The thematic focus of this programme covers the issues of languages, with special emphasis on silence – to better reflect on the contemporary social practices: silence as language and/or as a language; silences that selectively cease, while others remain; silence as an excess, in which the unsaid, the interdict and the unheard remains; silence of the defeated and silence of the victorious; silence as a political and social recourse, but also as an epistemological resource. In the game between language and silence, one socially constructs what we call “real”: history, literature, identities, all the social practices that we come up with in a more than ever transnationalised world.

Literature and Anglo-American Studies offer us a privileged space to observe the voices that have the power to make themselves be heard – in a world where the hegemonic power has a language, the English language, and/or an ideology turned dominant by many means (from the market to the media, to culture and the art). But paradoxically, Literature and Anglo-American Studies also allow us to observe the voice that, at the centre of that power (or at the margins, which for us are still part of that centre), did not make themselves be hegemonically heard because, even in English, their languages were different. 

Focusing on the history of culture and science, within a transdisciplinary perspective linked to a chronological framework occurring between the end of the 19^th century and the present time, History approaches currents of thought, of methodological, practical reflection, cultural practices and different experiences in the field of literary production, of figurative arts and multimedia, and of mass culture. This area is also oriented towards the historical recognition and the analytical and interpretative approach of the representation processes that, in the contemporary world, aim at bringing about the formulation of models that are alternative to the mainstream models and the participation in change and rupture processes in the field of cultural initiatives, and of political projects and of scientific and technological development.

In conclusion, following this wake, Sociology observes the relation between different languages with the ability or possibility of exercising rights and duties in society, either from a political perspective – in the exercise of citizenship rights through participation and/or governance -, or from an epistemological perspective which, however, cannot cease to be social and political – in the use and force of each form of knowledge and, moreover, in the possibility, or not of seeking new forms/languages of knowledge. What languages are included, and what languages are left out of political and social negotiation? What are the hierarchies of knowledges and what are the allowed forms of participation? What are the silencings and the whys for those silencings?

Objectives

1. Developing capacities for achieving and providing specialized knowledge to society within the Anglo-American Studies, History, contemporary social practices field, namely, within the scope of (a) text analysis, (b) critical recognition of the contemporary representations of the past and (c) exercise of rights and duties in society.

2. Development of a political perspective (on the exercise of citizenship rights, in the participation and/or governance languages), as well as the development of an epistemological perspective (necessarily historical, social and political) that critically approaches (a) the use and force to each form of knowledge and, moreover, (b) the search for new forms/languages and heterodoxies, present in its absence or emergence.

Literature and Anglo-American Studies provide us a privileged space to observe voices that have the power to make themselves be heard –  in a world where the hegemonic power has a language, the English language, and/or an ideology turned dominant by many means (from the market to the media, to culture and the art), which has brought us to the last consequences of globalisation. But paradoxically, Literature and Anglo-American Studies also allow us to observe the heterodoxy of the voices that, at the centre of that power (or at the margins, which for us are still part of that centre), did not make themselves be hegemonically heard because, even in English, their languages were and are different – being almost always silenced: women’s voices, exile and emigration voices, voices that cannot be stopped from having other visions of the world, voices that pursuit and demand other visions of the world.

Contemporary cultural History approaches currents of thought, methodological reflection processes, cultural practices and different experiences in the areas of literary productions, figurative arts and multimedia, and mass culture. This area is also oriented towards the historical recognition and the analytical and interpretative approach of the representation processes that, in the contemporary world, aim at bringing about the formulation of models that are alternative to the mainstream models and the participation in change and rupture processes in the field of cultural initiatives and of political projects. Pointing to an objective study of the heterodoxies and silencing acts, for the emergence of a social discourse put on to hide part of the past or, on the other hand, to hold out that process, the conditions for the historical representation and self-representation of minorities, of singular voices and of the ostracized are observed, as well as they forms and places of resistance and alternative.