Entangled Memories: Heritage, Sustainability, and Communities in Portugal and Lusophone Africa

Catalog description

This interdisciplinary course explores the dynamic interplay between shared memory, heritage, and the construction of sustainable communities across Portuguese and Lusophone African societies and diasporas. Integrating literature, cultural studies, and the social sciences, we will draw on case studies from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Guinea-Bissau to examine how cultural narratives and artistic practices engage historical legacies, identity formation, and contemporary socio-political challenges. Anchored in Afro-Portuguese and Lusophone African literatures, the syllabus extends to visual arts, music, cinema, oral history, and digital media, fostering comparative and cross-disciplinary analysis. Students engage critically with memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory, and sustainability studies. Through close reading, visual and archival analysis, and community-oriented research methods, we will investigate the politics of remembrance, reparative heritage practices, and emerging imaginaries of sustainable futures.