Italy

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 the debate regarding pension’s policy and how it affects individuals, a debate which interests policy and academic audiences. The lifecycle model is employed as a key tool for analyzing the issues of interest and for understanding existing analyses. Finally, the course addresses topical policy questions and the recent contributions to academic literature about how individuals are affected by, and respond to, public policy. The course focuses on the role for government intervention in the economy (why should government intervene?), and on some principles that might guide the design of economic policy. The course focuses on public policy regarding pensions / social security, and how this affects the decisions of individuals regarding consumption and savings. Topics include motives for government intervention in the economy, raising government revenue, and pensions and social security.

Bullying: Beyond common examines the phenomenon of youth bullying. The course focuses on both traditional bullying that usually takes place on school premises and cyberbullying, which occurs via information and communication technologies. With a social-ecological perspective, the first part of the course explores the boundaries of these phenomena, and analyzes the characteristics of youth involved and the social-psychological processes that underlie the different roles youth play in bully-victim-bystander dynamics. The second part of this course covers the prevention and intervention strategies available at the international level. The course recommends students have previous knowledge of theories and methodologies from developmental psychology and social psychology as a prerequisite.

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 the global challenges that the planet's population has been facing since the second half of the twentieth century. Among these, the critical relation with natural resources and with the concept of development and, above all, climate change, with its connections to territorial development, ecological risk, food security and the consumption of natural resources. At the end of the course, the students have acquired the theoretical and empirical tools to critically analyze the global strategies of climate resilience and cooperation and the relation between climate change and tourism. They also have acquired the ability to work in groups and develop class discussions. They are able to communicate both in expert and non-expert groups the global dynamics connected to climate change, globalization, poverty, development and tourism. Climate change offers the opportunity for a multidisciplinary analysis and, during the course, the many topics connected to the phenomenon are discussed, using mainly a geographical approach which means having a focus on territorial impacts, policies, and responses. The course concentrates on three main aspects of the phenomenon. PART 1 introduces climate change as a global phenomenon, with its natural and anthropogenic root causes, positioning it inside the wider perspective of environmental degradation and pollution and analyzing the global debate between climate change activists and deniers. In this respect, several activities are carried out, such as group work, presentation, and class discussion. PART 2 analyzes the Kyoto Protocol and the Post Kyoto adaptation and mitigation strategies, with a focus on the policy-making process but also trying to include it in a theoretical framework of adaptation, PART 3 covers climate change and mobility, including the connections between climate change and environmental crisis with migration and tourism.

The course deals with the main topics of interest in Social Psychology. The course examines the main concepts and theoretical frameworks in Social Psychology and the seminal experiments of the field. The course discusses topics including an introduction to social psychology, research methods in social psychology, self and self-presentation, social perception and cognition, attitudes, symbolic communication and language, social influence and persuasion, understanding groups, and group processes.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program in Modern, Post-Colonial and Comparative Literatures. The course is intended for advanced levels students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. Students acquire knowledge of gender studies (theories and methodologies) in diverse cultural contexts whereby the notions of identity and otherness, difference, and diversity are analyzed within an intercultural perspective. The course intends to favor the capability to deconstruct these notions in diverse texts (theoretical, literary, and visual). The course focuses on the following topics: controversial books, ethical reading, and ethical criticism: cultural representations of diversity and the survival of the outsiders. The course analyses books that were banned (such as WIDE SARGASSO SEA or THE COLOR PURPLE) or controversial (for instance THE PASSION OF NEW EVE and DISGRACE) for their provocative and non-mainstreaming cultural position. The first lessons analyze critical theories on difference and diversity within an intersectional perspective. The second part interrogates and discusses literary and visual texts where the construction of women and other subjects as "negative" and functional/structural diversity are challenged and overcome through narrative strategies of resistance and trans-formations. The violence of representation is thus exposed and critically challenged. The diachronic study of theories and fiction (in different genres) aims at showing repetitive patterns in the cultural representation of difference as well as in the strategic patterns of resistance, reaffirming the necessity, right, and power of diversity.

This intensive language course is conducted in Italian and is designed to provide students with basic knowledge of Italian. The course follows the language proficiency guidelines set up by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).  Students in this course generally have an entrance exam that places them between the AB and A.1 levels. At the end of the four-week intensive program, students are expected to be able to express themselves in a simple, fluid, and clear manner and to be able to describe events that have taken place in the past and express personal preferences. The course covers the present tense (regular and irregular verbs as well as the past tense (regular and irregular) and the use of the correct auxiliary verb and the concordance. The course is designed to cover the first semester of Italian, roughly akin to Italian 1 and a portion of Italian 2 in the quarter system. All four abilities including speaking, listening, reading, and writing are emphasized with the support of authentic materials (videos) and real-life situations such as visits to local venues and cultural sites. The course follows a communicative approach to language acquisition and involves opportunities for role playing, group activities, games, class discussions, and exchanges with local University of Bologna students. Activities outside the classroom are organized in order to reinforce observation and communication skills that facilitate immersion in Italian culture. The course includes a major field trip. Students select the number of quarter units from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 6. The course is organized by Inlingua with supervision from the Study Center. Course materials are provided by Inlingua. The basic text for the course is: NUOVO CONTATTO A1 (Loescher, 2018).

This course explores the time when the “Peoples of the Sea” roamed the southern Italian coasts, to the epic era in which Rome and Carthage fought for control over the Mediterranean basin, all the way to the period when Rome lost control of the Mediterranean at the end of Antiquity. One key component of the course consists in a number of fieldtrips to the most famous archeological sites around Naples, including Ischia, Paestum, and Pompeii. The fieldtrips are organized in temporal sequence, and so are the readings and seminar discussion, so as to arrange the course roughly in historical progression from ancient times to late antiquity. The focuses intensively on certain periods and themes, oscillating from the local to the Mediterranean at large, and from the particular to the general. In-class meetings consist of lectures and seminar discussions focusing on the history of Mediterranean life, culture, and politics in a certain historical period; fieldtrips focus more specifically on local history in that period.