English

This course critically examines key conceptual frameworks such as decolonization, postcolonialism and anti-colonialism - particularly in relation to art, museums and heritage. Emphasis is placed on challenging Western systems of knowledge and exploring alternative perspectives on seeing, curating and narrating. The course includes guest lectures from scholars and practitioners as well as field visits to museums and exhibitions.

This course explores the social, political, and economic structures that constitute what Elizabeth Hinton and DeAnza Cook describe as “the antiblack punitive tradition in America,” as well as the critique and forms of resistance engendered by this tradition. Students engage with historical sources, theoretical analyses, and cultural productions that illuminate the relation between policing and race more broadly—including their imbrication with issues of class and gender—across US history, from slave codes to ICE raids. Students explore the fundamental questions about the historical roots, structural persistence, and systemic character of racialized state violence.

This course considers the sensory qualities of cinema, a subject which engages variously with the film-as-object, film form and the spectator as active participant. The first half of the course draws on the main philosophical strands used by film scholars to conceptualize the affect of cinema, and then explores the ways film theory and criticism have sought to account for the sensuous or material nature of film. With these perspectives in mind, the second half considers the materialities of film form in more detail. The course explores the topic of filmic affect through a range of case studies and will draw on a diverse mix of references, including interviews with filmmaking personnel.

This course will cover a selection of topics including tea, tea utensils and tea ceremonies, agar wood and incense art, lacquer art, and daily life.

This course examines the key institutions, actors, and processes shaping U.S. foreign policy, with a focus on the current Trump administration. It introduces major theories of foreign policy analysis and applies them to domestic and international dynamics influencing U.S. foreign affairs. Students engage with core debates and empirical cases across regions and policy realms. The course analyzes how leadership, polarization, public opinion, and bureaucracy affect foreign policy decisions. It concludes with a simulation of a U.S. National Security Council emergency meeting, allowing students to apply their knowledge in a practical, crisis-based setting.

The course examines early modern narratives about creating artificial humans (the Golem, Frankenstein, Homunculus). Students discuss extracts from more recent literary texts that explore the relationship of humans and artificially created humanoids (Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me), and examine well-known science fiction films that depict humanoid robots and/ or androids (Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Alex MacGarland’s Ex Machina, and James Cameron’s The Terminator). Students analyze how fiction reflects real-world technological developments, human fears and desires, as well as gender roles and society’s relationship with technology more generally.

This seminar discusses how writers from different times and places have reacted to upheaval in different ways and examining the space where personal storytelling and political intent intertwine. It analyzes how the personal circumstances of those writers influence their respective writing, to gain clues as to how students' own individual conditions interact with their writing. Topics include how can fiction capture the turbulence of its times and can the world of fiction make sense of the complex causes of anger arising from sociopolitical change?

This course introduces computer vision with a focus on modern deep learning. We start with the foundational concepts and history of the field. We then dive into the key architectures that have shaped modern computer vision. We study convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformers (ViT), learning how they work and how they are used for fundamental tasks like image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation. Then, we cover 3D computer vision, including problems like 3D reconstruction. Finally, students focus on deep generative models for vision, exploring how they are used to create realistic images and videos.  

Prior to taking this course, it is recommended that students take courses in linear algebra and probability and statistics.  

Topics include Introduction to Computer Vision; Basics of Digital Images and Processing; Machine learning and neural networks; Convolutional neural networks (CNNs); Computer vision problems; Vision transformers (ViTs) for computer vision; 3D Computer Vision; Generative Models: VAEs, GANs; and Generative Models: Diffusion Models, Multimodal models. 

This course examines the creative and conceptual foundations of animation practice. It focuses on the basic elements of animated movement, allowing students to incorporate real-world physics into their own animated sequences. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The aim of the course is to develop semiotic skills for understanding the perceptual, affective, and cognitive dimensions of psychopathologies, as well as the discourses built to describe and understand them. The course provides a dual focus: first, it offers an overview of psychopathological literature from a philosophical perspective, reinterpreted through semiotic theories. Second, it equips students with tools to analyze the relationship between patients' expressive forms (including narratives, poetry, speech, and artistic productions), their lived experiences, and the surrounding sociocultural context. 

The course of this year (Fall 2025) begins with a general overview of the role of semiotics in understanding psychopathology, emphasizing how psychiatric and psychological knowledge is embedded within a broader cultural network. This network selects and organizes notions such as normality and abnormality, reason and madness, sense and nonsense, through biopolitical mechanisms and discursive practices. Special attention is devoted to the cultural dimension in the construction of concepts related to mental illness and in the emergence of specific psychopathological conditions. The theoretical frameworks introduced in the first part of the course are applied to a range of diagnostic constructs, including Borderline Personality Disorder, depression, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, psychopathy, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder. These cases serve to test the analytical potential of semiotic theory and its relevance for contemporary mental health discourse.

In the second part of the course, the focus shifts to schizophrenia, one of the most enigmatic and debated psychiatric conditions. This topic is explored through a range of interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute to a richer understanding of psychopathology. Cognitive and phenomenological approaches are examined for their capacity to illuminate the lived experience of mental illness, and are critically integrated with semiotic analysis, as well as with insights from anthropology and the philosophy of mind. The aim is to develop comprehensive and context-sensitive frameworks for interpreting the symbolic, narrative, and experiential dimensions of schizophrenia.

Key topics in this section include:

a) the cultural dimension of schizophrenia and its representations across different media;
b) the historical process of constructing and categorizing the disorder;
c) communicative and linguistic features associated with the condition;
d) narrative structures shaping patients’ experiences and the role of psychotherapy;
e) the disruption of experiential meaning and a semiotic account of delusion formation.