Base de Dados de Unidades de I&D
Programa de Financiamento Plurianual - 2004
(referente a 31/12/2003)

Instituto de Estudos de Literatura Tradicional

Coordenador Científico: Ana Paula Amorim de Sousa Guimarães
Nº de doutorados elegíveis (31/12/2003): 12
(Resultante da actualização das equipas de investigação efectuada no
primeiro semestre de 2002)
Área científica principal: Estudos Literários
Instituição de Acolhimento: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Financiamento base (2003-2005): 108.000,00 Euros
Financiamento programático (2003-2005): 25.000,00 Euros


Painel de avaliação:
 - Nancy Armstrong,
 - Ziva Ben-Porat,
 - Page duBois,
 - Helder Macedo,
 - Hugh Ridley,
 - Maria Irene Ramalho (Coordinator)

Apreciação global: Excellent

Relatório do painel:

The Evaluation Team fully supports the request of Instituto de Estudos de Literatura Tradicional to become an FCT Research Unit with regular, adequate funding. This multi-faceted group, co-ordinated by Professor Ana Paula Guimarães, brings together people from different disciplines, including literature, art, musicology, sociology, anthropology, medicine, and history of science. Although the researchers represent a wide range of training and experience, their projects nevertheless share a common focus.

Their purpose is to study the wealth of cultural material that is excluded from the erudite tradition, namely to document an indigenous and popular tradition of Portuguese cultural practices at a time when Portugal is undergoing Europeanization, They want to show that this material serves as a cultural repository on which great artists often draw, particularly at times of crisis, and so makes important changes in the elite tradition. They have held some successful conferences and plan to start up a post-graduate program.

Their commitment and enthusiasm made their presentation the best by far of all the new proposals. Under the coordination of a charismatic leader, the group has already accomplished an impressive amount of highly original work on very little funding. They have imaginative and delightful techniques for the presentation of the results of their research, incorporating visual data and unconventional materials.

Their past achievements and their future plans justify the full support of FCT. The Evaluation Team feels, however, that there is some danger that the group may become too dependent on the enthusiasm and synthesizing power of the Unit Leader and neglect important theoretical and methodological questions. The project needs to plan the next step: after they have amassed and so preserved this quite amazing data, what then? They need to meet as a group and decide on the theoretical principles and long-range research goals that unite them as a team and a center. They need to get in touch with similar institutions in other countries, and find out more about the relationship between the kind of research they do and folklore archives and museums. Finally, they have to make sure that their focus on the local and indigenous will not prevent them from reaching out to an international community of folklorists and scholars who work on popular culture. It is in representing the Portuguese case to the rest of the world that this Center will ultimately achieve the international visibility it deserves.

Programmatic funding is strongly recommended to help the Unit launch its projects on a solid basis, as well as to facilitate the circulation of scholars and encourage exchanges with similar institutions, with a view to strengthening the Unit's portential for international projection.