Italy

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 focuses on topics including: the basics for ICT, big data, and IoT; the introduction to IoT, application scenarios, enabling definitions and technologies, and cloud and fog computing; the main components of IoT solutions, and big data and references to Artificial Intelligence; and IoT and big data services from the product to the service, and application cases in smart agriculture. The course content is divided into 6 parts: 1) introduction to computer science; 2) Internet of Things (IoT); 3) big data and Artificial Intelligence; 4) tools for data analysis, elaboration, and visualizations; 5) field work; and 6) seminar.

This course examines the use of animal models in translational research to study human diseases (in particular, neuropsychiatric disorders) and the methodology applied. The course discusses topics including the history of animal models; classification of animals; animal diversity; evolution of nervous systems in invertebrates and vertebrates; ethics of animal research; and animal models of neuropsychiatric disorders. Animal models used in research: the nematode C. elegans, the common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster,) the zebrafish (Danio rerio), the chick (Gallus gallus), and the mouse (Mus musculus). A lesson is focused on research conducted in cephalopods. For each animal model information about biology, application in scientific research with reference to neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders is provided. The course recommends students have basic knowledge of general biology, psychobiology, and genetics as a prerequisite.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the diverse methodologies employed in gender and feminist studies in an interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, the course moves from the debates between second and third wave feminism, the course investigates some feminist research methods in literary criticism focusing on how feminist and gender studies challenge the major methodologies employed for the interpretation of literary texts written by both men and women. The course provides students with critical tools which enable them to re-read women’s access to knowledge and education, the canon formation, and the process of exclusion and inclusion of female writers from and within the literary canon and the public sphere. The course is divided into two parts. The first part introduces students to the main important methodologies in women’s and gender studies with specific reference to the rise of feminist literary criticism and to some manifestos of second and third wave feminism(s) and their temporal rhetoric of “awakening” and “space.” In particular, it explores the debates on canon formation and female genealogy and explains the notion of re-vision, resisting reading, and situated knowledge. It also examines the categories of gender, class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality and their interconnection. The second part of the course is devoted to the close-reading of some extracts from emblematic literary texts written by women in different historical moments. These texts which significantly belong to different literary genre, are explored in order to interrogate how women negotiated their agency in the public sphere, in the print market and in the political, economic, and social order. They are also examined in order to discuss the way in which they resist or perpetuate patriarchy, gender inequality, and a heterosexual politic of desire and sexuality. But they are also interrogated to see how they contributed, together with their interpretation and appropriation across time and space, to place the female self within a specific social order, to define the otherness of race and gender, and to establish relations of power between men and women, but also subjects who become geographically, ethnically, and culturally distinct. Required texts covered in this course may include: Margaret Cavendish, THE CONVENT OF PLEASURE, (1668); Aphra Behn, OROONOKO, 1688; Mary Astell, A SERIOUS PROPOSAL TO THE LADIES, PART 1 (1694/1696); M. Shelley, FRANKENSTEIN, 1816 (1831); and C. Bronte, JANE EYRE.

The course focuses on neuroimaging and neurostimulation techniques and their neuroscientific application for the study of interindividual brain differences in healthy and pathological populations, with a particular focus on forensic psychiatry. This course explores the fundamental concepts of neuroimaging, neurostimulation, and machine learning, and the main applications of these promising approaches to brain disorders. The course focuses in depth on each of these techniques, as well as on the advantages of their combined used for the study of the human brain connectome organization and its deviances. The course discusses theoretical knowledge on the following topics: 1) why are neuroimaging methods important in clinical settings; 2) how neuroimaging and neurostimulation techniques can be combined to study the patterns of information flow in the brain; 3) how machine learning methods differ from classical statistics; 4) what are the main machine learning methods used in clinical neuroscience; 5) how these methods can be used to investigate the neural basis of brain disorders in a research setting; 6) how these methods can be used to inform diagnostic and prognostic assessment in a clinical setting; 7) how the results obtained at the level of the group can be translated to the single individual; 8) how this approach can be helpful in clinical and forensic settings; 9) what do we mean by “multimodal approaches” and how can we use them to individualize the study in the brain; 9) how results should be interpreted; 10) how neuroscientific approach and classical psychiatry approach can run side by side. The course requires students to have basic knowledge of statistics, clinical neuroscience, neuropsychology, neuroanatomy, and psychiatry as a prerequisite.

This Italian language course at the Common European Framework (CEFR) level of B2 is for students who want to reach an advanced intermediate level of Italian. Students at the B2 level learn to understand the main ideas of complex texts on both concrete and abstract topics; learn to understand technical discussions and interact with a certain fluency; and learn to produce a clear and detailed text and to argue. The course reviews how to understand and reliably report the opinions and arguments of others; understand and express the meaning of a text; describe places, people, animals, objects, events, and equipment clearly and precisely; describe the structure and explain the contents of a text, written or oral, and in a course, express different points of view; expose the results of a study or research, showing an understanding of the data and information, and how to make comparisons, clarifications, and examples; express certainty or uncertainty about something with explicit linguistic means; make study projects, planning, and research; and complaining and protesting. Students must have attained the equivalent of the B1 level as a prerequisite. The course is graded pass/no pass only.

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 requires basic knowledge of organic chemistry, general chemistry, and physical chemistry concepts as a prerequisite. The course explores topics including polymers and production processes from renewable sources, processes of recovery and recycling of polymeric materials, depolymerization and degradation of polymeric materials, production of biodegradable polymers, membranes and polymeric technologies, and composite materials for the environment and energy. The course includes a lab session where students work with biodegradable materials in order to understand their properties. Students prepare a lab report about this experience.

This course focuses on the basic elements of the history of anthropological research in the Americas. It provides a general overview of indigenous America and the tools to begin to undertake an ethnographic analysis of the indigenous Americas. The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, the topic of colonization is discussed, the category of “indigenous” is defined, and the issue of indigenous rights is exposed. In the second part of the course, some contemporary ethnographies are presented to understand the ethnographic analysis of the indigenous Americas.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course offers, through theoretical references and case studies, the basic knowledge on the implementation of a complex urban project. The adopted design approach consists in working on urban space starting from the recognition of the structuring value of open spaces. The perspective assumed is that of the "reverse city" (Viganò) or the "soil project" (Secchi), and the design tools adopted in the urban dimension can be traced back to consolidated international experiences such as "landscape urbanism" (Waldheim) or "ecological urbanism" (Mostafavi and Doherty). Within this theoretical and methodological framework, the laboratory engages with the "Bologna green footprint" proposal, focusing on the dimension of open spaces and the structures of ecological networks across scales. Tools and materials are provided to the students for studying in-depth themes and sites assigned to each group, and developing the urban project. In the end, students learn the adequate knowledge of the principles, tools, and rules of urban planning and they are able to develop protection and transformation plans and projects in urban contexts, identifying the actions to be implemented by the subjects involved. Teaching methods include series of lectures, design exercises, and seminars.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course will help students to develop a general vision of the relationships between Italian Literature and other Arts, from the nineteenth century to present, with a focus on painting. The course discusses the most relevant works of literature which interact with images and analyzes critical, theoretical, and literary texts regarding visual arts. In addition to the interactions between literature and the arts, the module introduces students to the following themes and areas for in-depth study: 1) the interaction between literature and the visual arts; 2) the issue of the gaze in literature; 3) iconology, the "visual turn" and the “pictorial turn;” and 4) literature and visual arts facing the crisis of modernity and postmodernity. In particular, the course delves into the intermedial influence of the visual arts (painting, illustration, and photography) and the reflection on the gaze in some works by Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati in the last decades of the 20th century.

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 is graded P/NP only. The course covers the main skills related to data communication: design of a data communication product, from the sourcing and interpretation of data to their graphic representation; and the creation of data visualizations, charts, and dashboards using the main tools of the industry. For both of these points, there are practical exercises, to gain mastery in specific data visualization tools or to favor a creative design process. The course discusses key topics related to these two skills, such as: evaluating accessibility and inclusivity of data communication products; the elements of visual and info design; audience-driven design; perception and bias, and their influence in data communication; exercises of creativity in the representation of data; a focus on maps and geo data; and a critical evaluation of data visualizations, to improve the efficiency and clarity communication products.