Italy

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 course focuses on women's popular culture with specific reference to travel literature and critical utopias, within a gender perspective. This course explores the multi-layered meanings that utopia as a literary genre and utopianism as a form of thought acquire for women’s access to writing and to the public and contemporary debates. Starting from the analysis of some emblematic texts written by male authors, for example UTOPIA (1516) by Thomas More and NEW ATLANTIS (1628) by Francis Bacon, the course investigates the way in which this hybrid genre initiates a dialogue with classical utopianism and the great tradition as well as intertwining it with other contemporary emergent literary genres (travel writing, romance, novel, closet drama, theater and scientific treatises). The course then explores female forms of utopia from the 17th century to the 20th century and examines the ways in which female writers read the utopian paradigm and interpret it as a possible space for female agency and empowerment. The course also questions how women used the utopian paradigm to discuss the obstacles and possibilities in women’s private and public life and to propose social and political changes.

In this course students obtain knowledge in microbiology topics with a focus on the main microbial groups involved in bioenergy production from biomasses and in the biodegradation of environmental pollutants. Students are able to apply acquired knowledge in the management of plants for bioenergy production and for the bioremediation of contaminated habitats. The course is composed of two sections, each one having a theoretical part, performed via usual class teaching, and a practical part, performed via laboratory activity or visits to farms/factories. Part 1: Application of microorganisms in bioenergy and bioplastic production including biogas production, bioethanol production, biohydrogen production, and bioplastic production. This part of the course includes a visit to a biogas producing plant fed with waste products and biomasses. Part 2: Application of microorganisms for environmental remediation including soil, water and wastewater, and microbial indicators in water pollution and decontamination. Prerequisite for this course is a course in general microbiology and a course in biochemistry.

The course provides the technical skills for implementing financial models with Excel including array, financial, and statistical functions. Students are equipped with the basic operational tools to understand financial markets and employ the modelling abilities developed via sample applications to build their own models. Coursework mainly focuses on functions already embedded in the worksheet as well as on procedures designed to solve specific problems. The course concentrates on the application of several theoretical models for financial valuation, optimal portfolio choice, and performance evaluation. Topics covered include: mean-variance portfolio choice, efficient frontier with and without short selling constraints, and parameter uncertainty; bonds: duration, convexity, immunization, and the term structure of interest rates; stocks: CAPM, beta estimation, and the security market line; introduction to APT and multifactor models; binomial model, lognormal distribution, and Black-Scholes model; and event study and style analysis. The course requires students have an intermediate knowledge of Excel as a prerequisite.

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 is graded on a P/NP basis. The course introduces students to the Italian literary culture of the 16th and 20th century. It provides a wide historical background on the issue, together with the basic tools for reading, analyzing, and contextualizing Italian works of the Renaissance, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Course topics vary each term. For the most up to date version of the course topics, access the University of Bologna Online Course Catalog. The fall 2023 lectures are organized in four modules, and focus on a diverse range of literary topics. Module one focuses on women, female characters, and gender between Renaissance and post-unification Italy. Module two focuses on Women’s Education in Early Modern Italy: Theory and Actuality. Module three is on Women and society in the Italian peninsula (c. XIX). Module four introduces topic Of Ladies, of Passions and of Wars: Representation of Women in the Italian Resistance.

This course focuses on organization theories, with the aim of strengthening the analytical skills of the participants and enabling them to assess peoples' behavior in work environments, organizations’ forms and structures and the root causes of their performance. This is a highly useful skill to cultivate for a wide variety of managerial roles and positions (marketing, operations, HR, finance & accounting, etc.). It is indispensable for working in a start-up or in a family business, for managing a company, consulting, auditing, and even investment banking. This course includes a Group Field Project (GFP) with the aim of giving the opportunity to apply theory to reality and, in particular, to real organizations. Each group will find an interesting company or other type of organization and analyze it from an organizational frame, using the concepts and the models that are presented during the course. 

This course provides students with a sound basis for communicating effectively and accurately in oral and written Italian. 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 examines pre-Columbian art history in one or more areas of the American continent. The course explores the potential and limits of applying the “art” category to pre-colonial indigenous productions. The course includes an overview of fundamental elements of the current debate on the anthropology of art. The course analyzes the artistic productions of Mesoamerican pre-colonial indigenous peoples to explore their multiple aesthetic, religious, and political functions. The course discusses how such products were perceived, collected, and exhibited in museums in modern times, focusing attention on the objects’ materiality and agency, here perceived as their ability to continuously arouse new questions and discourses. The course examines topics including art and anthropology; artistic practices in ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs, Maya, Teotihuacan, Aztecs); Indigenous American artefacts in early modern European collections; birth and transformation of the Ethnographic museum, with specific focus on the musealization of Haida artifacts; and contemporary indigenous art and politics of display.

This course provides students with a sound basis for communicating effectively and accurately in oral and written Italian. Students practice recognizing and using more complex Italian grammatical and syntactic structures such as the present and past conditional and present subjunctive verbs. 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 millennium following the collapse of the Roman Empire saw the development in Europe of a radically new form of civilization now called "medieval." With its nuns and monks, knights and nobles, troubadours and artists, plagues and famines, crusades and cathedrals, and cities and castles, the Middle Ages left an indelible mark on the western world. Rome, the city of the Popes, played a key role in medieval western civilization and was the center of a long-lasting tradition of pilgrimage to the apostles' and martyrs' relics preserved in its many churches. This course is intended as a broad survey of medieval culture and history with a specific emphasis on Rome. The course takes advantage of the city's abundance of medieval monuments and works of art: mosaics and paintings, sculptures, and religious architecture, which are analyzed in comparison to the artistic production of the rest of Europe, the Byzantine East, and other cultural contexts such as the Islamic world. The reading of relevant historical and literary texts completes the course.

This course is intended to develop the linguistic skills of students who have completed the first year of Italian. It reviews basic grammar structures with emphasis on exceptions; it enriches vocabulary, reading comprehension, and argumentative skills on different kinds of texts, improving comprehension and conversation through the discussion of contemporary issues proposed by the instructor. Students approach longer and more complex argumentative texts of which they are asked to identify the main points. They comment on articles or reports on contemporary issues in which authors express points of view and opinions. In oral tests and group discussions, students are asked to take a critical stance on given texts, debating pros and cons of different points of view. They also research various aspects of Italian daily life, interviewing Italian people and reporting back to the class. They can understand discussions on concrete and abstract topics and follow conversations between native speakers. All four abilities (writing, speaking, listening, reading) are developed, also with the support of authentic audiovisual materials such as Italian movies, short videos, tv programs, and songs. The course uses a communication-based approach: students engage in daily role-plays, group activities, games, and class discussions. Out of class activities are designed to take advantage of the opportunities for interaction and language practice, as well as immersion in Italian culture, that the city provides.