Italian

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. In Spring 2024, the course offered a special focus on the literature, photography, and illustration at the beginning of the 20th century: The collaboration between Henry James and Alvin Langdon Coburn. In analyzing this case study from the point of view of the genesis of the images and of the editorial context, this course reflects on the relationship between writing and visual culture, literature and photography, word and image within the framework of the technological, social, and cultural transformations that have marked the turn from the 19th to the 20th Century: from the rise of what Walter Benjamin has called the "technological reproduction" to the development of tourism and the emergence of a new imagery of space and places. The course provides the theoretical tools for interpreting literature in the new framework of visual culture which emerged at the threshold of modernity. Students acquire a deep knowledge of the relationships between verbal and visual texts in their multiple manifestations, and are familiar with the main theoretical categories and methodologies which have been elaborated by visual studies and have crossed (and transformed) literary studies themselves.

This course covers the essential lines of food history in an economic, social, and cultural perspective, based on reading documentary, narrative, literary, and scientific sources, by way of examples of document interpretation and an introduction to proper historical work. The course introduces the use of original documents, narratives, and literary and scientific sources as starting points for historical research. The course provides the general outlines of food history and food cultures, with special emphasis on Italian and European history between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. Its 15 lectures are structured in such a way that each includes a theoretical part and an analytical part discussing sources relevant to the topic covered in part 1. Topics include: the birth of Food History as a discipline, methodology, birth, and evolution of dietetic science in the West, food in Antiquity and Middle Ages, food in Europe, food production and land management, city supply and markets, eating behaviors, food and social identities, birth of written cookbooks, dissemination of European gastronomic cultures, the Colombian Exchange, Italian identity in the kitchen, and history and myth.

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 course provides advanced knowledge of the different moments of international relations and the development in Latin America from the 19th century to the present. The course provides the ability to: a) identify and compare the different interpretations of the history of development and international relations in Latin America; b) detect and analyze the features of continuity and discontinuity in the dynamics of the western hemisphere, in relation to changes in the international system; c) discuss, from a global perspective, the development models in Latin America from the 19th century to the present. The course presents the principal issues in the history of development and international relations in Latin America from independence to the 21st century. Starting from the analysis of the consequences, for the Latin American area, of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, the course analyzes the international dimension of the processes of state building and, subsequently, of nation building, the inclusion of Latin American countries in the dynamics of the first globalization, the consolidation of the export-led growth strategy model, the transition to mass democracies and, in some cases, the structuring of populist regimes, the definition of the ISI development model, the evolution of the Pan-American system and, then, the inter-American diffusion of the dynamics of the Cold War, the diffusion of the Washington Consensus, of forms of regional integration and, later, of nationalist movements.

The Elementary Italian course provides students with the essential language skills to communicate effectively in common Italian contexts, covering the first level of Italian proficiency. Through a communicative approach and a strong emphasis on active participation, it helps students to quickly improve their ability to interact with Italians. Engaging in role-playing, group work, in and out of class task-based activities and oral and written tests, learners are immersed in the Italian language, reinforcing their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. Assignments and projects deepen their understanding of Florentine life and Italian culture. By the end of the course, students acquire foundational language skills as well as insights into Italy's rich cultural tapestry. 

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 course analyzes the genealogy of the relationship power-opinion-public-democracy, which is constituted in political modernity, observing its genesis, its aporias, its theoretical and historical transformations. At the end of the course, the student: is familiar with the political authors who have contributed to the reflection on this relationship; is able to understand the dialectic it establishes with other concepts of political modernity, such as domination, representation, freedom, both with respect to the crisis and to the new potentialities that the articulation of power-public-opinion-democracy is experiencing in the era of the digital revolution; is able to apply these categories to the analysis of the present . The course examines the nature, structure, and critical role of public opinion and its relation with political and social institutions in the 19th century. It includes readings by some of the most important political thinkers on the relationship between democracy and public opinion, like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. The course analyzes the social and political transformations enabled in public opinion by the process of democratization during 20th century with the help of authors like Tarde, Bentley, Lippmann, Dewey, and Hannah Arendt. During the second part, the course uses authors like Adorno and Marcuse, Lazersfeld and Kaplan, Debord, Habermas, Baudrillard, and Bourdieu to understand the new political configurations of the public opinion in the age of mass democracy; finally, the course analyzes the crisis of public opinion in the age of globalization, the age of information, the show society age, the post-truth and fake news age, and the possibility for public opinion in contemporary democracies to gain (or not) a new political role.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Geography, gender, and ethic is an advanced course of cultural geography. The course provides in-depth and critical knowledge of topics and perspectives that lie at the core of contemporary geographical debates, such as gender studies and ethical issues. The course provides an understanding of these subjects and perspectives within today’s geographical debates as well as the intersection of these topics and other fundamental topics in the field of cultural geographies, such as mobility. The course addresses two main thematic pathways: 1) contemporary evolution of feminist and gender debates in the geographical field. 2) the intersection between gender geographies and ethics. The topics addressed include: feminisms, methodology, and ethics in geographical research; concept of positionality; contribution of feminist and gender studies to ethical issues concerning, for example, subjectivity, difference, and the overcoming of culture/nature; feminisms, transfeminisms, and more-than-human and posthuman geographies; geographies, feminisms, and concepts such as "trans-species"; and ecofeminisms.

This course provides general knowledge of Italian contemporary history and the main interpretations of it. The course prepares students to transmit the knowledge acquired, adopting the appropriate vocabulary and being versed in the historiographical debate. It covers the methodologies used by the research on social classes including basic mass culture and consumption phenomena. It provides awareness of how sources and choice of methodology bear on the ultimate result. The course covers: Italy from the First to the Second Republic; the main political, economic, and social junctures that represented the framework within which the democratic political system was reconstituted in Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War; the institutional as well as the economic and social framework, always keeping the international context as a reference perspective; the various moments that have marked the history of the Italian peninsula since the Second World War, from reconstruction to the economic boom, from the years of revolts and movements to the crisis of the First Republic and of that party system that had contributed to rewriting the democratic political framework. Finally, attention is focused on the different generations of men and women who were protagonists of that history.

This course offers students the possibility to grow the knowledge and skills necessary to recognize, describe, and interpret structural and tectonic features at all scales of observation, and how to use structural geology to constrain tectonic and geodynamic scenarios recorded in the rock record. After completing the course, students are able to: recognize, measure, and plot the geometric features of a significant variety of geological structures, from the outcrop to the regional scale; understand the mechanics of deformation and assess the dynamic and kinematic framework within which deformation and strain localization have taken place; reconstruct modes and timing of deformation; and decipher the geodynamic environments that govern the first-order evolution of our Planet. Teaching includes a combination of theory lessons, practical sessions and one excursion to deformed areas of the Northern Apennines.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the seminar, the student improves the knowledge of the Italian grammar. The student obtains the necessary linguistic abilities to understand and to analyze complex texts, as literary texts and related to the specialist bibliographies about the disciplinary area of the courses. The student is able to create texts in order to expose complex contents. The class is structured around the following activities: the analysis of Italian language through the study of literary texts and essays; an introduction to the reading of main bibliography of the courses in the first year of IS; producing texts and cultural and professional projects; commentaries and analysis of academic texts such as book, film, and art exhibition reviews and descriptions; and a focus on oral exposure aimed the presentation of cultural projects, events, shows, and exhibits. Students must have completed the equivalent of two or more years of university-level Italian language study as a prerequisite for this course.

A working knowledge of regional geology represents the basis for any practical application of geology, including land planning, engineering geology, and the sustainable development of mineral, hydrocarbon, and water resources. This course provides the student with a modern synthesis of the geology of Italy in view of its many practical applications. The course discusses topics including the main geophysical features of the Italian peninsula and the adjacent marine basins; and the main Italian geological domains: the Alpine orogen, the Corsica-Sardinia block, the Calabria-Peloritani terrane, the Apennines, the Apulia and Hyblean platforms, the geology of Sicily, and the Quaternary.