POSLETRAS was established owing to the initiative of the Department of Languages and Literature of the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP) and had its proposal implemented with the approval of the Resolution CEPE-UFOP 3.551, on March 11th, 2009. In the same year, at the 108th Meeting of the Scientific and Technical Council, CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) approved the creation of the Program at the Academic Master's level.
The beginning of teaching and research activities took place in March 2010. From the first selection process until the selection process of 2013, 15 vacancies were offered to the students. From 2014 to 2016, the Program increased the number of vacancies to 18. In 2017, the University implemented an incentive policy to encourage researchers through their productivity and the impact of their research, and POSLETRAS was able to offer a total of 30 vacancies for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Since the end of 2017, POSLETRAS has been part of the "PAEC OEA-GCUB", a Scholarship Program for Education and Training, which results from the cooperation between the Organization of American States (OAS), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and the Coimbra Group of Brazilian Universities (CGBU).
This Program is one of the most important regional cooperation initiatives in the field of education for the development of Latin America and the Caribbean. Its main objective is to contribute to the integration and regional strengthening of the Americas by awarding full scholarships for strictosensu courses offering Master's and Ph.D degrees.
The Federal University of Ouro Preto serves undergraduate and graduate students from nearby cities where there are no courses in Languages and Literature. This confirms the positive impact that our Program has on the region.
The Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (ICHS) is more than 100 km away from other higher education institutions that offer postgraduate courses in Languages and Literature, in which there are no lines of research like those proposed here. Because of that, our Postgraduate Program attracts to UFOP researchers related to the lines of research presented here, especially to Line 1 (Language and Cultural Memory) and Line 2 (Translation and Discursive Practices).
In 2017, Line 3 (Applied Linguistics: interfaces between practices and theories) was implemented in our Program. This line of research incorporates applied linguistics in its different perspectives, in addition to addressing the teaching and learning of Portuguese and foreign languages at different levels of education. The implementation of this line of research was necessary to both the external and internal community. In addition, it is believed to contribute to the consolidation and the expansion of our Postgraduate Program in Languages and Literature.