English

This course examines the nature of moral judgments, and how they are related to motivation, truth, and objectivity. It ask the question do moral judgments always accompany motivation to act in a certain way, how can moral judgments be true or false, and is morality relative or absolute? 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Art and literature can be seen weaving around each other, influencing one and another, and being used as a tool to teach students about liberal arts and humanity; this course explores various ways in which words and images have interacted and shaped Italian culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is divided into two modules.

Module 1: Literature and Visual Culture explores the relations between the Italian novel and comic strip fiction between the 20th and 21st centuries, highlighting the fundamental role played by comics in the personal formation and creative activity of some writers. Tracing the development and diffusion of comic strip fiction in Italy starting from the second half of the 20th century, this module focuses in particular on how much the experience of comic strip readers influenced the narrative and non-fiction production of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, shaping their imagery and writing methods. The module analyzes and discusses interpretations of comic book characters and serial stories, as well as the different ways in which comics are incorporated into their texts.

Module 2: Literature and the Arts provides students with themes and areas for in-depth study: 1) the interaction between literature and photography; 2) the issue of the gaze in literature; 3) iconology, the visual turn and the pictorial turn; 4) literature and visual arts facing the crisis of modernity and postmodernity. In particular, the course delves into these specific forms of interaction between literature and photography: 1) the photographer as a character; 2) photography as a theme in literature; 3) photography as a way of writing or the role of photographic gaze in literature; 4) phototexts. At the end of the course, students are able to develop a general vision of the relationships between Italian Literature and other Arts, from the nineteenth century to nowadays, with a focus on painting. Students acquire knowledge on the most relevant works of literature which interact with images and they will be capable of analyzing critical, theoretical, and literary texts regarding visual arts.

This course provides students with the fundamental tools to understand financial decision-making in the modern corporation. Topics include: capital budgeting/corporate investment, capital structure, corporate sources of funding, dividend policy, corporate contingent claims for financial risk management. The course frames these topics within the standard theories of risk and return, valuation of assets, and market structure.

The course focuses on the following topics:

• Financial Planning and Analyzing financial performance
• Capital budgeting (NPV, IRR and payback period)
• Capital budgeting and risk (asset beta and equity beta)
• Financing decisions and the firm cost of capital
• Capital issuing (seasoned equity offers, IPOs and venture capital)
• Corporate risk management

This course focuses on histories of Palestine, beginning in the seventh century and ending in the twenty-first. It is based on a comparative approach that engages with primary sources, secondary historical texts, literary narratives, material culture, and cinematic representations. The course provides the historical and theoretical tools to learn about and engage formations of nation and history in Palestine. Its main purpose is to center Palestinian voices and experiences, both before and after 1948. By recovering such narratives, the course contributes to countering the comprehensive erasure of Palestinian history.

This course considers a range of recent novels produced by Irish writers considering the relationship between writers and the state, north and south. Students explore what kind of difference literature can make to a society’s growing consciousness of itself. Issues to be addressed include modernity in an Irish context, sexuality, violence, the fantastic, religion and its aftermath,  the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and the connections between literary production and the imagined "nation."  The course treats Edna O’Brien’s debut novel THE COUNTRY GIRLS (1960), as its founding text. O’Brien has said that the Archbishop of Dublin and Charles J Haughey (who was at that time Minister for Justice) characterized the book as “filth” that “should not be allowed in any decent home”. Her first three novels were subject to multiple public burnings. The course also considers works by writers such as Brian Moore, John Banville, Anne Enright, Kevin Barry, Niamh Campbell, Colm Tóibín, Eoin McNamee, Anna Burns, and Sally Rooney. 

In this course, students glimpse into the Mediterranean world, using real examples of Archaic sculpture in the British Museum as touchstones and maintaining an emphasis on first-hand inspection and close-looking through gallery visits and handling sessions. Moving beyond Greece, students consider the interconnected development of Archaic art across the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, and Magna Graecia, informing these discussions with new discoveries and scientific testing. Readings engage with current scholarly debates about periodization, gender, and polychromy in Archaic Sculpture. This course requires self-directed study and presentations in museum contexts, culminating in a final essay. All ancient texts are provided in both Greek and English. Numbers will be capped because of museum visits/handling sessions.

This course looks at the vast socio-economic changes that have occurred in China, the most populous and fastest-developing country in the world, a country that was a "blank sheet of poverty" in 1949 and is the second largest economic power in the world now.  

This course explores viruses and viral disease by examining viral structure and function. It explains how viruses subvert host cell function to generate viral factories. Citing examples such as the influenza and HIV viruses, students examine details of the pathogenic mechanisms used by viruses to cause disease. The course also covers the design of viral vaccines and their use in eradicating viral infections such as polio.

This course focuses on the language, but also on the history, geography, artistic works, traditions and current events of the Spanish-speaking countries and their communities. Language learning constitutes the 75% of the course assignments, whereas Culture assignments constitute 25% of the final grade. Tasks in various forms related to language and cultural topics are performed individually and in groups. Contact hours focus on language practice in line with the textbook chapters. Students mainly work in pairs and small groups. All participants have to complete obligatory self-study assignments before class. Students are expected to take part during the lessons as well as in group tasks.

Early Greece was the age of beautiful poetry and cutting-edge philosophy. The course explores the diversity of early Greek thought at the crossroads of poetry and philosophy, from the 8th to the 5th century BCE starting with Hesiod's struggle to re-order the world of gods and humans: Hesiod's work stands side by side with Homer's poems as foundational works of ancient Greek epic. We then consider the exciting literary and intellectual experiments of lyric poets and philosopher poets, who saw poetry as a way of writing philosophy, exploring love and attacking enemies. Authors to be studied include Sappho, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and Empedocles. All texts are studied in translation.