Memories of the End of the Empire is an advanced postgraduate course that performs a “spectrography” – in every sense – of the tracks of Portugal’s past in Africa. The process of building a memory of Africa, the battlefield of building a contemporary memory of colonialism and its problematic ends and the horizons of a possible common memory of this complex time, which combines past and present, are at the centre of the reflections launched in the course.
Partnership: Camões, I.P.- Chair Eduardo Lourenço / Università degli Studi di Bologna - Project Memoirs Children of the Empire and European Post-Memories ERC Horizon 2020 n.648624 based at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) / University of Coimbra.
Image credits: “Standard of Discoveries” (2006) by Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda.
Objectives
- Configure the landscapes of memories, both individual and collective, related to the decolonisations of the Portuguese colonies in Africa;
- To analyse the impact of the most complex archives of the past in/from Africa (colonial pauses, the experience of the colonial war, the movement of Return and Returns, etc.);
- Carry out an initial approach to the emergences of Portuguese Afropolitan cultural productions, as an alternative space for access to the labyrinths of Portugal’s experience in Africa and its European contemporaneity;
Methodology
Asynchronous and synchronous activities with multimedia material sharing, individual and group work, in permanent discussion with teachers.
Duration
12 weeks.
Tuition Fee
EUR 250.
Assessment
Participatory work per module (4-5 hours per week) is subject to continuous evaluation, both individual and group. The final score will be the result of the partial evaluations made by each module.
Certification
A joint certificate will be issued by Camões, I.P., and the Eduardo Lourenço Chair for candidates who perform the activities successfully. This certificate is equivalent to a 30-hour face-to-face course in the Master’s Degree in Letterature Moderne Comparate and Postcolonial from the Department of Modern Literature and Cultures of the University of Bologna.