Italy

This course offers a study of the main psychological theories on human development as well as the changes that occur in behaviors and psychological functions from birth to young adulthood. The course focuses on different domains encompassing motor, perceptual, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Furthermore, research methodologies and cultural-contextual influences are presented. The course discusses topics including an introduction to developmental psychology; the importance of culture; brain, motor, and perceptual development; cognitive development; the development of language and communication; emotional development; social development; contexts of development; and development in the context of emergency and trauma. At the end of the course, students are able to express knowledge about major developmental psychology theories, methods, and processes underlying change across the stages of human development. Moreover, students understand and apply key concepts in developmental psychology within the areas of perceptual, motor, cognitive, social, and emotional development in different cultural contexts.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. The course is taught in Italian. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course has two separate modules on two different topics, PART A and PART B. Students who complete a research paper on a pre-approved topic are awarded 1 extra unit for the course. Maximum units for the course are 8, 4 for each part. The course focuses on diachronic aspects of the Italian literary tradition, the critical discussion regarding key issues about texts and authors, and the use of the principal tools of methodological analysis of texts and contexts. The topic for spring 2022 is on types of identity and women writings. Through a conceptual and thematic point of view, the course focuses on female identity in literature. PART A: The first module is dedicated to the writings of Elena Ferrante, Goliarda Sapienza, and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli. PART B: The second module is devoted to Sibilla Aleramo and Anna Banti. The course includes traditional lectures and seminars on specific texts as well as the use of audio and visual materials.

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 A1.3 and the A2.1 levels. The course is intended for students who have familiarity with Spanish or French and who have a strong background in grammatical structures which allows them to proceed at a slightly faster pace compared to ITAL 10. 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), the past tense (regular and irregular) and the use of the correct auxiliary verb and the concordance as well as the future tense. 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 is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. At the end of the course the student has a sound knowledge of the financial products traded in the market, the differences among them, and the reasons why they were introduced in the market. The products range from standard bonds and stocks to derivatives and structured finance products. The student examines the main agents trading in the market, as fund raisers or investors, as well as financial intermediaries. The course starts by illustrating the role that financial markets play in the economy. Students are introduced to the key finance concepts of time value of money and no-arbitrage valuation. These concepts are applied to the valuation of two asset classes: fixed-income securities and financial derivatives.

The course focuses on the conceptual apparatus regarding linguistic studies based on authentic data. Emphasis is placed on the role of linguistic corpora for language analysis with the support of computational tools. The course highlights methodologies for developing language teaching materials in advanced learning environments. Course topics: what is a corpus, how to use it and the kind of information it provides; parameters for corpus design; representativeness; syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis; concordances, collocations, and lexical association indexes; annotations; electronic texts, coding, mark-up format, and conversion methods; how to collect electronic texts; corpus access and text retrieval; case study: the corpora CORIS/CODIS, BoLC e DiaCORIS; web as corpus; laboratory: querying a tagged corpus; procedures for reading concordances; introduction to machine learning; part-of-speech tagging–parsing and formal grammars; lexical semantics–wordnets; laboratory of computational linguistics.

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 health-related behavioral determinants and offers an overview of some recent policies aimed at improving population lifestyles. The course highlights the following topics: 1) the demand for health and health capital; 2) the behavioral determinants leading to unhealthy outcomes such as obesity and addiction; 3) the trade-offs between health and welfare objectives; and 4) policies aimed at modifying health-related behavior and lifestyles. The course combines theoretical analysis and class discussion of case-studies. The course combines theoretical analysis and discussion of case-studies.

The course is an introduction to North American literature (USA and Canada) written in English, with a special focus on identity issues and the making of "national" literatures. Classic and founding texts will be compared to outline the symbolic and mythological patterns that have molded US and Canadian realities, from European colonization to the end of the 19th century. Literature in this course is investigated through a constant dialogue with other arts, including media, cinema, photography, and the visual arts. The concepts of identity, memory, community, and inner/outer landscape, constitute the thematic paradigms to approach the evolving mentalities underpinning the evolution of complex identity processes in the so-called New World. The course discusses topics including: discovering, conquering and inventing North America; USA melting pot versus Canadian multiculturalism; puritan roots of American literary discourses; American pioneers, mapping the frontier; Canadian travelogues, female voices of the origins and contemporary interpretations; American transcendentalism/renaissance, eco-criticism, self-reliance, and new canons; the Civil War, slavery, freedom, and human Rights; the Gilded Age; and American proto-modernism.

This field-based research project course engages in all stages of earth and environmental science field investigations and allows students to gain an understanding of different research methodologies: from design to implementation, through collection and analysis of data that addresses specific research questions, identified independently by each student. The course also allows students to experience collaborative research work with clear objectives and milestones. Students draw upon the knowledge and practical skills gained during the “Volcanology of the Mediterranean” course to identify case-studies and research themes of interest to study in-depth, choosing from the wide range of geological and man-made processes and environments which students are exposed to throughout the program. During the results interpretation stage the attention is focused on developing skills for reporting field results in the format of scientific publications. While the majority of the research work is self-directed, a research advisor is assigned to each student, who provides guidance during scheduled appointments on how to locate resources and collect data, as well as review the appropriateness and feasibility of the research methods and tools in a collaborative manner with the student. Earth science and Environmental science disciplines are grounded in observations at all scales, from satellite and drone imagery to microscopic sampling; upon placing the results of such observations into geographic, spatial, and temporal frameworks, conclusions may be drawn about the processes that occur within complex environmental systems, and predictive models may be developed to assess the effect of human interactions. This course provides students with an opportunity to practice and hone key skills in gathering and analyzing data from primary sources, as well as developing a coherent and compelling argument in a scholarly manner.