Portuguese and International Media and Communications Studies BA

Aimed at total beginners (or those with a little knowledge) this lively module will lay the foundations for your Portuguese language skills. Right from the first class we'll help you feel confident in gaining the key skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

We appreciate the importance of using interesting, relevant materials to aid your learning and will make use of a range of texts covering subjects from everyday life to current affairs. This way you will not only learn the Portuguese language, but also cultures from the lusophone world.

By the end of the module you will have the ability to understand spoken Portuguese, produce written texts and participate in conversations.

This module will introduce you to the cultures and societies of the portuguese-speaking world.

Through a combination of lectures, guided reading and research you'll explore the main patterns of Latin American political, economic and social history, between independence in the 1820s and the end of the twentieth century.

We'll focus on specific concepts, terminology, events and people, so as to develop an understanding of different perspectives and interpretations of the history in question. We'll also encourage you to appreciate the interaction between the ‘political history’ of major events and protagonists in official positions of power, and the ‘social history' of populations who both contributed to, and were affected by, political change.

You will learn to develop a critical approach to the study of history through a variety of materials; gain an ability to distinguish between the particular and the general and to develop the tools for comparative analysis.

This module will support you in your first year as you make the transition into degree level work. You will gain a variety of skills in independent and collaborative learning with the aid of guided and self-directed learning tasks and individual and group research projects. All of which will prepare the ground for subsequent research training and your final year dissertation. This module is worth 20 credits.

In this module you will critically examine the social forces that have shaped different media, focussing on the press, broadcasting, the internet, and film & television. You will explore key debates surrounding the development, composition and function of these different media forms, and examine the social, political, economic and cultural conditions that shaped their evolution.

You will be introduced to a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the production, content and reception of media messages and representations, with a particular focus on the social and political role of the mass media.

This module is worth 20 credits.

While we may take the idea of our daily lives for granted, they are filled with 'realities' and phenomena that exceed our abilities to account for them: associating it with routine, familiar and repeated experiences, our everyday lives are, simultaneously, punctuated by the exceptional, the random and the disruptive. This module explores the cultural theory of everyday life, and covers the work of key theorists Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre. You will be introduced to methods for representing everyday life in arts and media. You will also look at a wide range of attempts to register daily existence, including the modernist novel, photography, film, time capsules, poetry, video diaries and comics. This module is worth 20 credits.

We live in culture and we communicate with each other every day, online and offline. What is communication? How is it shaped by culture? In this module, you will learn theories on communication, media and culture. These theories include Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, critical race studies and digital media studies. They will enable you to look at society and culture with fresh eyes and use media and communication more self-consciously. You will be aware of how social structures and power relations shape media and communication practices, and what we can do as individuals and social groups to challenge these structures and relations. Eventually, you will use these theories to critically analyse a wide range of media and cultural texts and practices such as film, television, journalism, advertising, popular culture and social media. This module is worth 20 credits.

This module takes a detailed look at debates around the impact of new information and communications technologies such as the internet, digital TV, and mobile and wireless communications on processes of communication. The module emphasises the social, economic and political implications of information communication technology adoption, such as the ongoing 'digital divide' between the information-rich and -poor. It also investigates issues surrounding human-machine interaction, exploring the reshaping of communication forms and practices together with notions of posthumanism and cyberbodies.

Building on the foundations laid in Portuguese 1 Beginners (MLAC1049), this module will improve not only your language skills but also your confidence.

We'll continue using relevant contemporary materials such as websites, newspapers, magazines and video content to improve your understanding, but we'll also dive deeper into grammar awareness and sentence structure.

You'll grow your vocabulary and focus on areas you may need whilst working or studying in a lusophone country. Listening comprehension skills will be further developed to ensure you feel comfortable taking part in authentic speed conversations.

For this year-long core research module you'll spend two hours a week in lectures and workshops to become familiar with different approaches to investigating research topics which interest you. This will include learning about and trying out first-hand a range of research methods and techniques commonly applied in ethnographic, historical and textual study, and determining their suitability for different projects. You’ll learn about the kinds of research that a range of industry professionals from diverse sectors within the media, creative, entertainment and heritage industries pursue, and have opportunities to reflect on how you could incorporate that learning into your own research. You'll also investigate the interdisciplinary nature of culture, film, media, the arts and critical digital studies and demonstrate this knowledge by choosing your own research project and methods. This module is worth is 20 credits.

If you are studying Portuguese, this modules gives you an introduction to some of the major texts of the Portuguese-speaking world. The commonality of language derives from the colonial experiences of the Portuguese Empire, which resonate through the cultures from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century.

We will examine the ways in which ideas of nationhood and national identity have been expressed and constructed through the cultures of the Lusophone world. The texts studied explore the ways in which cultural production (through the arts) is embedded in the formation of nationhood and ideas about national identity. Culture is therefore examined through and in its political and historical context. The module will address questions of nationalism and identity as expressed through language, race and place, as well as issues relating to globalisation.

In this module you'll learn how show business is broken down into 'show' and 'business' in film, television and promotional industries and examine how creative decision-making, technology and legislation influence those industries. You'll also learn about how advertising and market research influence the design and production of media in certain regions and how film and television industries have developed in different contexts and periods. This module is worth 20 credits.

This module develops critical modes of attention to the mediation of identity. On our screens and in our headphones, we shape and reshape our selves. Media do not reflect identities but play an active role in bringing them into being. This module takes up the question of 'identity politics', enhancing students' knowledge and understanding of key identity categories that have been advanced and problematized by media scholars, such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, national, regional and local belonging, age, ability and disability, and more. The module also interrogates the mediated forms these identities take, considering the politics of looking and visual culture, the politics of hearing and auditory culture, and the politics of affect, emotions and embodiment. The module encourages historical as well as contemporary perspectives.

We're bombarded with political messages every day and in every way. They aim to influence our thinking and affect our behaviour. Some are blatant ("Hands. Face. Space.") some are more subtle ("A report launched by a thinktank today highlights..."). Some don't seem like deliberate messages at all ("Have you seen this Boris GIF. 😂").

We'll explore this world of political communication, public relations and propaganda in its widest form. In particular we'll look at:

• communicators - established institutions and power groups as well as those in opposition to them, both in formal politics and civil society
• global contexts - the political, economic, social and cultural landscapes that structure and influence political journalism and public debate.
• the public – as passive audiences, as a political imaginary, as part of a deliberative public sphere, and as actively campaigning partisans
• form - the discourses and symbolic strategies used and the influence of technology
• ethics – whether persuasive communication is good or bad for democracy, and whether free or regulated media better serve the public interest

Taking a global approach we'll explore specific practices from around the world.

And with a focus on current political communication, you'll be expected to maintain an interest in recent events and to be able to discuss up-to-date examples.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Described variously as an era of dissent, revolution and experiment, the 1960s offers a unique vantage point from which to explore a range of issues and topics pertinent to media and cultural studies. The art of the period brings into view a volatile world where distinctions between different media were becoming blurred (as in performance art, for instance) and where inherited ideas, hierarchies and values were contested, if not exploded. Notions such as the Establishment, the underground, celebrity, obscenity, mass culture, alongside those of personal identity (gender, race, class, sexuality) were all subject to radical questioning in an era where events, such as those of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, challenged the received order of things. This module critically evaluates the idea of the 1960s, starting with its status as a fabled decade that is said to cast its shadow today. Historiographical and geographical questions structure the module.  When and, crucially, where were ‘the Sixties’? Was it primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon? Was it the 1950s until 1963? Did it end in the early 1970s, as some believe, with the Oz Trials?  These and other questions will help us to demythologise the period and begin investigating it anew.

Explore how film can be regarded as an art form through the study of avant-garde cinema in early 20th century Europe.

We’ll start by looking at what is meant by the term ‘avant-garde’, and consider the development of experimental filmmaking in the context of artistic movements such as:

• Futurism
• Cubism
• Dada
• Surrealism
• Constructivism

The focus will be on developments in Germany, France and the Soviet Union and consider key trends from abstract animation to Cinema Pur.

We’ll also explore some key concerns of non-mainstream cinema such as:

• Narrative
• Abstraction
• Reflexivity
• Spectatorship
• movement, time and space

You’ll examine how experimental film engaged with modernity, including the aesthetic and political strategies of the European avant-gardes.

By the end of the module you’ll be able to:

• contextualise the avant-garde in relation to broader artistic and historical developments
• understand the relationships between film and other media

This module is worth 20 credits.

You will explore the works and practices of Black artists that have been displayed or produced in Europe and America from the nineteenth century to the present day. This includes how methods of display, tactics of critique and attitudes towards the 'Other' have defined and influenced how Black art is viewed and produced in the Western world.

Moving through time we'll:

• examine nineteenth-century attitudes towards African objects
• explore the influences of ethnography and African material culture on artists working in the early to mid-twentieth century, such as the Surrealists
• consider artworks produced in the Harlem Renaissance by painters like Aaron Douglas and photographers like James Van Der Zee
• discover how artists like Jeff Donaldson and Faith Ringgold sought to recover African history, culture, and forms of memory in the context of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and how their work responded to the political and social pressures of this period
• look at the practices of more recent artists like Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, and Kara Walker, and explore how artists have critically re-presented history’s narratives in ‘the present’ before focusing on the curatorial works of Fred Wilson

To finish we'll consider the rise of contemporary African art within European and American art markets, and the related economic and political shifts that have occurred since the colonial era. 

This module is worth 20 credits.

During this year-long module you'll:

• think about industries, audiences and surrounding debates from a social and cultural viewpoint
• learn about the way that social and cultural meaning is produced by film and television programmes​
• explore the social practices that surround the consumption of media, such as movie going and television viewing

Some of the specific questions we might look at together include:

• How do value judgements shape the way in which movies and television programmes get made
• What is "good" television?
• What challenges are public service broadcasters, like the BBC, facing and how should they address these?
• How have writers and producers attempted to use television drama to enact social change?
• What kind of TV programmes are preferred by streaming services and why?
• How might binge watching impact on the viewer's experience and social communication?

This module is worth 20 credits.

In this module you'll learn about the concepts of ‘transnational’ and ‘postnational’ media, taking into account the movement and interactions of people, finance, technology and ideas around the world. The module addresses in particular global media interactions emerging from tensions between forces of cultural homogenisation and heterogenisation. You'll also develop a foundation of theoretical knowledge to be applied to case studies in global film, television and other screen and print media. This module is worth 20 credits.

Digital communication and media are significantly transforming the ways our societies operate. In this module you will critically explore key issues behind this transformation, and investigate theoretical and practical foundations of digital communication and media and their relationship to contemporary culture. You will study the cultural, political, economic, technical and regulatory contexts from which digital communication and media have emerged and in which they continue to operate. To link conceptual frameworks to real-life experiences and situations, the module also provides opportunities for you to explore the interactive forms and practices that result from the use of digital communication and media through a range of both individual and group activities. This module is worth 20 credits.

A vital introduction to the first-hand study of art and architecture.

Through a series of weekly site visits you’ll explore:

• space - residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, ceremonial
• function - art galleries, streets, churches, factories, monuments, municipal buildings, museums, private estates, public parks
• identity - civic, familial, institutional, political, religious

We’ll examine how these change as a city develops and ask important questions about heritage and conservation.

The on-site study will be supported by archival material from Manuscripts and Special Collections. This might include architectural drawings, guide books, maps, newspapers, pamphlets, and photographs.

Media, TV, film and visual culture play a central role in forming our knowledge of the past. There is no memory without its representation in language or images. Using a range of case studies, you will explore how different forms of remembrance add weight to what they represent. Who remembers what, when, where, why and to what purpose? Why do screen and other media retell certain stories over and over again, and how is such remembrance linked to the erasure of other pasts? What is the relationship between national and transnational memories, when set against memories of enslavement and its visualisations? These, and other questions, will guide our approach to an interdisciplinary field of media, film and visual studies. The module will also encourage you to reflect critically on regimes of visibility and narration, and on the distinct ways that memories of certain events are communicated via different genres, institutions, and artefacts. This module is worth 20 credits.

Explore relations between early modern Spain, Portugal and their empires through art, cinema and historical documents to better understand the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in Latin America today.

Together we’ll study paintings starting from the mid-15th century in Portugal where voyages of ‘discovery’ were well under way, to Mexico and Brazil in the late eighteenth century.

To explore the political and cultural relations between the old countries in Europe and the new lands in the Americas we’ll read travelogues, testimonies and political discussion about the New World and look at modern cinematic and theoretical responses to the conquest and colonisation of the Americas.

These complementary areas of history and culture are perfectly balanced to help you understand how the Portuguese and Spanish empires are so relevant to contemporary global geo-politics.

Take your understanding of Spanish and Portuguese further by delving into the rich history of cinema in Spain, Portugal, Latin America and Portuguese-speaking Africa. This will assist your language skills and also deepen your knowledge of a diversity of global cultures.

In the first semester we'll examine cinema from Spanish America since the 1960s, then, in the second semester, cinema from Brazil, Portugal and Africa. In so doing, we'll address questions of cinematic style and technique, socio-historical contexts and the politics of film-making.

Don't worry if you're just starting out on your language journey, the films will be available with English subtitles.

This advanced module will be your final step towards fluency. We'll build on your grammatical competence and assist you to develop a more sophisticated and formal register of vocabulary, idiom and advanced syntax.

During class you'll gain the ability to discuss a wide range of topics in written and spoken Portuguese, giving you the confidence to converse articulately upon complex and intellectual subjects.

This module gives students the opportunity to work independently on a chosen subject area of their choice, with an appropriate supervisor.

An understanding of Brazilian slavery is key to understanding not only the history of the country but also appreciating their culture today. Within this module, we'll explore the significance of Brazilian slavery in both, the transatlantic slave systems and slave societies across the Americas. 

In addition to gaining historical understanding, you'll also learn how to use different historical approaches, tools and skills.

Explore how literature and film can give us a deeper insight into the experiences of conflict in 20^th and 21^st-century Latin American and Iberian societies.

Together we’ll investigate the way in which film and literature have reflected, resisted, interrogated and remembered the socio-political violence and conflicts that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries so far in Europe (with a particular emphasis on the Iberian Peninsula) and Latin America (including Brazil).

Your Spanish and Portuguese language skills (along with translations or subtitles where needed) will help you adopt a comparative approach focussing on the formal experiments and common preoccupations of filmmakers and writers across different national cultures and historical contexts.

You will discuss questions around a range of themes which may include; authoritarianism, confronting colonial and neo-colonial practices, racial and class inequality, social injustice, gender and sexuality, and living on with the legacies of past traumas.

You can expect to discuss works by writers such as Roberto Bolaño, Ruben Fonseca, Alejandro Zambra, Mariana Enríquez, Clarice Lispector and Liliana Heker. Feature films and documentaries by Alfonso Cuarón, Pedro Almodóvar, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Claudia Llosa, Patricio Guzmán and Susana de Sousa Dias will also be discussed.

This module uses a focus on identities and identity formation, as represented or articulated in literary, cinematic and visual texts, as the basis of a chronological survey of the development of lusophone societies and cultures in the long 20th century (roughly, from 1880 to the present). Approaches to these set texts will introduce, and equip you to evaluate, a history of changing conceptions both of racial, ethnic, sexual, and class identity.

The module will explore how shifts in social taxonomies and conceptions of community and difference relate both to scientific and philosophical discoveries and innovations and to the changing political and socio-economic structures of Portugal and the African territories formerly subject to Portuguese colonial rule. It will also provide an introduction to the study of the concept of identity itself, and of the interrogation, by psychoanalysis and post-structuralist thinking, of preconceptions of either individual or collective identities as stable and unitary. 

This module equips students you with the theoretical tools needed to explore how social identity is both asserted and challenged through the deployment of signs broadly conceived. 'Sign' is understood here primarily with reference to Saussurean linguistics, and the impact of the structuralist and then poststructuralist movements on disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, semiotics, postcolonial theory, cultural studies and visual culture.

• How does our accent function as a sign of our class origins or cultural sympathies?
• Does skin colour always function as a social sign?
• How do the clothes we wear align us with particular lifestyles and ideological positions and how is this transgressed?
• How has the phenomenon of self-branding colonised our everyday lives?
• What does our Facebook profile say about how we would like to be read by the wider world? Does the logic of the sign itself exceed what we intend to do with it?
• How do the signs that construct a social 'self' circulate in the context of new media?
• Are there psychological costs associated with living in this society of the sign?

This module will address these and other related questions by introducing students to the approaches of thinkers such as Freud and Lacan, Saussure and Greimas, Barthes and Baudrillard, Levi-Strauss and Geertz, Derrida and Bhabha, and Mirzoeff and Mitchell among others.

This module critically evaluates the roles that media play in scenarios of disaster. From war and famine to train crashes and natural disasters, the media play a central role in our understanding of, and imaginative engagement with, disaster. From the disaster movie to documentary photography and news coverage, a variety of media forms regularly link us to the real and imaginary landscapes of disaster, war, conflict and emergency, particularly with the technological expansion of the means of image-making in the 21st century. The module investigates the aesthetics and ethics of representation where disaster is concerned, introducing students to research in fields concerned with the mediatisation of disaster, conflict and emergency.

Almost every country has a cinema industry. Yet what’s shown, and why, varies wildly.

We’ll look at how films outside Hollywood are made, distributed and received globally, and how these reflect local, regional and international trends.

We’ll ask how these cinemas:

• reflect past and current international film industries setups and audiences’ tastes
• are driven by local cultural specifics and global changes
• might benefit different institutions and structures in society

We will also try to untangle categories such as national cinema, transnational cinema and world cinema, as well as to make sense of different filmic traditions, genres and modes around the world. Who creates these categories and who do they serve?

With an entire global cinema to draw from, the focus will narrow in any year to particular regions, filmic genres or movements.

This module is worth 20 credits.

The cultural and creative industries are at the forefront of government strategies across the world for developing post-industrial economies, are seen as exciting places to work, and regularly feature at the top of graduate employment destinations.

• But what are these industries, and what is it like to work in them?
• How do you gain entry to these competitive, highly skilled jobs?
• What is ‘creativity’ and why is it so important to modern economies?
• And what does the future hold for cultural and creative sectors?

We’ll examine the structure, organisation and working patterns in the creative and media industries alongside more practical exercises designed to help you to identify and evaluate your own skills and interests. This combination of industry knowledge and personal reflection is aimed to help you to find a rewarding and exciting career when you leave university.

You’ll also examine key aspects of contemporary work including:

• the concept of creativity, the knowledge economy and precarious labour
• important issues such as internship culture, exploitation and inequality

There will be plenty of opportunity to discuss and build upon your own experiences and aspirations, and to conduct independent research on areas of creative and media work that interest you.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module examines the development of photography in America from roughly 1945 onwards. The module breaks the period down into themes and considers:

1. the transformation of ‘documentary’ photograph;

2. the emergence and importance of colour photography;

3. experimental, conceptual and post-conceptual photography;

4. issues of serialism and seriality;

5. landscape photography;

6. the photobook

7. analogue/digital

The module will draw on the work of a diverse range of photographers, including Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Ed Ruscha, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Robert Heinecken, Stephen Shore, Todd Hido, William Eggleston and Doug Rickard.

This module is part of the nationwide Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme, which works with universities to provide academic modules that enable students to go into local schools to act as inspiring role models. You will split your time between the university-based seminar and your allocated school, where you will be placed in an appropriate department as a teaching assistant. You will design and deliver a teaching project aimed at improving pupil understanding of selected aspects of media studies. You will be supported by the module convenor, the education specialist on campus, and the school's contact teacher. The module typically includes fortnightly seminars and seven half-days spent in school. Placements are in secondary schools and Sixth Form or FE colleges.

Many films share common traits. Together they might be classed as “action”, “made for television” or “low budget”. But how does as film get assigned a genre? Who does the assigning? And what impact does this assigning have?

During the module we’ll delve deep into a particular genre. We’ll examine it’s:

• key concepts and texts
• development
• influence and influences

Building on what you’ve learnt in years one and two you’ll also look at the genre in the context of production and consumption.

As well as knowledge of a specific genre you’ll also develop the skills to apply your learning to other genres.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Develop and expand your understanding of the relationship between screen media and their most important component – the audience.

We’ll explore widely across history including:

• pre-cinema moving images
• the changing nature of cinema space
• the impact of domestic television and VCRs
• the playing of games and use of smartphone apps
• experimental forms of screen media

You’ll also consider the impact social and political factors, and changes in daily living, have on screen media’s relationship with its audience.

Alongside the theory you’ll also get practical experience by using questionnaires and focus groups to conduct your own audience research.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces students to the cultural and social role of sound and listening in everyday life. Scholars have argued that, since the Enlightenment, modern societies have privileged sight over the other senses in their desire to know and control the world. But what of hearing? Until recently, the role of sound in everyday life was a neglected field of study. Yet Jonathan Sterne argues that the emergence of new sound media technologies in the nineteenth century - from the stethoscope to the phonograph - amounted to an 'ensoniment' in modern culture in which listening took centre stage.

Beginning with an examination of the relationship between visual and auditory culture in everyday life, this module introduces a variety of cultural contexts in which sound played an important role, including:

• how people interact with the sounds of their cities
• how new sound technologies allowed people to intervene in everyday experience
• why some sounds (such as music) have been valued over others (such as noise)
• the role of sound in making and breaking communities
• the role of sounds in conflict and warfare
• the importance of sound in film and television from the silent era onwards.

We use a variety of sound sources, such as music and archival sound recordings, in order to understand the significance of sound in everyday life from the late eighteenth century to the present.

Examine how issues of gender and sexuality relate to media and popular culture.

Using the intersectional fields of feminism, queer theory, and media and cultural studies we'll ask some crucial questions such as:

• How are gender and sexuality represented in media and popular culture?
• How do media and cultural industries structure gender and sexual inequalities?
• How are identities and practices of media audiences and users gendered and sexualised?
• How can gender and sexual norms be challenged in creative and radical ways?

This module is worth 20 credits.

Explore the relationship between public space, politics and technology using overlapping and interdisciplinary fields, including:

• cultural studies
• cultural geography
• digital studies
• urban sociology
• cultural politics

You will engage in debates about the changing nature and uses of public space, with an emphasis on urban environments and digital space.

A range of protest movements will also provide case-study material and offer a central focus for your theoretical and practical explorations of the role of new technologies in:

• controlling space
• resisting control
• enabling new forms of civic participation.

This module is worth 20 credits.