Italy

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced students only. Enrolment is based on consent of the instructor. The course focuses on particular phases of Italian film history, following movements, themes, trends, and genres that have characterized the transnational paths of Italian films, from the silent era to contemporary cinema. Through the analysis of Italian films that have been internationally distributed, the course detects the elements that may have contributed to their international success or failure. The course focuses on the following films: GERMANIA ANNO ZERO (GERMANY YEAR ZERO, Roberto Rossellini, 1948); CRONACA DI UN AMORE (STORY OF A LOVE AFFAIR, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950); LA CIOCIARA (TWO WOMEN, Vittorio De Sica, 1960); DJANGO (Sergio Corbucci, 1966); MIMÌ METALLURGICO FERITO NELL'ONORE (THE SEDUCTION OF MIMÌ, Lina Wertmüller, 1972); and NICO, 1988 (Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2017). The course uses methods from reception theory, production and distribution studies, and textual analysis. The course considers the evolving characteristics of the film distribution system, the differences and nuances between distribution and circulation, and between local, national, and transnational scale. The course investigates the evolution of film scholarship on Italian popular cinema, as well as Italian films' most exportable traits and what have defined them throughout the history of Italian cinema.

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 of the main aesthetic traditions of the past century. Students acquire the conceptual and methodological tools enabling them to analyze the key issues that are central to the contemporary aesthetic debate, according to a mainly theoretical and problematic approach. The new paradigms provided by the theory of mind suggest today a remodeling of the notion of the aesthetic experience starting from a reconsideration of the traditional conceptions of perception and expression. Merleau-Ponty's thought considered a turning point in the passage. The course aims to examine this phenomenological reflection by comparing it with current outcomes that also derive from cognitive sciences and studies on evolutionism that can contribute to shedding new light on the particularity of the aesthetic dimension.

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. At the end of the course, students are able to: identify and critically analyze the major research traditions and theories in the study of collective violence; distinguish the major forms of collective violence, identifying the causes and dynamics; link theory with empirical analysis on the subject of collective violence. The course examines different types of collective violence, including violence occurring in civil wars, instances of state repression, mafia and gang violence. The course is divided in three sections. The first section explores classic types of “political violence” (such as civil wars, revolutions, and terrorism) looking at their origins and dynamics. The second section deals with violence perpetrated by states (such as repressions and genocides) and violence that occurs within states that does not challenge their existence or regime (such as that perpetrated by organized crime and gangs). The third section looks at the organizations that “produce” violence, and namely at insurgent and mafia groups, discussing their emergence, their internal functioning, their relations with violence, and their demise.

This course provides a core of knowledge of Italy's post-Unification history, grounding students in the political, economic, and social development of the country. Commencing with the nation-state's formation, the analysis of issues surrounding Italy's early identity, society, and political structures reveal many of the problems that subsequent regimes have sought to address. After developing a solid grounding in the formation and establishment of the new nation state, the course explores the impact of World War One upon the interwar period of Fascist Italy. After establishing what Fascism was and what it meant for Italian people, consideration turns to the Second World War, the fall of Italian Fascism and its longterm legacy upon the postwar republic. Examination of post-1945 Italy considers the influence of America and the Cold War upon the internal battle for political control between the Left and the Catholic Right. This period also focuses on Italy's economic recovery and re-entry into "normal" diplomatic relations that was rubber-stamped by the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. With the country's foreign relations stabilized, attention turns to the internal crises of insurrection, terrorism, mafia activity, and corruption that led to Tangentopoli, the collapse of the old political order, and the rise of Silvio Berlusconi. The course concludes by examining the rise of the contemporary political phenomenon of the Five Star Movement and the Lega.

This course provides students with a sound basis for communicating effectively and accurately in oral and written Italian. Students obtain proficiency in basic Italian spelling and pronunciation. Elementary Italian grammar and syntactic structures are covered, especially the use of nouns and adjectives and regular and irregular verbs in the present and past tense. Authentic materials (songs, videos, advertisements, and film clips) are used in a communicative-based approach, and emphasis is placed on the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students participate in several sessions of language exchange with Italian university students, and field trips take them outside the classroom to engage with the city and Romans to reinforce the grammatical skills learned in class. The course is conducted entirely in Italian.

The course provides analytical and critical tools aimed at knowledge, enhancement and communication of cultural heritage sites, applying the theoretical and practical methodologies of Digital Humanities. The course introduces the principal methods of investigating and visualizing urban historical contexts and their long-term transformations. The course comprises the fields of Urban History and Architectural Representation. In addition to traditional sources and interpretative models, students are introduced to digital technologies, enabling them to experiment with new applications for digital urban history. This is achieved through in-depth case studies developed through teamwork. The course comprises a number of general urban history lessons, whose content ranges from modern to contemporary cities. Their focus rests on the methods, visual and textual sources, and the analytical tools necessary for understanding urban and territorial settlements in both European and international contexts. A series of lectures will be dedicated to specific topics: the dynamics of creation of the built space; the relationships between center and periphery, urban cartography, and the development of a city’s everyday infrastructure. Lessons then focus on water cities, particularly on the case study of Venice’s lagoon. Emphasis is placed on analyzing its processes of growth and urban development, its principal buildings and their reuse, covering the chronological period ranging from the 16th century to the present day. The course also includes seminar activities and site visits to some lagoon islands. Both these experiences foster the physical knowledge of the Venetian environment and its descriptive textual and visual sources. Building on the study and critical interpretation of historical materials and using GIS and 3D modeling tools, students, divided into small working groups, reconstruct the historical stratigraphy and the ancient conformation of over sixty islands shaping the Venetian archipelago, investigating them either at the urban or architectural scale.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the main interdisciplinary theoretical, methodological, and technical tools of the historical-religious studies that deal with religious pluralism in urban contexts in the Modern and Contemporary Ages. The course focuses on different source materials to highlight and describe how religions create their worldviews and interact with the broader cultural, economic, and material context. The aim of this course is to investigate the relationship between religion and urban life, focusing on the theme of religious diversity, as it is organized and present in different urban contexts. A historical journey through different cities offers several different urban examples of how religion contributed to shape the environment, how religious interactions and encounters were established and negotiated, and ultimately how religious conflict and interactions might determine the future of cities.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The objective of this course is to provide an advanced-level overview of the institutions, policies, and politics concerning economic governance in the European Union (EU). The course examines the process of European economic integration; the formulation, adoption, and implementation of the main economic policies in the EU, and the impact these policies have on member states. The course covers a variety of topics, including an overview of the institutions and policy processes in the EU economic governance; theories of European integration, and EU governance and political economy; Single Market and competition policy; Economic and Monetary Union; governing finance in the EU and internationally; the political economy of Brexit; the financial crisis, the sovereign debt crisis, and the EU response; and the EU's economic responses to the pandemic.

The course examines the theoretical and methodological tools to understand and analyze human language in its complexity and in its various manifestations, i.e. languages. At first, human language is contextualized within the larger set of semiotic phenomena, and the main models of linguistic and non-linguistic communication will be compared. The course then defines the concept of natural language, within a broader perspective taking into account the world's languages and their variation in time and space, and focuses on the concept of linguistic diversity. The diversity of languages is the background during the middle part of the course, where various levels of linguistic analysis are explained and demonstrated using examples from Italian and other European and non-European languages. The course addresses phonetics, phonology, morphology, vocabulary, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In light of the different levels of analysis addressed, the course proposes possible typologies and taxonomies with which to organize linguistic diversity, and concludes by discussing the concept of linguistic universals.