Italy

The course focuses on the history of North American cinema and in particular the identifying elements of production and industry (the genre system, the studio system, and the star system). Special attention is placed on cultural and formal elements as well as economic and distribution factors that have determined the success of North American cinema worldwide in a comparison with European cinema production. The topic for the 2025-2026 year is Hollywood Film Comedy (1920-1990). This course deals with, among others, the following thematic blocks: vaudeville comedy and film; slapstick comedy; screwball and romantic comedy; Hollywood comedians; New Hollywood comedy, Woody Allen.

Required readings include: 1) Institutional part: F. La Polla, Introduzione al cinema di Hollywood, Mondadori, Milano, 2006. Peter Decherney, Hollywood, Mulino, Bologna 2016. 2) Monographic course: Reference bibliography for preparing the paper will be available on the platform VIRTUALE from the beginning of the course.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course explores the role that visual imagery plays in contemporary society, by means of looking at the visual as a key communication as well as economic and cultural resource. The course offers both an overview of established critical theories of visual communication and more contemporary takes on visual analysis and visuality at large. To gain a critical understanding of the central role that visual communication plays in global and local contexts alike, the course relies on a wide range of examples and case studies from key communication industries including advertising, film, stock photography, branding, social media, and news media. As well as studying visual communication theories, methods for critical visual analysis and specific examples and cases, students develop their own original research on specific dimensions of visual communication.

In this course, anthropology is approached from a philosophical point of view and with philosophical methods. The course consists of three units. The following main topics are addressed: key concepts for the epistemology of anthropology, philosophical accounts of human nature from antiquity to modern age, and evolutionism and anthropology.

This course offers a study of neuroimaging. The course explores topics including basic methodological notions for the use of neuroimaging techniques as a tool to explore structure and function of the brain; structural techniques such as computational morphometry, diffusion (DTI) and tractography; and functional techniques such as functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), basics of magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and positron emission tomography (PET). The course requires adequate knowledge of brain anatomy and recommends knowledge of the basic concepts of inferential statistics as prerequisites.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. Students master a variety of North American literary productions in relation to their cultural, social, and technological realities. Students learn to appreciate literary productions as part of complex, trans-media, and inclusive contexts. Course topics vary each term. For the most up to date course topics, access the University of Bologna Online Course Catalog. The fall 2023 course topic is on “Counterecycling: Science Fiction and Cognitive Pollution.” Through an assessment of traditional North American Science Fiction stories (and media adaptations), this course investigates whether using (in fact reusing) this genre traditional literary language helps to truly understand new complex phenomena or whether, instead, it induces cognitive pollution, therefore inhibiting our ability to observe. Recycling is certainly a useful action for the environment, but recycling literary language is not necessarily useful for seeing the limits and potential of a situation, especially where ontological levels are confused through a shared semantic. Among the themes discussed are: inventing the future: literature and technology; the evolving semantics of Science Fiction; the evolving semantics of Technology; environmental explorations: from cyberspace to metaverse; and artificial or artful Intelligence.

The course focuses on the new product development process as a complex inter-functional management topic, which requires strategic initiative, aligned organizational solutions and appropriate supporting methodologies. Collaborative innovation is presented in order to discuss the potentialities of the involvement of external players in the innovation process, also thanks to the opportunities offered by internet-based technologies. Despite the increasing relevance of innovation strategies and new product development, few companies seem to have mastered their ability to identify, create, and exploit opportunities for innovation on a systematic basis. Crafting and delivering a new product is not an easy and intuitive process, but the result of a set of structured and organized practices. This course explores these practices and exploits the tools and techniques that can be used to this purpose. The New Product Development and Open Innovation course is organized in two main parts. The first provides a set of integrated frameworks and tools to effectively design and manage the strategies, processes, and techniques for innovation. It provides the conceptual tools to understand the nature and characteristics of different types of innovation, as well as practical insights on how to design and manage a new product development process. The second part of the course is focused on how digital environments can help companies to open their boundaries and pursue processes of open and collaborative innovation, involving several external partners in their new product development activities. Special attention is paid to the role of users in enhancing innovation and to ad-hoc mechanisms supporting their active involvement, among which user communities, virtual knowledge brokers, and Open Source Systems.

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 addresses recent topics in the field of Global Health. Specific topics critical assessment of recent health care reforms in LMICs; efforts to extend coverage of health care and improve universal coverage; issues in financing schemes of health care in LMIC; definition of healthcare policy priorities and the assessment of economic burden of disease in LMICs; the role of NGOs and multilateral institutions; key policy interventions on prevention, workforce planning, and capacity building. The course examines global health issues from the standpoint of health policy and systems. It aims to provide an overview of key global health policies and an introduction to the main challenges, issues, and solutions in global health. The course covers the following topics: global health trends and estimates of health indicators; global health policy landscape; health systems approaches to global health challenges; global governance and health; global health financing architecture; financing health systems and universal health coverage; and evidence for global health policies. The course includes lectures, case studies, group discussions and presentations.

This course examines the biological, psychological, and environmental bases of human pathological behavior and the main methods for psychiatric assessment. The course reviews psychiatric diseases in adulthood and adolescence, as described in recognized diagnostic systems, such as DSM and ICD. Course topics also include diagnostic methods; diagnostic instruments including neuroimaging techniques (TAC, RMN, SPET E PET), neuroendocrinology, neuropsychology, and neurophysiology; treatments, including drugs, psychotherapy, remediation techniques, prevention, and interventions; psychopharmacology; differential diagnosis; and neuropsychological and structural/functional neuroimaging correlates of psychiatric diseases. The course explores the etiopathogenesis, clinical and prognostic features, epidemiology, prevention, pathophysiology and neuropsychological, and neuroimaging correlates, biological, and psychotherapic treatments of the main psychiatric diseases: delirium and dementia, alcohol and substance abuse/dependence and correlated diseases, schizophrenia and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, dissociative disorders, somatoform disorders, suicidal behavior, and eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, personality disorders.