English

A research project that assigns students to expert professors in their proposed research topic. The course takes the student's research capabilities to a more professional level. This can be most closely compared to what is called a supervised research project in the USA.

On this course, students read a variety of Victorian texts from across many genres to explore many different issues and themes including print culture; periodicals and serialization; religious, sexual, national, and ethnic identity; the women’s movement; the crisis of faith; industrialization and the city; ecology; human and non-human animal identity; imperialism. Although the course is structured around the work of major representative writers, students consider a variety of literary and non-literary texts to get a sense of the dynamism and variety of writing and debate in the period. This course examines a range of English writing across the Victorian period, some of it very familiar and some of it neglected or forgotten work. Authors studied vary from year to year, but representative authors include the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Braddon, and H. G. Wells. A major focus of this course is the exploration of relationships between literary texts and the historical, social, and political contexts which shaped their imaginative creation. Essentially, this is a course about setting Victorian writing in its intellectual and cultural context. 

This course examines key issues pertaining to international security including: the various approaches to studying international security, the nature of interaction among various levels (national, regional, international) of security, and the major security threats caused by the expansion of conventional arms, proliferation of nuclear arsenal and the spread of biological and chemical weapons. The rise of non-traditional security threats in world politics, especially Southeast Asia, and of Asia, particularly China, as a security concern internationally is also analyzed.

The course introduces students to the key concepts and debates in global health, and uses case studies to illuminate these inequalities and the political, economic, social, and structural forces that perpetuate them. In this course students focus on the politics of global health in order to critically assess the role that governmental, institutional, and corporate actors play in financing, governing, and delivering healthcare worldwide. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course examines: the conceptual and theoretical foundations of cybercrime research; the cutting edge empirical research on cybercrimes; the main tools and practices related to the prevention and countering of cybercrimes, and to their harm mitigation; the social challenges and implications of digitalization and datafication in the context of cybercrime research and investigations; and develops an approach to cybercrimes that recognizes the cross-disciplinary nature of the area. The course discusses topics including approaching and researching crime in cyberspace; crimes against devices; crime against persons; crimes of deception and coercion; intellectual property infringement; market-based crimes; political offences; cyberterrorism and radicalization; information pollution; disrupting and preventing cybercrimes; crimes of the present, crimes of the future; and researching crime in cyberspace.

Topics include Islamic Reformism (al-Afghani and Abduh), the Arab Renaissance (Tahtawi, Amin), nationalism (al-Husri, Arslan), national culture (Hussein and Mahfouz), Pan-Arabism (Aflaq, Nasser), communism and leftism, Palestine Question (Zurayq, Kanafani), 1967 Critique (al-Azm, Laroui, Mernissi), Islamic Revival, Political Islam, and Arab Liberalism (Jabri, Ibrahim, Saadawi).

This course deals with current trade policy issues in turmoil from the viewpoint of international trade and international laws. After reviewing economic and politico-economic theory on trade policy, the issue of empirical measurement of trade policy will be discussed. Furthermore, the course explores WTO discipline on trade in goods; trade in services; intellectual property rights; safeguards and exception, and government procurement. The relationship between WTO and mega-FTAs such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will also be covered.

This course offers a critical examination of the resurgence of “folk horror cinema” in British cinema since the 2000s. Based on cultural references involving neo-pagan cults, witchcraft, and a largely fantasized rewriting of the national past in terms of pre-Christian heritage, this profoundly ambiguous tradition has variously been re-appropriated by feminist as well as masculinist discourses and has given rise to a range of aesthetic propositions, from exploitation cinema to “elevated horror,” and analyzes how British and American horror cinemas have both developed a subgenre based on stories that resort to some folklore deeply engrained in a country’s traditions. Using recurring themes like religion, hostile landscapes, and supernatural creatures, these films rely on man’s deepest fears, and they may also be a means for some artists to criticize the human tendency to act in some superstitious and harmful ways.

The course explores how humanity’s political, cultural, social, environmental, and economic issues transcend the way the world is divided through borders and how relations are interconnected across space and time. Students examine various aspects of globalization and key global issues emerging out of interconnectedness and interdependency across borders. Topics include contemporary and historic case-studies, broader trends, and through learning and applying theoretical-frameworks to better understand and analyze how international interdependence emerges, changes, and is governed.

Throughout this course, the class reflects on individuals and cultures that have at one time been considered (and are sometimes happy to be considered) aberrant, not “normal”. The course balances questions of identity (who we are, who we think we are, who others think we are) with questions of desire and sexual aim (who – or what – we are attracted to, if anything). This course asks students to focus on one question throughout: should we understand ourselves, and be understood in turn, as sexual and gendered identities; “straight”, “queer”, “female”, “heterosexual”, etc., or by our attachments; who we love, who we desire?

Emphasis is be placed on works from Britain or from the British post-colonial diaspora and students examine mediums including literature, art, and film.