English

This survey course covers the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China. It covers the pre-1949 revolutionary struggles, socialist transformation and construction in the 1950s, political movements from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, and post-Mao economic and political reforms, up to the consolidation of Xi Jinping’s personal rule. The permeation of the party-state’s power into diverse aspects of social life is one key feature of communist rule, and this entire course closely integrates national and international political events with the daily lives of Chinese people. It examines historical transformations in the fields of economics, culture and the arts, family and gender relations, public health, and environment and ecology during the century, throughout the study of revolutionary wars, political movements, and reforms. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course is also taught under the title 'International Law and Sustainability'

The course addresses the following topics:

• The “what”, “who” and “where” of contemporary international environmental law:
  • What does international environmental law deal with?
  • Who makes international environmental law?
  • Where is international environmental law made and where is it applied?
• The origins and evolution of international environmental law;
• The sources of international environmental law;
• The institutional contexts (MEAs);
• Accountability, liability, responsibility and dispute settlement;
• Interactions with other bodies of international law, with special regard to international human rights law, international economic law and the laws of warfare.

Throughout the course, the law governing the utilization of transboundary water resources is given special attention in order to show the practical functioning of international environmental law. Other specific substantive areas of international environmental law will be illustrated, with special regard to the marine environment, biodiversity and the fight against climate change. At the end of the course, students will have acquired: The international origin and basis of rules and principles of domestic environmental law; The content of rules and principles on the international protection of the environment; The sources of international environmental law; The interactions between international environmental law and other branches of international law, eg human rights law and investment law; How to develop a research on international environmental law.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course analyzes the development of the photographic language, from its origins in the 19th century to recent experiences, focusing on artistic practices and those of the cultural and creative industries. Special attention is paid to exhibitions, both public and private, and their capacity to help the photographic language change its meanings and identities. Following a theoretical and historical approach, classes explore artistic poetics, creative ideas, and curatorial choices from an aesthetic point of view, reading photography as a social, political, and communicative issue. Several historical exhibitions are analyzed as case histories of the development of curatorial language and photographic display.

Students acquire the fundamental historical and theoretical knowledge that puts photography at the heart of artistic practices and of the cultural and creative industry. In particular, they develop methodological tools and interpretative skills useful to recognize the styles and poetics of the photographic display. They are also able to analyze and comment on display types with critical awareness.

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 program focuses on the protection of healthcare in the European Union and most notably covers the following topics:

• the major constitutional and political issues underlying this subject;
• the competences of the EU in the field of healthcare and the increasing role of the One Health approach in the EU;
• healthcare as an economic freedom;
• healthcare as a fundamental right;
• healthcare as a sectoral policy of the European Union: governance, institutional actors and regulatory framework;
• the case law of the Court of Justice on health services and access to cross-border healthcare; the pharmaceutical and medical devices market;
• the digitization of healthcare systems (e.g., e-Health, m-Health, Artificial Intelligence, and European Health Data Space);
• preparedness and response planning in the event of serious cross-border health threats: the Union’s response to COVID-19.

At the end of the course unit, students: possess an in-depth knowledge about the supranational legal mechanisms concerning health, with an emphasis on patient mobility and the cooperation between Member States to face transboundary health crises; can figure out (and solve) problems affecting the transboundary development of health policies at the European level, especially the provision of health services, and are capable to assess the abovementioned mechanisms in the framework of the applicable international legal regime, in particular the World Health Organization.

This course studies significant Christian theological works by Americans, paying careful attention both to their contributions to Christian theology and to their context within the United States. One theme that emerges repeatedly, although certainly not the only important theme, is the question of what makes one a “true Christian." The course covers topics such as: Revivals and the First Great Awakening; the Holiness Movement and the Second Great Awakening; the Bible, the Civil War, and white Christian debates about slavery; the Social Gospel; the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy and Pentecostalism; the World Wars and American power; American power, American oppression and liberation theology, and American culture and Christianity. 

Berlin and Warsaw were two central theaters of the Holocaust. While in Berlin the Nazis planned the global murder of the Jews and attempted to transform the city into the capital of Nazi Europe, it was in Warsaw that they created Europe’s biggest ghetto, in which 100,000 Jews died before the first deportations to the Treblinka death camp in July 1942. In this seminar, the course studies and compares how the Jews were persecuted and murdered in Berlin and Warsaw; who helped them, how and why; and how the local population reacted to their persecution. In studying the Holocaust in both cities, students concentrate on the general frameworks for understanding the Holocaust, the plans of the perpetrators, the behavior of the collaborators, and the fate of particular actors, especially survivors, while analyzing their diaries, memoirs, and interviews. In this seminar, students read theoretical texts about the Holocaust and discuss the urban aspect of the genocide, while concentrating on persecution, murder and help. The course includes visits to museums and memorial sites in Berlin.

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, published in German in 2015, is a politically charged novel about the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Richard, an older German with a GDR background, gets involved with, and befriends, a number of African refugees at a protest camp on Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg. A former Classics professor who was recently forced into retirement, he empathizes with the refugees, who are not allowed to work under German asylum laws. Richard researches their plight and helps them with administrative and everyday tasks, even giving piano lessons to one of them. After a break-in at Richard’s house, he and his friends question their own prejudices and attempt to learn from the experience. The novel serves as a starting point for the exploration of the political and human rights issues surrounding the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Some additional materials are provided to round out the discussion.

In this course, students advance their knowledge of data-structures and algorithms to data-processing algorithms and  applications. They acquire theoretical and practical knowledge of data processing systems design and implementation for correct results and (close-to) optimal performance. Students learn how Database Management Systems (DBMSs) optimize query performance, and understand Data Processing System tuning. Finally, students explore challenges and opportunities of cloud-native Data Processing Systems, as well as the research directions such as Big Data or data management on modern hardware.

This course focuses on learning how to structure and solve complex decision problems and analyzing their property and solutions quantitatively. It covers advanced theories, algorithms, and applications of management science in the context of quantitative decision modeling and optimization. Topics include the theory and applications of linear, nonlinear, integer programming, as well as advanced modeling approaches to optimization problems under various sources of uncertainty. Students will also explore recent advances in the field, including integration with machine learning, and address real-world decision challenges across various domains, ranging from finance, marketing, and production to healthcare, sports management, and humanitarian operations. The course involves hands-on learning using relevant languages (e.g., Excel, Python) and state-of-the-art solvers. A basic understanding of mathematical optimization and probability is required. 

This course empowers undergraduate students in the College of Natural Sciences with essential knowledge in programming and artificial intelligence. Regardless of their specific majors, students gain foundational insights into computer science, computational science, statistics, and deep neural networks. This course equips students with practical skills that can be directly applied to scientific challenges. Through a combination of theory and practical exercises, this course offers students the opportunity to tackle real-world problems and work with data using artificial intelligence techniques. Students who possess basic computing and programming skills gain an understanding of how artificial intelligence and programming are applied in various subfields of natural sciences, fostering their ability to utilize these skills in future research endeavors.