired poets, novelists, artists and film directors. On the other, scientists often make use of narrative discourse or visual techniques to disseminate their new discoveries. Thus the research members confront and compare scientific and humanistic discourses also studying the different strategies employed in the representation, dissemination and popularisation of science, particularly in fictional narratives as well as in the Arts, attempting, in this way, to establish how far the comparison of different forms of discursivity can contribute towards the study of the history of science, visual culture and literature, in nineteenth, twentieth and twentieth-first-century Anglophone countries. The members of the Project group have therefore raised certain issues for discussion: will the future of the Humanities depend inevitably upon an approximation to Life Sciences? What will be the role of specialists in Social and Human Sciences in the interpretation, understanding and dissemination of scientific discoveries? What are the advantages of the inclusion of the Humanities in scientific debates and of the inclusion of Science in debates on Literature and Visual Culture? At the same time the research strand studies the relationship between literature and different forms of contemporary media, namely television, cinema and new media. This implies the development of other fields of research, such as the role played by a set of television series produced by the BBC as strong canonical propagators of Anglophone culture; the importance of television, in general, as propagator of Anglophone literature and culture; the implications of the dynamic relationship between Anglophone literature and cinema; and the role of transmedia storytelling as representation of various storyworlds through multiple media and to diverse audiences within Anglophone cultures. Researchers will approach selected texts, from traditional literature to contemporary media, including novels, short stories, plays, films, television productions, graphic novels and digital literature as interconnected arenas of human experience and culture.

Strand B)  (convener: Teresa Botelho) aims to advance the understanding of cultural realities in the United States from a broad thematic and interdisciplinary perspective, examining how questions of place, identity and transnational interdependencies intersect in the mapping of the ever-changing and multilayered American imaginary.

Forthcoming Activities

A) Organisation of Conferences and Colloquia

  • Imagining Extinction in Video Games: An International Symposium (April 2024)
  • International Colloquium: Fictionalisations of Science in the Anglophone World (2024-28)
  • Internacional Conference: Victorian and American Myths in Videogames (April 2025)
  • Internacional Conference: American and War (80th anniversary of the end of WWII and 130th anniversary of the end of the Civil War) (2025)
  • International Conference: America at 250 (250th anniversary of Independence) (2026)
  • International Symposium: America On the Road (70th anniversary of publication): Mobility/ Immobility and Place; Road narratives; Petro-culture (2027)
  • International Symposium: Native–American Renaissance and after (60 years after the publication of The House Made of Dawn, Scott Momaday) (2028)
  • International Conference: Woodstock at 60:  The history and aesthetics of American counter-cultures and the imaging of Other Worlds (2029)

B) Courses

  • Permanent Seminar : Victorian and American Myths in Video Games (2024-2028)
  • Permanent Seminar  (Spring Sessions) 2025 – Theme: American Wars in Multiple Media ( Films, Televisual Projects, Visual Culture,  Music)
  • Permanent Seminar  (Spring Sessions) 2026 – Theme: American Literary Identities/ Transnationalism
  • Permanent Seminar  (Spring Sessions) 2027 – ThemeMobility and Energy Humanities ; American Petro-fiction
  • Permanent Seminar  (Spring Sessions) 2028 – Theme: “Survivance”:  Filmic and Literary Narratives
  • Permanent Seminar  (Spring Sessions) 2029 – Theme: : The 60th anniversary of Ursula Le Guin´s The Left Hand of Darkness and American Utopias

C) Publications

  • Literature and Science (21st Century): An Anthology (2028)

Gabriela Gândara Terenas

Related Activities

Facing the Dream – International Symposium

Facing the Dream – International Symposium

Representations of the Moon in Literature and Arts

Representations of the Moon in Literature and Arts

Call for Articles – Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses / Journal of Anglo-Portuguese Studies

Call for Articles – Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses / Journal of Anglo-Portuguese Studies

Os artigos, redigidos em inglês ou em português, de acordo com as normas do MLA Style Manual e acompanhados do respectivo abstract (cerca de cem palavras em inglês, incluindo o título, e cinco ...
Victorian and American Myths in Video Games  – International Conference

Victorian and American Myths in Video Games – International Conference

Website
Cross-Cultural Discourses: Portugal, Britain and the Press

Cross-Cultural Discourses: Portugal, Britain and the Press

The principal aim of the Project is to carry out a critical analysis of the discourses 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.

Members

Cidalia Barbosa

Cidalia Barbosa

Cidalia Barbosa

Gabriela Gândara Terenas

Gabriela Gândara Terenas

Gabriela Gândara Terenas

More Research Areas

American Intersections

Anglo-Portuguese Studies

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

Culture, Science and the Media

Intercultural studies in second language education

Mapping Utopianisms

Orientalism and Anglo-Portuguese (Post-)Colonial Relations

Relational Forms: Medial and Textual Transits in Ireland and Britain

Shakespeare and The English Canon: History, Criticism, Translation

Teacher education and curriculum studies in second language education

Translation, Teacher Education and Applied Language Studies

Translationality