Italy

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. This course offers an understanding of the different systems of attainment, transfer, and conservation of knowledge in ancient societies all over the world. The course focuses on the methods and procedures for exchanging and archiving wisdom in different cultures and offers a comparison with regard to specific aims and effectiveness in storing knowledge and information, with attention to material aspects. Emphasis is also placed on recently established databases that aim to collect data and texts of ancient authors and literary works, and to carve out new tendencies in the conception of modern storage systems on the basis of a widened perspective regarding the classification of cultural memories. Highlights of the course are the recent developments in Digital Papyrology and interdisciplinary and intercultural connections, as well as the application of different scientific approaches. The course focuses on how different ancient cultures across the world, from Greek-Latin to Indian, Chinese, Meso-American and the like, have faced and solved the problem of the organization and transmission of written data, both in the documentary field (the texts of everyday life and of administration: letters, accounts, contracts, lists) and in the literary field (books). Particular attention is placed on how, within different pre-modern cultural systems, people conceived and organized their archives. The preferred methodological approach is that of archiving as a social practice, which in turn allows for a cross-cultural comparison of phenomena beyond the European and modern idea of archive. Among the points to be explored are the difference between documents that can be discarded or that must be preserved (short or long term); the different ways of organizing the material writing support and – where possible – the physical place where the texts are stored; finally, the course refocuses attention on the activities of non-elite players and generally stresses the diffusion of archival practices throughout societies. Special attention is devoted to the implications of this methodological approach to the digitalization of ancient archives.

This is an advanced 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. There are three versions of this course; this course, “GEOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES,” UCEAP Course Number 177B and Bologna course number 95931, is associated with the LM in Local and Global Development degree programme. One of the other versions, “GEOGRAPHIES OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES,” UCEAP Course Number 177A and Bologna course number 81952, is associated with the LM in History and Oriental Studies degree programme. The final version “GEOGRAPHY OF DEVELOPMENT,” UCEAP Course Number 176 and Bologna course number 19695, is associated with the LM in Local and Global Development degree programme.
Climate change offers the opportunity for a multidisciplinary analysis. The course discusses various aspects of the topic through a primarily geographical approach. The course is structured into three parts. Part one introduces climate change as a global phenomenon, with its natural and anthropogenic root causes. Students discuss and reflect on the socio-spatial inequalities inherent in the climate crisis. Part two analyzes climate governance, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Post Kyoto adaptation and mitigation strategies. In addition to the policy-making process, the course critically examines theoretical frameworks of adaptation, notions of climate justice, and intersectional approaches to addressing the climate crisis and its colonial roots. Part three concerns climate change and mobility. The course examines the complex interconnections between climate change and (im)mobility. Empirical examples are drawn from the #ClimateOfChange [https://climateofchange.info/publications-press/] interdisciplinary research project to contextualize the climate crisis as it is manifested, resisted, and understood from diverse locations across the globe. At the end of the course students show understanding of some of the global challenges the population of the planet has been facing since the second half of the twentieth century. Among these, the critical relation with the natural resources and with the concept of development and, above all, climate change, with its connections to territorial development, ecological risk, food security, and the consumption of natural resources. At the end of the course, the students have acquired the theoretical and empirical tools to critically analyze the global strategies of climate resilience and cooperation and the relation between climate change and tourism.

This is a special studies course with projects arranged between the student and a faculty member. The specific topics of study vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. The number of units varies with the student's project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student's special study project form.

This course investigates race/class and gender implications of the media generated immigration discourse in Europe, and Italy in particular, as a whole. That is, how individuals in Europe perceive immigration and distinguish among different movements of people. The course analyzes how what people perceive is generated and communicated, and in what way meaning is attributed and reacted with counter-narratives to that which is perceived. From the past to the present, through colonial and modern times to post WWII massive intra-European migrations, images and symbols of immigration remain political. How and why do they become so? Does theorizing the visual require a “grammar” of its own? How do images limit and enable securitization? How do figurations and discourses relate to and shape one another? Drawing upon examples from the last century as well as current media related discourses of asylum and migration in Europe at the continental, national and urban level, students participate in a group project that attempts to connect media politics to the concept of “community” in Rome. To this end, students’ analytical focal point is placed upon the city and suburbs of Rome where the presence of diverse immigrant communities offers opportunity for first-hand exploration of how effectively they and their second-generation individuals have been challenging the Italian political, economic, cultural mainstream and ultimately the same idea of citizenship from within the city. Students therefore experience first-hand how the Eternal city has changed in the past thirty years and how it is still changing beyond tourist stereotypes through a continual process of immigration and alteration.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course focuses on gender studies (theories and methodologies) in diverse cultural contexts. Notions of identity and otherness, difference and diversity are analyzed with specific reference to the politics of the body. The course intends to favor the capability to deconstruct these notions in diverse texts (theoretical, literary, visual). 

This course covers literary texts, with specific reference to speculative fiction, and discusses diverse politics of the body in black feminist, postcolonial, decolonial, posthuman, and trans* studies. In particular, the course tackles the historical and discursive construction and "framing" (J. Butler) of the non-human: how it has been culturally appropriated; but investigates also different forms of resistance as well as transversal and transcultural (and trans-species) forms of alliances, questioning the possibility of imagining an episteme that expands the very category of the human, not only to those subjectivities that have never had complete access to it (R. Braidotti), but also to a series of new "bodies" that have never been associated with the idea of human, and therefore of life.

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.