Italy

Alternating introductory lectures with seminar discussions and presentations by students, this course explores the time when Christians and Muslims fought for control over the Mediterranean continent, all the way to the wave of immigrants entering southern Italy today. One key component of the course consists in a number of fieldtrips to places such as Amalfi and Naples where students experience on site what they study in readings and in the lectures. The fieldtrips are organized in temporal sequence, and so are the readings and seminar discussion, in order to arrange the course roughly in historical progression from the early Middle Ages (ca. 800AD) to the present. The course focuses intensively on certain periods and themes, oscillating from the micro and local to the macro and the Mediterranean at large. Generally speaking, lectures present the outlines of Mediterranean life, culture, and politics in a certain historical period, and seminars focus more specifically on local history in that period.

This course explores the decisions that executives in the creative industries have to make in order to carve competitive positioning and ensure long-term sustainability for their companies. The schedule is organized into four modules with the goal to help students develop an analytic toolkit for understanding strategic issues and hone their ability to structure complex business problems and make decisions in lack of complete information. The modules are: 1) formulation of competitive strategy for a given business of a firm (how to play in relation to the external and internal environments and the changes both constantly undergo); 2) developing an understanding on how multi-business firms determine the scope of their activities (where to play in terms of product/customer segments, geographies and value chains); 3) operations management and its strategic centrality to cope with constant changes in customer preferences, networks of supply and demand, and developments in technology; and 4) analyzing strategic decisions that are specific of and key to current competitive landscapes in the creative fields. The ultimate objective of the course is to provide students with a coherent theoretical framework useful to the stimulation and development of their strategic decision-making in different situations. Prerequisite: students should be familiar with the fundamentals of management and microeconomics.

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 and the department. Students are advised to talk to the Professor directly before applying for departmental approval. The course focuses on the urban transformation which took place in Europe in the nineteenth century and the new rapport between the city and the surrounding territory and their conservation. In particular, students are expected to: master theories and methods for reading and planning the historic city and cultural landscapes; interpret the preservation of the historic city as an asset for cultural and economic development; interpret the historic city and landscape as context and object of interest for cultural institutions. Topics covered: the historic city as an urban planning issue; methods of identification and assessment of cultural values to be protected and enhanced; reading and planning the historic city; key experiences in Italy ‘50s – ‘70s, the foundation of an urban planning practice; preserving the historic city, regulatory frameworks for urban conservation in UK, France, and Italy; the World Heritage Convention (1972) and the UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape approach (2011); planning policies and conservation interventions for the World Heritage cities; the role of cultural activities in historic cities.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course content is divided into three distinct parts. The first part of the course discusses the evolution of the discipline from Human Computer Interaction to User Experience Design, focusing on the human, the computer, and their interaction. The second part of the course is on usability analysis and design, topics include a systematic discussion of the techniques and standards for the management of the process of user experience design, with particular attention to the phases of usability analysis (with and without the participation of users), and the user- and goal-oriented usability design methodologies. The third part of the course examines the guidelines, patterns, and methods for usability design. During this section the course discusses, with historical aspects, the framework on which the concrete aspects of usability design is based, and strong attention is given to the problem of usability for web applications and mobile apps.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level student. Enrollment is by consent of instructor. This course provides an overview of the basic tools used by health economists for their empirical investigations, the linear regression model for the analysis of cross-sectional data, and under what conditions the estimated relationship has a causal interpretation. Drawing on critical discussion about some micro-economic applications, the student receives specific data to practice at the computer and learn the basic skills to perform empirical work using the software STATA. At the end of the course, the student is able to understand scientific articles using the linear regression model and is also able to perform their own analysis with this tool. The course discusses topics including an introduction to econometric methods, data, and STATA; simple and multiple regression models (advanced); and a variety of data issues.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course is intended for students who already have a strong background in literature and critical theory. The course focuses on the institutions of literature, the relationship between text and context, and the dynamics of literary communication and its political, ideological, socio-economic and editorial influence. The course explores the use of critical tools and forms of investigation that belong to the field of sociology and applies them to literature. Emphasis is placed on the thematic and sociological components of literary texts. The topic for the Spring 2018 semester is: The Other Nation–The Italian Migration. The course is divided in 6 sections with assigned readings: history of migrations, migration and literature, novels, new migrations; the question of Brain Drain, narrations. The course includes visual materials and a guest speaker series with international experts in the field of migration and authors who have addressed the question of migration in their writings. Assessment in the course is based on a final oral exam.

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 historical development of consumer capitalism, the fundamental elements of contemporary sociological theories of consumer action, and the main issues related to the politics of consumer culture. Emphasis is placed on how theories work in practice, by addressing key contemporary empirical phenomena in the sphere of consumption, with particular attention to social boundaries and social identities, commercial institutions, and the new challenges posed by environmental issues and the process of globalization/localization. The course aims at providing a theoretically informed sociological understanding of contemporary consumer cultures and practices. While adopting an interdisciplinary outlook, it deals mainly with the sociology of consumption, concentrating on contemporary social phenomena of global relevance. The course begins with a discussion of the historical development of so-called consumer capitalism, highlighting the relevance of urbanization, colonialism, changes in social stratification (class, gender) and international commerce. It then focuses on the most important theories of consumer action, considering how economics, sociology, and anthropology have provided several distinctive perspectives on the functions, meanings, and mechanisms of consumption. Finally, the course considers the politics of consumer culture and addresses cultural industries as a vehicle for hegemonic views of the “consumer,” commercially mediated spaces as institutional contexts for a variety of dominant or alternative consumer practices and identities, and the process of globalization/localization that takes place through the global standardization of commodity chains and alternative, locally grounded market circuits.

This course introduces students to the key elements in society for determining those who have power, and those who do not. This is due to the perception that race, gender, and class (or at least how these determiners are perceived and maintained by a group), interact with one another, and inform one another, to ensure that power to and from is monopolized or unfairly distributed within the group. Students are introduced to issues surrounding race, gender, and class in the microcosm that is Italy; simultaneously a unique model and representative of shared universal concerns. This course has been divided into four sections. The first part of the semester focuses on gender, the second on race, the third on class, and although the last part of the course individually looks at the theories of intersectionality, these will naturally occur throughout the course. Alongside theories of gender, race, class, and intersectionality, students are encouraged to apply theories to case studies. The course explores not only explanations of why power inequalities exist and are sustained, but also insights into how such knowledge might be used to challenge these very real issues within society. Although the concerns covered in the course are universal, the case studies focused upon, alongside field trips, root the study in the Italian, local context. Students are encouraged to compare this context to their own academic concerns and pursuits, as well as personal experience, in order to provide more robust and unique insights.