English

The ‘Silk Roads’ are often considered to be the world’s greatest network of throughways that linked China to the Mediterranean world over land and sea. The historical development of Chinese culture and civilization cannot be scrutinized without a reflective understanding of the Chinese Empire’s dynamic interactions with the nomadic peoples and the Western world that were situated along the Silk Road. This course examines the geopolitical and cultural landscapes of Eurasia; the migration of peoples; as well as the spread of goods, religions, ideas, technologies, art and diseases between the East and the West. It explores the construction of an early form of globalization, and how it has contributed to the formation and dissolution of people’s ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identities. This course ends by examining Chinese government’s grand initiative 'One Belt One Road', and inquiring about the way in which the geopolitics of the Silk Road region in the past still exerts tangible and long-lasting impact on the world today.

This course provides clear understanding of the different types of environmental exposures that are related with pathogenic mechanisms of human diseases. The first section reviews the natural environment (land, water, air, energy) and its impact on health indicators as well as nutritional content of food and nutraceuticals. The second section focuses on the built environment (housing, urban vs. rural landscapes, transport, work) and the relation of our living conditions with health outcomes. The third section reviews the effects of the psychosocial environment (mental health, stress, socialization, financial status) on the public health. The fourth section expands on the microenvironment features (microbiome) and the epigenetic effects (gene-by-environment interactions) that modulate disease mechanisms. The final section of the course focuses on the combined and synergistic impact of all different types of the environment on health indicators. It also showcases the added value of multidisciplinary approaches to evaluate the combined impact of environment on health and disease.

This hands-on course examines how new technologies and vast bodies of real language data have transformed the study of the English language. Students examine multi-million-word collections of language and focus on analyzing real data using computational tools to find out more about language, culture, and society. While computational methods are used extensively, no advanced computing knowledge is required.

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 course content includes:

1) Introduction to the use of clinical interviewing for well-being interventions.

2) Attending and listening skills for clinical interviewing.

3) The use of questions during clinical interviewing.

4) Well-being interventions based on person-centered approaches: theoretical principles and methodological recommendations.

5) Conceptual and methodological principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).

6) Conceptual and methodological principles of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT).

7) The Well-Being Therapy (WBT): the conceptual background, the methodological framework, and its main clinical applications.

8) An introduction to the Schema Therapy.

9) The clinician and the soul: an introduction to Logotherapy.

10) The inferiority feeling and striving for superiority: an introduction to Individual Psychology and Adlerian Psychotherapy.

By the end of the course, students: know evidence-based interventions aimed at improving well-being, their mechanisms of action, potential beneficial and adverse effects; are able to evaluate the efficacy of well-being interventions and plan research and intervention projects to reduce risk in populations with unhealthy lifestyle and promote adaptation and self-management in patients with chronic and progressive diseases.

In the last twenty years the history of capitalism has been one of the most important themes in Global History. In this course, students are introduced to the key debates in this area. Students learn to differentiate capitalism from other kinds of economic organization, engage with the periodization for capitalism, and explore international trade and domestic institutions in the development of the modern economy. The central section of the course is taken up with the debates around consumption, slavery, and empire. Core reading in this section will include the classic Williams thesis, and its development in the literature on the relationship between cotton and chattel slavery in the group around Rockman and Beckert. The penultimate section addresses the history of finance capitalism, looking at the inflationary effects of silver supply from the Americas in the early period, the era of financial experimentation in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the eventual emergence of a recognizable world of international finance around the Gold Standard in the early 19th century. Students conclude with a consideration of Pomeranz's "Great Divergence" between Atlantic and Asian economies.

This seminar course explores the impacts of globalization, with a focus on China. The course will include in-class readings, discussions, and mini-projects. We will together read through the recent economics literature on a set of topics related to the open-up of China in the mid-19th century, impacts of free trade agreements, imports and exports, foreign investment, migration, human capital accumulation, income inequality, etc. 

Modern healthcare has changed the way we approach medicine. We are now increasingly in charge of our health, assuming new roles in seeking information, understanding rights and responsibilities, and making health decisions. Underlying these demands, however, are the needs for the knowledge and skills to navigate the sea of information (and misinformation) to make smart decisions about health. Health literacy goes beyond having the basic ability of understanding and applying language, literacy and numeracy skills to process health information. It is also about having the knowledge, confidence and skills to interpret information. This course will equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to understand health information to the fullest, empower them to make informed decisions, to question the reliability of information, and to think critically about scientific evidence. 

The first part of this course covers fundamental topics in discrete mathematics that underlie many areas of computer science and presents standard mathematical reasoning and proof techniques such as proof by induction. The second part of this course covers discrete and continuous probability theory, including standard definitions and commonly used distributions and their applications.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and thought of major Indian Buddhist philosophical schools. It surveys four key traditions of Buddhist philosophy in India, including Abhidharma, Madhyamika, Yogacara, and Buddhist epistemology and logic. No background in Buddhist thought is presumed on the part of the participants. 

Reading assignments will balance primary sources from key moments of Buddhist thought with recent introductory texts. Primary texts covered or sampled in the course include: Treasury of Metaphysics with its auto commentary; Treatise on the Middle Way, Introduction to the Middle Way and its auto commentary; Twenty Verses and its auto commentary; Thirty Verses, Demonstration of the Three Natures, A Compendium of Means of Knowledge, and its auto commentary. Lectures will be combined with in-class discussions, with particular attention paid to the close reading of primary texts.  

This course examines advanced macroeconomics and its application to real-world issues. The emphasis will be on the microeconomic foundations and decisions that underlie the behavior of aggregate variables.