English

This course provides a contemporary overview of theoretical frameworks and research in the area of social cognition, which refers to the cognitive processes that enable individuals to function within a social group. The course considers how we perceive and understand others, how the presence of others changes our cognitive processing, and how our cognitive processes are optimized for group living. Topics include agency, imitation, communication, mentalizing, the relationship between self and other, social influence on cognitive processes, and joint action. Throughout, the course touches on the developmental and evolutionary origins of our core social cognitive capacities, how human social cognition compares to that of other animals, and what neural processes support these capacities.

This course approaches media and popular culture as a dynamic field of production, consumption, and contestation. After an initial phase of understanding forms of popular culture, the focus is put primarily on case studies from Japan, along with some comparative examples. This coures examines historical and contemporary meaning-making processes in context, introducing academic vocabulary and approaches while providing tools to examine popular culture and media.  There will also be in-class screenings. By the end of the term, students should be able to think cross-culturally, critically, and collaboratively about not only media and popular culture but also everyday life and the world in which we live.

This course examines environmental change from a historical geography perspective. Approaches to investigating and understanding the transformation of environments are explored, and processes driving creation of different types of landscapes including heritage places are considered. 

Drawing from law, sociology of law, criminology, political science, and migration studies more generally, this multidisciplinary course provides a wholesome understanding of the many debates and dilemmas surrounding international migration and its management today. The course addresses a broad range of topics and themes, including the legal regulation and institutional management of migration; ordering through labels, terms, and categories; sovereignty, control, and externalization; citizenship and statelessness; securitization and criminalization of migration; smuggling, trafficking, and instrumentalization debates; as well as gendered, racial, and other aspects of migration and its management. It covers a combination of both canonical and newer academic texts in this area and draws additional insights from policy documents, reports, fiction literature, and films.

This class consists of an extended laboratory, over 10 weeks, to investigate how a particular processing parameter influences the structure, properties and performance of a material. Each group of students is asked to determine the processing parameters that optimizes the performance of a material for a particular application. Students design and perform a systematic series of experiments to meet the objective, each student produces an individual report on the investigation. 

This course examines a new topic in modern art each time it is offered. Visit the Bocconi University course catalog for the current course topic. In spring 2023-24, the course focused on the visual representation of the human body in art. The course studies the visual representations of the human body in many guises: aesthetic, political, social, cultural, and erotic among others. It analyses the different strategies that artists deployed to develop rhetorics of the body both physical and emotional. This course proposes a dynamic approach of the body in art considered as a focus of a composition, an object of investigation, a locus of gender and racial understanding, a vehicle for physical and emotional experience, the cornerstone of our creative power and ability.  Students learn to visually and historically analyze works of art from various periods, the human body being the basis of visual representations and an object of aesthetic investigation; understand and be able to deploy in their own words major theoretical approaches used to interpret works of art; discuss the relationships between the real and the represented body through works of art conceived as the occasion, the site, and the condition of a process of historical, social and cultural construction.  The course includes visits to local museums, namely the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli.

The course develops the tools required for the application of new energy and renewable energy systems to the problems faced by climate change and global energy security while transitioning to a zero emissions economy. The focus is on the application of materials for the development of new energy recovery systems such as nanostructured surfaces for solar harvesting, solar fuels, batteries/capacitors, and fuel cells/electrolysers. Biomass as a potential alternative to clean energy is also discussed along with its different scenarios and the associated advantages and risks. 

The course examines the meanings produced by costume in theatre, and film and fashion in the media and everyday life. It explores the relationship between clothing and performance historically and today. It considers how costume and fashion construct class, gender identity and sexual identity, and race. It interrogates the fashion industry's relationship with colonial histories and with questions of ecology and sustainability. It offers students the opportunity to create a costume design portfolio and to bring their own interests in costume and fashion into conversation with theoretical questions of subjectivity.

This is an introductory course to security studies. The first three weeks of the course provides an overview of the core theoretical models and research questions in security studies, and core actors in this field, such as state intelligence services, alliances, and regional organizations. The course then analyzes some of the most critical security challenges the world has faced in 2024:  cybersecurity, environmental change, global migration, energy security, and global health and epidemics such as COVID-19 or SARS. 

This course examines short-form prose storytelling with a focus on the short story. It covers a wide range of short story forms and structures.