The BA in Comparative Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon was created in 2015/2016, in substitution of the former BA in Artistic Studies, Compared Arts and Cultures. It focuses on a new approach, under a comparative thread line, to fields of study traditionally present in the curricula of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities: the study of literature and culture as well as art history and foreign languages. Its main goal is to give students a transdisciplinary environment where knowledge results from the intersection of different fields and where pragmatic competences can always be sustained and legitimized by theoretical discourse.

The course is inspired by the European and North-American traditions of graduate studies on Compared Literature/ Comparative Studies, introducing a strong component of the study of the arts. For this effect, along with the study of more traditional subjects, the BA offers new curricular units, such as Interarts and Intermedia Studies, Gender Studies, Intercultural Communication and Visual Culture.

Students who choose this BA will benefit from the articulation of the program with the research activities promoted by the Centre for Comparative Studies, a Research Unit graded “Exceptional” by international evaluators. The Centre for Comparative Studies has a consolidated tradition of supporting its students’ success, namely by integrating them in research projects and allowing them to take part in scientific events both at the national and international level and the possibility of benefiting from the existing protocols between the Centre and foreign institutions of recognized merit.

Main professional outlooks:

1. Capacity to teach at various levels of artistic and cultural institutions.
2. Cultural agents of local communities and of public administration (social and cultural animators, advisers on the area of artistic teaching)
3. Researcher on the areas of Comparative Studies, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnology, Cultural Studies, Pragmatics and Iconology.
4. Exercise functions as an analyst, text evaluator, documentalist, literary or artistic assessor, translator and interpreter.
5. Professional of the field of the audiovisual arts (radio, cinema, television).
6. Text producer and editor.
7. Cultural journalist and critic in the media.
8. Libraries and archives.

Course Director: Prof. Dr. Luísa Afonso Soares
Contact: lsoares@letras.ulisboa.pt

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