English

The institutional church never had the kind of control over the populace of medieval Europe that modern people think it did. This course explores the multiplicity of types of belief and practice amongst those who lived in accordance with the church’s teaching—monks and nuns, wandering preachers, pious families—and the varieties of resistance among those who did not—Jews, Muslims, and heretics, social revolutionaries, sexual nonconformists, practitioners of the occult, student wastrels. The course discusses the kinds of sources that tell us about these groups, including saints’ lives, chronicles, Inquisition registers, letters, and poetry. This course helps students appreciate how people in the past operated much as people do today, but in a very different world with a different set of assumptions. Continuous emphasis is placed on the geographical and cultural diversity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and the decentralized and multivocal nature of medieval religion.

This course develops foundational writing skills in Irish by engaging with short texts based on themes aligned with the A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Writing practice is supported by analysis of Irish syntax using both original work and selected examples from other sources. Reading skills are strengthened through short passages accompanied by comprehension tasks. The course also encourages reflection on personal learning processes, with attention to the use of learning strategies, common challenges, and effective approaches for addressing them through guided class discussion.

This course begins with Japan’s early history then focuses on the different stages of modernization, extending into the twenty-first century. Following a chronological sequence, the thematic design introduces students to different aspects of Japan, including the “myth” of the country, and its multifarious relations with East Asia, the West, and the world. Japan serves as a non-Western case to understand (post-)modern world history.  

This course examines policy and decision making for conserving biodiversity in an uncertain world using a combination of ecological data and decision science. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. As a result of this course, students will know and understand the fundamentals of the virtual prototyping through the systematic approach to a complete DMU (Digital Mockup) that from the design concept leads to the engineering of a vehicle (car or motorcycle). Students will learn to work independently and apply multidisciplinary knowledge to the virtual design and optimization of systems and components in vehicle engineering. The students learn the most advanced techniques of interaction between real and virtual prototype through the principles of human-machine interaction. Students develop the ability to work within a workgroup, planning and managing the activities needed to achieve technically valid project results.

This course provides the skills and knowledge for the development of an innovative concept for new motorcycles and/or scooters. To achieve these objectives, the program includes the following activities: Definition of project objectives through Market Analysis and Competitor Analysis; Definition of Technical Specifications; Setting up the Product Architecture; Morphological matrix for the selection of integrated innovative solutions; Setting up the layout of the new motorcycle/scooter; 3D construction of the Digital Mock-up of the new motorcycle/scooter; Introduction to Aesthetics-Oriented Design; Definition of the new motorcycle vehicle concepts; Virtual and physical prototyping of the concepts.

The following prerequisites are required to participate in the course: Advanced knowledge of 2D CAD software, advanced knowledge of 3D CAD software for solid modeling, and advanced knowledge of 3D CAD (CAS) software for surface modeling. Please note that during the course, no class hours are dedicated to teaching 2D or 3D modeling software, which, as stated above, must be considered prerequisites.

This course introduces the principles of 3D structures of proteins, which underlie all protein function, as well as the techniques used to obtain and analyze protein structures. The course strongly emphasizes protein dynamics as well; i.e. how protein structural flexibility permits enzymatic/receptor/structural activity. Finally, the course provides hands-on experience for all students, with in-silico analysis of protein structure, motion, and activity. 

The course provides an overview of the field of protein biophysics and structure, with a strong emphasis on practical analysis and structural evaluation. 

This course examines the historical trajectories and contemporary interpretations of the concepts of race, ethnicity and nationhood. Through critical engagement with classical and contemporary theories of race, ethnicity and nationhood, the course examines the role that these play in the construction of social and political identities, and in the development of the modern nation-state and nationalist politics. The course also investigates the co-constitutive relationship between interpretations of race, ethnicity and nationhood, and historical and contemporary migration. Emphasis is placed on the role of migration in the constitution of the modern nation- state, the relationship between migrant and minority politics, and the manner in which contemporary migration continues to be affected by discourses of race, ethnicity and nationhood.

As a discipline, history is a matter of selecting and shaping historical data. Theory is a meditation upon the discipline and its data. The course is a study of historians, theorists, and their texts. After an introduction considering the Period as the object of historical definition and as the tool of the historian, the course introduces theorists and theories of architecture from Vitruvius to Deconstruction. They are arranged chronologically so that the force of historical determinism and purposiveness of historical reflection may be gauged. The course concludes with a discussion of the proposition that cultural time moves in cycles.

This course examines Plato’s political philosophy through the lens of John Rawls’s distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory. Rawls characterizes ideal theory as assuming full compliance with the demands of justice, while non-ideal theory addresses the conditions under which such compliance fails. By engaging closely with Plato’s Republic and Laws, the class explores how each text embodies or challenges these frameworks in order to achieve a greater understanding of the aims of Plato’s political thought and the merits versus limits of philosophical idealization.

This course introduces the major themes in world prehistory through a global and comparative approach, focusing on the great evolutionary, behavioral, and cultural transitions or “revolutions” in our common past, beginning with the appearance of the first material culture record (the world’s earliest stone tools, dating 3.3 million years ago).  

Considering how power and violence, socio-political stratification, economies and trade, technological innovation, and especially ideology shaped human societies, the course addresses the following periods:  

• The hominin evolution and behavior during the Lower Paleolithic period 

• The first migrations of Homo erectus out of Africa  

• The evolution of archaic humans and their behavior (Middle Paleolithic period), and the emergence of anatomically modern humans and their interactions with archaic humans (Neanderthals and Denisovans). 

• The behavioral revolution of the Upper Paleolithic and the transition from hunting-gathering to village life and farming.  

• The emergence of socio-political complexity, the development of chiefdoms, and formation of state-level societies in the New World and the Old World, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica.