English

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.

This is the most advanced undergraduate course in the Astronomy program Department of Physics & Astronomy and is targeted to astronomy-major or physics-major senior (or junior) undergraduate students or first and secondar year graduate students. 

To retain the advanced level of this course, the enrollment is restricted only to those students who took the following classes in astronomy, physics and mathematics classes: Galaxies and the Universe, Introduction to Astrophysics 1, General physics, Classical Mechanics I & II (including the Special Relativity), Quantum Mechanics I & II, Thermal Physics, Electrodynamics I & II, General Mathematics, Calculus/Analysis, Linear Algebra. 

Students should not register for this class unless they have completed the above prerequisite courses. 

This course focuses on the institutions of the European Union. At the same time, this course provides an opportunity for students to be exposed to legal thinking. Law is central to the process of European integration, and it plays a greater role in European affairs than it does at national or international level. It is accordingly essential for students to become familiar with the ways of legal thought and legal reasoning, if they want to understand fully the European integration process, and European matters more generally.  Prerequisites: SSC1007 Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning and at least one of the following courses: SSC2060 Comparative Constitutional Law (SSC2012 Comparative Government) or SSC2024 International Law.

This special topics course includes the following topics: How filmmakers use their depictions of robots, androids, and AI to comment on contemporary science, society and culture; How developments in real-world science and technology have influenced cinema, and how the real science of AI has been influenced by science fiction; How to analyze and interpret science fiction films in terms of their themes and symbolism (what is the message of this movie?) and historical significance (why was this film important, and what events from history influenced its creation?) 

Students explore film analysis, terminology, and methodology through films, readings, group discussions, and debates. 

This course teaches basic knowledge and techniques used in animal cell biology, through performing the following animal cell and molecular biology experiments: RNA and protein extraction from rat tissues/cell culture pellets, quantification of transcript (RT-qPCR) and protein (Western-Blotting) expression, and observation of protein expression on rat tissues/cell culture by confocal microscopy.

Recommended Prerequisites: Basic Concepts in Cell Biology; Basic Concepts in Genetics; Advanced Cell Biology, and Laboratory in Foundation of Biology.