University Catalog 2024-2025

Portuguese (PORT)

PORT 1120  Intensive Portuguese  (4)  

An intensive one-semester introduction to Portuguese with an emphasis on listening and speaking skills designed to quickly prepare students for more advanced study of language, literature, and culture. Co-requisite: PORT 1121.

PORT 1121  Intensive Portuguese Lab  (0)  

A 75-minute weekly meeting dedicated to improving proficiency via telecollaboration. Co-requisite: PORT 1120.

PORT 1290  Semester Abroad  (1-20)  

Semester Abroad. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 1940  Transfer Coursework  (0-20)  

Transfer Coursework at the 1000 level. Department approval may be required.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 2000  Portuguese For Spanish Speakers  (4)  

Language course that uses students’ previous knowledge of Spanish to achieve quick command of Portuguese.

PORT 2030  Intermediate Portuguese  (4)  

Review of fundamental skills taught in previous courses. Introduction to Brazilian literature and culture through plays, short stories, articles, and Plm. Practice in composition. Co-requisite: PORT 2031. Optional: PORT 2890.

Prerequisite(s): minimum score of PASS in 'PORT 2030 Placement' or PORT 1120.

PORT 2031  Intermediate Portuguese Lab  (0)  

Intensive Portuguese Lab. A 75-minute weekly meeting dedicated to improving proficiency via telecollaboration. Co-requisite: PORT 2030.

PORT 2050  Immersive Intermedia Portugues  (4)  

Summer Program.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 1120.

PORT 2390  Semester Abroad  (1-20)  

Semester Abroad. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 2890  Service Learning  (0-1)  

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Corequisite(s): PORT 2030.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 3040  Grammar & Writing - Portuguese  (3)  

Analysis and practice in the written language.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 2030.

PORT 3050  Immersive Grammar & Writing  (3)  

Summer program.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 2030.

PORT 3130  Intro to Brazilian Culture  (3)  

Introduction to Brazilian literature, with a focus on questions of cultural identities, relations between high and low culture, representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality.

Prerequisite(s): minimum score of PASS in 'PORT 3130 Placement' or PORT 2030.

PORT 3190  Brazilian Short Stories  (3)  

This course provides an introduction to the Brazilian short story from 1870 to the present, while providing intermediate to advanced training in Portuguese conversation and composition.

PORT 3250  Composition & Convers  (3)  

Reinforcement of spoken Portuguese and review of grammatical structures. Short stories and plays serve as the basis for further development of speaking and writing. Emphasis in dealing with the texts is on their utility for skill practice rather than literary analysis.

Prerequisite(s): minimum score of PASS in 'PORT 3250 Placement' or PORT 2030.

PORT 3280  Advanced Portuguese through Brazilian Film  (3)  

Through a series of film viewings, readings, and access to other visual media from Brazil, students receive instruction in how to discuss and analyze visual culture in Portuguese. Vocabulary building and strategies for enhanced viewing and reading comprehension are stressed. Significant emphasis on the continued development of linguistic skills.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 2030.

PORT 3290  Special Topics  (3)  

Course will expand upon grammar and vocabulary learned in 1120-2030 sequence. Emphasis on written and oral production in specific registers. Possible themes include Portuguese across the Lusophone world, regional studies in the Lusophone world, professional skills, historical development of Portuguese, Portuguese pronunciation. The precise topic varies from year to year. Course may be repeated 3 times for credit.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 2030 or minimum score of PASS in 'PORT 3290 Placement'.

Course Limit: 3

PORT 3330  Brazilian Lit Translatn  (3)  

A survey of Brazilian literature in translation, focusing primarily on the novel and short story. Students engage a wide variety of texts, including representative works of romanticism, realism, modernism and postmodernism. This course may be taken for major or minor credit if written work is completed in Portuguese.

PORT 3340  Brazilian Women Writers  (3)  

An introductory survey of influential Brazilian women writers of prose fiction, with a focus on literary treatment of questions of gender, sexuality, race, and class.

PORT 3890  Service Learning  (0-1)  

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 4100  Gender & Sexuality Brazillian  (3)  

This course proposes a historicized and interdisciplinary consideration of gender and sexuality in modern Brazil through short fiction, films, documentaries, popular music, and critical texts. It will address a wide range of topics, including patriarchal power and the construction of masculinity, the quest for female subjectivity, gender in relation to race and class, the constitution and crisis of the bourgeois family, marital strife and infidelity, homosexuality, and transgender performance.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 3040, 3130 or 3280.

PORT 4110  Race and Ethnicity in Brazilian Literature and Culture  (3)  

This course will focus on the construction of “race” as a social category and ethnicity as a process of cultural distinction in relation to Brazilian nationality. While making use of historical and, to a limit extent, social scientific materials, our focus will be on literary texts and other cultural artifacts dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will engage canonical texts of Brazilian literature, as well as recent works.

PORT 4120  Social Problems in Brazilian Literature & Culture  (3)  

The chief problems of Brazilian society as reflected in fiction, testimony, poetry, theatre, music, and other forms of cultural expression. Representative works may concern persistent race, class, and gender inequalities; tyranny and political repression; violence; and/or environmental issues.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 3130, 3280 or 3250.

PORT 4130  Topics in Brazilian Literature  (3)  

Readings in Brazilian stories, essays, and poems, focusing on a topic of historical and cultural importance. Some themes: women in Brazilian literature, regionalism, Afro-Brazilian culture, soccer. The precise topic varies from year to year. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 3130, 3250, 3280 or minimum score of PASS in 'PORT 4000 Level Placement'.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 4160  Afro-Brazilians  (3)  

This course provides an introduction to the history of Brazilian race relations, the fiction and poetry of black writers from Brazil, and the study of recent Afro-Brazilian cultural and social movements.

PORT 4290  Brazilian Cultural Study  (3)  

A survey of Brazilian cultural practices and discourses of the twentieth century that engages historic and contemporary debates in Brazil surrounding nationality, modernity, democracy, and citizenship.

PORT 4440  Brazilian Popular Music  (3)  

This course examines Brazilian cultural history through the prism of popular music, often regarded as Brazil's most accomplished field of artistic production. The study of music will provide the basis for the exploration of issues such as nationalism, regionalism, developmentalism, authoritarianism, and globalization.

PORT 4510  Luzo-Brazilian Cities  (3)  

An advanced undergraduate course with a focus on the literary and cultural production of a major city of the Portuguese-speaking world including Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Salvador da Bahia, Luanda, and Maputo. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 3130, 3250 or 3280.

Course Limit: 2

PORT 4610  Brazilian Cinema  (3)  

This survey of Brazilian cinema and film criticism covers key phases in national film production including early experiments, the failed Vera Cruz enterprise, Cinema Novo, Cinema Marginal, Embrafilme productions, and recent film directors include Mário Peixoto, Humberto Mauro, Anselmo Duarte, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ruy Guerra, Glauber Rocha, Carlos Diegues, Walter Lima Junior, Luiz Carlos Barreto, Paulo César Saraceni, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Rogério Sganzerla, Júlio Bressane, Suzana Amaral, and Carla Camurati.

PORT 4910  Independent Study  (3)  

PORT 3000-level sequence and departmental approval. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 4990  Honors Thesis  (3)  

Honors Thesis.

PORT 5000  Honors Thesis  (4)  

For especially qualified seniors with approval of the faculty director and the Office of Academic Enrichment. Students must have a minimum of a 3.400 overall grade-point average and a 3.500 grade-point average in the major.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 4990.

PORT 5380  Junior Year Abroad  (1-20)  

Junior Year Abroad. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 5390  Junior Year Abroad  (1-20)  

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.


Maximum Hours: 99

PORT 6000  Independent Study  (1-3)  

Independent Study.

Prerequisite(s): PORT 4120, 4130, 4510, 4610 or 4910.

PORT 6130  Brazilian Cultural Imaginaries  (3)  

This course is a textual and experiential exploration of Brazil and specifically the city of São Paulo as part of the Tulane Summer in Brazil program.

PORT 6160  Afro-Brazilians  (3)  

This course provides an introduction to the history of Brazilian race relations, the fiction and poetry of black writers from Brazil, and the study of recent Afro-Brazilian cultural and social movements.

PORT 6190  Avant-Garde Move Lat Am  (3)  

This course surveys the avant-garde movements in Spanish America and Brazil, focusing on the period from 1916 to 1935. Some of the movements to be examined include Huidobro's creacionismo, ultraísmo, Brazilian modernismo and verdeamarelismo, Mexican estridentismo and the “Contemporáneos” group, and the impact in Latin America of surrealism and other European avant- garde movements. Readings in both Spanish and Portuguese, and the class is taught in both languages, but fluency in both languages is not expected.

PORT 6220  The Literature of Brazil  (3)  

In-depth study of Brazilian literature from its beginning to the present. Authors: Manuel Antônio de Almeida, José de Alencar, Gonçalves Dias, Castro Alves, Machado de Assis, Aluisio Azevedo, Graciliano Ramos, José Lins do Rêgo, Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Guimarães Rosa, Clarice Lispector, Antônio Callado, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Rubem Fonseca, Sérgio Sant'anna, Roberto Drummond, and others.

Prerequisite(s): (PORT 4120, 4130, 4510, 4610, 4910 or 4920).

PORT 6230  Brazilian Lit & The City  (3)  

Brazilian literature and its production within an urban environment focusing of issues such as slavery and race relations, class divisions and spatial marginality, industrialization and labor movements, gender and sexuality, media and popular culture, rural to urban migration, and violence and criminality. Authors may include Manuel Antônio de Almeida, Aluísio Azevedo, Machado de Assis, Lima Barreto, Mário de Andrade, Patricia Galvão, Marques Rebelo, Nelson Rodrigues, Rubem Fonseca, Caio Fernando Abreu, Patricia Melo, Paulo Lins, and Regina Rheda.

PORT 6290  Brazilian Cultural Studies  (3)  

An advanced survey of Brazilian social and cultural critics of the twentieth century including Silvio Romero, Euclides da Cunha, Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, Guerrero Ramos, Roland Corbisier, Florestan Fernandes, Antônio Cândido, Roberto Schwarz, Ferreira Gullar, Silviano Santiago, Luiz Costa Lima, Flora Süssekind, Renato Ortiz, Muniz Sodré, and Marilena Chaui. The course foregrounds historic and contemporary debates in Brazil surrounding nationality, modernity, democracy, and citizenship.

PORT 6440  Brazilian Popular Music  (3)  

Prerequisite(s): (PORT 4120, 4130, 4510, 4610, 4910 or 4920).

Prerequisite(s): (PORT 4120, 4130, 4510, 4610, 4910 or 4920).

PORT 6710  Contemp Fict Sp Am &Braz  (3)  

A comparison of the contemporary fiction of Spanish America and Brazil. Topics vary but may include: the short story; race, gender, and nationalism; the regionalist novel; experimental fiction; fiction and popular culture. Among the selected authors are Julio Cortázar, Guimarães Rosa, Fonseca, Borges, Clarice Lispector, Rulfo, Donoso, Icaza, Ramos, Rivera. Reading competence in Spanish and Portuguese to be established by previous course work or judgment of instructor.

PORT 6910  Special Topics  (3-4)  

Open to graduate students only.

Prerequisite(s): (PORT 4120, 4130, 4510, 4610, 4910 or 4920).