English

This course prepares students with the necessary skills to provide effective writing tutorials in English. The course teaches the theoretical foundations of academic writing and tutoring. The course covers the process approach; roles of tutoring as a constructive dialogue in the writing process, as well as the roles of effective writing tutors. The course also offers a practical component with opportunities for tutorial observations, mock tutorials, and reflective practice in tutoring.

This course explains the basics of semiconductor devices and electronic circuits. It also studies the fundamentals of transistor amplifier circuits for alternating current and digital circuits for logic operations.

This course examines key psychological factors and explanatory frameworks accounting for the participation and adherence to exercise and physical activity behavior. It focuses on the main themes of behavior change, mental-health and well-being. 

This course introduces students to the mechanisms of the production of speech sounds, e.g. vowels and consonants, their description, classification and transcription. The course explores how speech sounds are organized across languages. Students practice how to establish speech sounds in a language (or phonemes) by using minimal pairs and complementary distribution. They learn basic phonological processes which occur in language.

This course introduces the basic terminology of film form and concepts of film analysis. Film screenings cover various national cinemas, genres, modes, and directorial oeuvres from several historical periods. The course places emphasis on cinematic stylistics, but also considers film as an industrial system (of production, distribution, and exhibition) as well as a popular medium that both reinforces and challenges social norms and aesthetic codes.

This course examines modern processor architectures; principles of modern processor design; pipelining; memory hierarchies; I/O and network interfacing; compiler and OS support; embedded processors; performance; multiprocessing.

This course examines how macroeconomic systems work by exploring the interdependence between different sectors of the economy, including the goods, labor, and financial markets. It explores the interactions between economies, including through exchanges rates and capital movements.

The aim of this course it to be able to apply the theoretical and conceptual knowledge to understanding and resolving some key contemporary issues in the behavior of citizens in advanced democracies. At the end of the course, students are able to provide original answers to questions like: Why do people vote for this party, or that party, or at all? How do people make sense of politics? What is the link between citizens’ actions and beliefs and the democratic vitality of political systems? How is it possible to measure the quality of democracy? The course is divided into two parts. The first part [16 seminars] introduces students to the acquisition of basic conceptual and theoretical tools for the study of public opinion and political behavior in comparative perspective. It focuses in particular on the nature of mass beliefs, values, and ideological orientation; the determinants of electoral participation and vote choice; competing theories of political representation; and the role of citizens in the democratic process today. The second part (14 seminars) is in turn divided into two separate thematic tracks. It is organized in a seminar format and is more specifically aimed at applying and deepening the knowledge acquired during the first part of the course. The division of students between thematic tracks is coordinated during the first part of the course. The two thematic tracks deal in turn with: (1) elections as “beauty contests”, and (2) elections as “hate games”. More details about each of these thematic tracks are provided to students during the first part of the course.

The focus of this class is economic growth, technological change and competition in a world where geography matters. It provides an understanding of the postwar history and geography of economic growth. As global production becomes increasingly integrated, workers and firms in different regions are forced more directly into competition with one another. The courses addresses how these firms, and the regions in which they are embedded, compete for the capital and labor required to sustain competitiveness. The dominant strategies of competitive advantage hinge on technology. More specifically, technological change remains one of the primary determinants of profitability and growth. Increasingly, it is recognized that the motors of national economic performance are sub-national technology districts. These innovative regions are characterized by strong ties between firms embedded in institutional structures that reinforce common sets of rules, norms, business cultures and decision routines.

The course tracks the 150-year period, between the founding of Italy to the present day, analyzing the history, context, and political and philosophical theories which have vied not only for the identity of Italy and Italians, but collective humanity itself. Students study the context of these political movements, and the ideological creations used to justify and push their dominance, as well as those birthed to challenge this hegemony. 

The course provides students with a historical narrative that spans the birth of Italy to the modern day. Students engage with the political, economic, and philosophical contexts of four distinct periods. These consist of Risorgimento Italy and the dominance of Nationalism in the newborn state, Fascist Italy in the wake of the First World War, the resurgence of Communist politics post Second World War, and finally the Populism that emerged toward the end of the millennium.