Italy

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course provides a philosophical introduction to the most influential theories of emotion of the past sixty years in philosophy and psychology. Taking a multidisciplinary and empirically informed perspective, the approach integrates philosophical analysis with the discussion of cutting-edge research in psychology and cognitive science, contextualizing current debates in the history of ideas from Darwin to pragmatism.

This introductory foundation course for beginners investigates the various materials, skills, and expressive issues involved in drawing the city of Florence, its architecture, sculptures, and the human figure from the live model. Students explore a range of compositional issues such as figure/ground relationships, light and shade, perspective, line and shape, value and color, texture, anatomy, contrapposto, and design.  Students draw on site in the city of Florence as well as in the classroom. Both are used in conjunction with exploring diverse approaches to the learning of drawing fundamentals. Emphasis is placed on drawing from perception while focusing on different cultural conventions relating to space, perspective, the human figure, architecture, anatomy, and proportion. The course includes trips to on-site locations in the city of Florence: its piazzas, gardens, museums, as well as a visit to an artist studio. There are two versions of the FOUNDATIONS OF DRAWING: DRAWING IN THE CITY OF FLORENCE, a beginner level and an intermediate level, this course is the beginning level.

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. The course provides an understanding of key issues involved in environmental politics, from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Environmental issues are critically discussed, with particular reference to the role and responsibilities of great powers in the international politics of climate change, power inequality, and the global ecological crisis. Students acquire and learn: 1) the essential conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools necessary to tackle and understand environmental issues; 2) knowledge regarding the major interpretations of environmental security; 3) basic knowledge about major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Council, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics); and 4) how to apply the acquired tools to the analysis of concrete cases.

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. The course focuses on some questions and debates that are central to the contemporary philosophy of social sciences. After a short introduction to the discipline, in which a comparison between the social sciences and the natural sciences is made, the following topics are covered: 1) the naturalism/anti-naturalism debate within the philosophy of social sciences; 2) the role of idealized models in social sciences; 3) the nature of explanation in the social sciences; 4) the value-free/laden character of social studies; 5) the objectivity question within the social sciences; and 6) the possibility of having social laws. During the course these topics are explored at length, using case-studies from different social science fields and tracing connections with those debates that address similar topics within the general philosophy of science.

This course highlights strategies for adapting to local culture and the specific challenges that emerge for international players in diverse environments. The course begins with a review of relevant institutional theories and how institutions influence organizational behavior, strategies, and markets. The course then explores a variety of institutional strategies—successful as well as unsuccessful—across a broad range of regions and countries. The course takes an institutions-based approach, which interprets multinational enterprises (MNE) strategy in the global arena as informed by the institutional environment and local culture of the home and host environment. The focus is on adjustment and implementation processes necessary to respond successfully to different host environments. The course consists of three modules: background and theoretical concepts; strategic adaptation, innovation and implementation; and managing external relations.

This course offers an intensive introduction to the field of network analysis with a particular emphasis on organizational settings. The course is divided into traditional lecture sessions and hands-on laboratory sessions in which students have a chance to play with real-world data. The course familiarizes students with the theory, research, methodological issues, and practical implications connected with the analysis of relational data within organizations. Upon completion of the course, students should have a good grasp of social network concepts and methods, and be able to use them. The approach is practical and it involves concrete use of social network data during the laboratory sessions. This includes mastering not only software tools but also statistical and analytical methods. Students are required to bring their own laptops to effectively participate in the laboratory sessions. The course discusses topics including social network theories, concepts, and terminology (e.g., structural holes, social capital, social influence, origins and evolutions of network structures).; using matrices and graphs to represent social relationships (e.g., one-mode and two-mode networks, layout algorithms, network visualizations); methods and measures to understand network data (e.g., centrality algorithms, cliques and communities, positions and roles, scale-free networks); and applications of social network analysis (e.g., strategic alliances, organizational change, key-player detection).

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. The course is separated into two parts. The first part is on an introduction to Phoenician and Punic Archaeology. Topics in this part include: the identity of Phoenicians and Punics between history, microhistory and archaeology; relations with the substrata in the contexts of expansion; and commercial contacts and cultural exchanges with the great civilizations of the ancient Near East and the pre-Roman Mediterranean. The second part is on the archaeology of production and material culture from the Phoenician East to the Punic Mediterranean. This part of the course examines the archaeological data relating to various expressions of Phoenician and Punic material culture, analyzing the different evidence of production chains that can be traced between the Syrian-Palestinian coast and the central-western Mediterranean, from the end of the Bronze Age to Romanization. In particular, starting from the study of each single handcraft productions, the technological aspects of the various materials examined are explored, as well as the issue of the contexts of supply of raw matters. Students interested in participating in archaeological excavations are required to complete the safety course for archaeological sites.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students interested in International Law. The three fundamental legal functions on which the legal dynamics of the international community is founded – law-making, law-determination and law-enforcement – are analyzed within the contemporary social context. International law is presented in its different dimensions: as a tool in the hand of international actors able to handle change in the international society and safeguard stability and predictability of international legal relations; as common language useful in reaching consensus or, at least, peaceful disagreement; and as key to understanding the reality of contemporary international relations. Bringing together different perspectives, the course demonstrates how international rules, while made by governments and mostly addressed to them, can be of great relevance to private actors and to their interests.

The course focuses on the major turning points in Italian economic history, in which business management groups emerged. The course provides a chronological and thematic analysis of the historical-economic events in Italy, from its unification to present day, together with the analysis of various case studies selected from the most interesting successes and failures of Italian private and public companies in today's global economy.

This course examines the performance and operation of imperfectly competitive markets, as well as the behavior of firms in these markets. The course looks at the effects of various business decisions and policy actions on the way firms compete. The course also explores how the need to motivate members of an organization and to coordinate their actions shapes the provision of incentives within the organization and the actual organization design. This allows a look at how organizational choices affect firms’ competitive behavior and rivals’ reactions. The course discusses topics including a review of fundamental concepts of game theory; the determinants of market power in static oligopolistic models; strategic positioning and advertising; the intensity of rivalry in dynamic oligopolistic models: collusive agreements; strategic and non-strategic barriers to entry; incentives within an organization: motivation; incentives within an organization: externalities and transfer prices; the strategic effects of organizational choices: horizontal mergers; and anti-trust intervention in oligopolistic markets. Students attending this course should be familiar with basic microeconomics concepts, in particular with the notion of Nash Equilibrium and Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium, with basic oligopolistic models (such as Bertrand and Cournot models of static competition) and with the fundamentals of unconstrained and constrained optimization problems.