A Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, os intelectuais e a cidade: programa de investigação, ilustrações significativas e desafios analíticos

Abstract

Taking as reference the historical course of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, with this presentation, we seek to establish the main coordinates of a possible sociological research program on the action of this institution in the University and the city. In addition to a reading of the configuration of relationships responsible for the emergence and autonomization of specific university disciplines and degree programs offered by the Faculty, the research program highlights the heuristic potential of a sociological and prosopographic portrait of its professors. In light of the coordinates to be established, the results of different sociological investigations are mobilized. Under specific historical circumstances, for purposes of analytically significant illustration, a reading is elaborated that relates the different properties of the professors of the Faculty of Arts. Furthermore, the intervention also seeks to inform such an exercise of reading by identifying the social and symbolic properties characteristic of the intellectual field of Porto in the periods under consideration. The presentation ends with the formulation of a set of relevant analytical challenges.