English

This course examines the language of, about, and surrounding food. It explores the role of food (and its discursive enactment) in community-building, lifestyles, and the creation of social elites. Other topics include food performances (e.g., cooking and eating shows), dinner talk and socialization, and food and language in the public landscape. Special emphasis lies on the entanglements of language, food, and the digital realm.

This interdisciplinary course is divided into two parts. The first part explores the history, theories, and realities of democracy. If, from Ancient Athens to the Modern Revolutions, democracy was associated with direct self-rule, the invention of the representative government puts elections at the core of politics. The theory of representation is complex, and its concrete practices are plagued by crisis: elitism, corruption, and backsliding. The second part of the course analyzes, from a comparative perspective, the role of democratic innovations in renewing democracy and shaping public policy. It focuses on five types: referendum, participatory budgeting, e-democracy, collaborative governance, and deliberative mini-publics.

This course discusses the relationship between current social issues and dystopian imagination and focuses on evaluation and analysis by putting various Korean texts in dialog with other texts, including classics from around the world. The main goal of this course is to make the fictional horror-based world more culturally relevant to modern society and the world today.  

Topics include how literature is used to explore and comment on political and cultural issues, how classical literature is adapted and interpreted through contemporary cinema and mass media, and the idea of cinema as a literary art form. 

Discussion centers around several texts – films, poetry, music, and a novel - which we will analyze in detail. 

Drinking water production plants and wastewater treatment plants are essential parts of the urban water infrastructure and have a large influence on the hydrological cycle. To protect the environment and the environmental services the ecosystems provide, water needs to be handled in an environmentally sustainable way. In the glocal perspective SDG 6 "Water and sanitation" targets the need to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and saniation for all. The aim of the course is to provide knowledge about water and wastewater treatment to be able to design and operate municipal facilities for production of drinking water and treatment of wastewater in the urban area.

This course examines controversial issues related to educational policies in multicultural societies. Students explore global case studies, engage with theories of equality and justice, and critically analyze how these issues intersect with multicultural education policy. Topics include religious symbols in public schools, affirmative action, language rights, and many other issues central to multicultural education. Students debate, reflect, and develop their own policy proposals to address real-world equity challenges.  

This course covers homology, cohomology and applications, CW-complexes, and basic notions of homotopy theory.

This course explores a range of films (popular genre movies and art cinema) from post-war Japan in relation to their historical background (national and international). It examines in particular the international circulation and understanding of Japanese cinema.

This course considers the limits and potential of using law to pursue justice and achieve social change. It looks at key goals of law reform (such as access to justice, rights and equality) as well as considers a different understanding of justice and what constitutes a just outcome. It focuses on the importance of the process of law reform and having an awareness of its social, historical, cultural and political dynamics, as well as the central role of community organizations in advocating for social and legal change. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course, the student: is able to understand the fundamental philosophical issues raised by law and their significance; has knowledge of legal-philosophical conceptions in their historical development, from their origins to contemporary perspectives, and can reconstruct how these conceptions provide answers to these issues; can critically evaluate the theoretical advantages and limitations of the various conceptions; possesses basic notions of legal theory and the theory of legal interpretation. The course consists of two parts:

• The first part (Conceptions of Law) introduces the three main conceptions of legal theory – natural law theory, legal positivism, and legal realism – and discusses their theoretical implications; then, some contemporary trends (law and economics, critical legal studies, and legal feminism) are introduced and discussed, also in connection with the traditional views.
• The second part (Hart: The Concept of Law) discusses in details H. L. A. Hart’s masterpiece “The Concept of Law” and its Postscript, also in the light of some contemporary debates in legal theory that derived from it: particularly the Hart-Dworkin debate, but also the debate on inclusive and exclusive legal positivism (Raz on authority).

This course teaches critical thinking approaches, methods, and techniques for evaluating information and making sound decisions. It examines misinformation, common logical fallacies, and misleading uses of statistics and data visualization, using everyday examples to build practical analytical skills. Emphasis is placed on assessing the credibility and validity of information in an environment saturated with competing claims. By strengthening the ability to identify and challenge misinformation, the course highlights the importance of critical thinking for informed decision-making, scientific literacy, and the functioning of democratic societies.