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 the new requirements with which diplomacy must comply, both at the national and global level, in the present transitional phase of the international relations system. A special section of the course is devoted to the radical changes that occurred after the Cold War and the public and multilateral diplomatic methods that resulted from it, with special reference to specific crises. The course describes the additional challenges that diplomacy must face, at the domestic and international level, in the present transitional phase of foreign relations. Specific case studies analyze the most relevant changes that have occurred since the end of the Cold War, and indicate the emerging public and multilateral diplomatic tools.

The course introduces key concepts of culture anthropology, and diversity and provides tools to analyze different approaches to the study cultural differences. Particular attention is devoted to current issues, positionality (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) and the processes of globalization, migration, and intercultural relations. The course discusses topics including, an introduction to cultural anthropology (theoretical approaches); cultures, cultural differences, and diversity; local and global dimensions, borders, and contact areas; migration processes and intercultural relations; language and communication, arts, media, and sports; and concepts of identity and issues of positionality. The course explores these topics in relation to psychology.

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 engages the role of language—both as a symbolic code and as a material tool—in the spreading of late/neoliberal capitalism. While most analyses of the world’s current order tend to focus on political and economic aspects, this course explores how certain ways of speaking and using language may partake in producing capitalist forms of reasoning and practical conduct. Throughout the course, students develop tools to analyze the discursive and semiotic forms that characterize our everyday lives. Students learn to view linguistic interactions and graphic artifacts (i.e., street signage, typefaces, letterforms, brands, logos, and other types of graphic media) as socially and politically meaningful semiotic technologies that shape our worlds. Students learn how to analyze new protocols of discourse that characterize our everyday lives: the customer satisfaction survey, the service encounter, the checklist, the logbook, the flowchart, the electoral mission statement, the training session, etc. Despite their apparent ordinariness, these discursive genres/textual artifacts are key for the production of the self-improving and self-reflexive subjects required by the regimes of moral accountability and the forms of market rationality that characterize our contemporary moment. While reading ethnographic analyses of specific technologies of discourse, students engage broader questions: How pervasive are neoliberal structures of practice? To what extent can neoliberalism be represented as an overarching and coherent global trend generated by the homogenizing forces of Western Capitalism? Is our moral and affective experience completely shaped by the extension of economic rationality to all areas of life? The course shows how, within a regime of advanced capitalism, life and labor unfold through complex interplays of semiotic codes, affective registers, and material objects.

This course examines the evolution and cultural significance of three staple foods of Italian cuisine, bread, wine, and olive oil, from their ancient roots in the Mediterranean to their role in the enogastronomic traditions of Tuscany. The course traces the origins of these products in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, and their changing symbolic and cultural meaning across time, from ancient Roman and early Christian civilizations to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Students discuss their contribution to the definition of an Italian national identity and their place in today's food culture. For the study of bread and pasta in modern Italy, students look at the industrialization of wheat growing and of bread and pasta-making techniques, countered by the recent revival of heritage grains, especially in Tuscany. The analysis of Italian wine culture addresses the industrialization of wine production in Italy and the natural wine movement, with a specific focus on wine production in Tuscany. Finally, olive oil is studied from a symbolic, agricultural, and dietary perspective. Comparative tastings of ancient and modern grain breads, of conventional and natural wine, as well as of traditional Tuscan organic olive oil and commercial oil, are part of the class. Field trips to mills, farms, and food sites complement the class contents.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students, Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course discusses the economic principles of financial transactions and financial contracts, particularly the main contingencies pertaining to specific types of financial transactions (purchases, loans, mortgages, etc.). The course reviews the risks associated to different contingencies, how to prioritize them, and how to apply economic techniques to correct risks. The course explores topics including economic theories of the firm; the firm as authority; the firm as a nexus of contracts; the firm and specific investment; law and finance; and international perspectives: Italy, Germany, UK, USA, and Japan.

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 first part of the course focuses on the history and development of non-European literature in French, with particular attention to the relationship between literary texts and the historical, artistic, and linguistic context. Special attention is placed on the different methodologies useful for the analysis and interpretation of literary texts. The second part of the course focuses on the issues of diversity and inclusion in French-speaking migrant literatures with particular attention to Quebec, Lebanese, and Senegalese literatures. Special attention is placed on literature written  by migrant authors and literature written by those born in exile. Voluntary or forced mobility generates a literature with a dual focus: towards the country of origin and towards the country of adoption. Migrant writings, in a French-speaking context, give rise to a third space in which identity is renegotiated through writing, a space for the elaboration of diversity in search of similarities. Principal texts by Marco Micone, Antonio D'Alfonso, Fulvio Caccia, Amin Maalouf, and Wajdi Mouawad.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students who have the appropriate background. Places for incoming exchange students are restricted and primarily reserved for students enrolled in art related programs at their home university. This course is designed to identify the broad issues that are shaping visual culture in the 21st Century. Students are introduced to foundational aspects of visual culture theory through a discussion on the social role of images in contemporary culture, with particular attention to the impact of prosumer technologies, the Internet, and emerging forms of artificial intelligence. The course takes into account pictures produced within a diversified set of increasingly interconnected fields, including contemporary art, mainstream media, social movements, speculative design, and visual communication. Most of the case studies discussed elicit the dichotomy between pictures that are the expression of power systems and pictures produced as counter-discourses. Students develop the methodological tools to analyze the visual experience and recognize the main characters of the communication through various media.

This course focuses on some central topics and arguments in the philosophy of mind and language in the tradition of analytic philosophy. The main aim is to engage in detail with arguments and texts that have played a central role in contemporary discussions. Topics include: the nature of linguistic and mental content; the nature of thought and its relation to linguistic understanding; what is reference and meaning and what are their relations to intentionality and concepts; the relation between our inferential and representational abilities and the nature of our rationality; the nature and our knowledge of our mental states; the relation between the physical and the mental domains. Students acquire an understanding of central topics in the philosophy of mind and language and they will be in a position to explain and to engage competently orally and in writing with these problems. More specifically they will be in a position to: master the central concepts in the theory of language and mind; understand the philosophical positions involved on the debates; understand the arguments in favor or against the relevant philosophical theses; have some appreciation of the significance of these issues for other areas of philosophy.

This course examines some central topics in the philosophies of language. We discuss core concepts such as that of truth, meaning, validity, inference. We then focus on the normative role of truth and validity in relation to reasoning. Although this course does not presuppose any specific competence in formal logic, some basic acquaintance in elementary formal logic may help.

This course is designed as a comprehensive survey course of theory and research in social psychology. The goal is to explain how human thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other people and cultural background. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to critically think about how research in social psychology can shed light on events going on around the world and in their own lives and how it can help to better human existence. The main topics include: the self; social perception; social cognition and information processing; attitudes and persuasion; conforming; prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination; social influence and group behavior, and romantic, aggressive, and helping behavior; and applied social psychology.