University of Bologna

By the end of the course, the student: has an in-depth knowledge of the films, the directors, and the main trends of the history of documentary cinema; has an in-depth knowledge of the creative features of documentaries, as well as of their production and distribution process; and is able to identify and analyze the linguistic and expressive characteristics of documentary cinema. The course investigates the history of documentary cinema from its origins to nowadays, taking into consideration the key moments of its historical development. The course considers the international panorama with some focuses on specific areas where, in given historical moments, new movements, styles, and approaches in making documentaries emerged. The course pays particular attention to the following topics: the origins of cinema; the two fathers of documentaries (Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov); the British social documentaries; documentaries and propaganda; the relationship between Italian Neorealism and documentary films; Cine Vérité in France and the Direct Cinema in the United States; activist documentaries; mockumentary; interactive documentary; contemporary Italian documentaries. During the course, a constant comparison between fiction films and documentary films is considered in order to achieve a better understanding of their own specific features and a well-designed definition of documentary cinema. The historical and text analysis are integrated by the investigation of documentary production and circulation. In the final part of the course, a special lecture is devoted to documentary financing in Italy. Mandatory filmography: Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922); Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929); Comizi d'amore/Love Meetings (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964); The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999); Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2003).

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 offers students a multidimensional perspective on the dynamic links between human societies and the environment, using insights from environmental, resource, and ecological economics. The course particularly focuses on the design, implementation, and implications of economic policies aimed at improving environmental sustainability, without affecting human prosperity. Several types of policies are analyzed and discussed, including fiscal policies (taxes and subsidies), pollution permit markets, public spending policies, behavioral interventions, and financial policies. The mitigation and adaptation to climate change is the main applied focus. At the end of the course, students have a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing environmental policy debate. The course covers the following topics: Basics of environmental economics; The rationale for environmental policy-making; Market-based policies vs command-and-control regulation; Carbon pricing: carbon taxes and emission trading schemes; International environmental agreements; Paris Agreement; Sustainable finance policy-making; Behavioral change; strategic interactions; social norms.

At the end of the course, the student acquires the ability to understand the main classical and contemporary sociological theories and to critically reflect on the fundamental social and cultural mechanisms, identities, and processes. The student acquires the conceptual tools necessary to consider contemporary phenomena of cultural production and consumption. The course focuses on the main concepts to understand classical and contemporary sociological theories and to reflect critically on the socio-historical genesis of contemporary societies and on social mechanisms and social structure with particular reference to the globalized Western world. In particular, the course provides the analytical tools to thematize the genesis of contemporary society from a sociological perspective with particular attention to the classics of the subject and their reflections on modernity and the forms of capitalism; social roles and institutions; social differences and inequalities. Also relevant to this part of the course is a theoretical reflection on sociological styles exemplified by some foundational studies of the subject. The course then considers social interaction more closely in the framework of the debate between structure and action and focuses on the construction of identity and social differences, with particular attention to gender identities. Finally, some of the most important social issues in contemporary societies are considered, with particular attention to the sphere of culture, cultural production, and consumption.

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 requires a background knowledge of cell biology and animal physiology from Bachelor of Science courses of Biology. The course content includes:

• Temperature: biochemical and physiological effects on animals; regulation of thermal biology; molecular basis of thermal adaptation.
• Ocean Acidification: biochemical and physiological effects of pH variations on animals; molecular basis of pH adaptation
• Drought and salinity: animal water balance and osmoregulation; adaptation in terrestrial and aquatic environments; molecular basis of osmotic adaptation.
• Physiological and molecular limits of adaptation; climate change adverse effects on animal and human health.
• Biological effects of emerging pollutants

At the end of the course, students demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the physiological mechanisms (at the molecular, cellular and systemic levels) through which animals - including humans - can adapt to changes in temperature, pH, osmolarity, water scarcity, etc. in the surrounding environment. On the other hand, students know the limits of adaptation, thus being able to evaluate the risks related to climate changes. Students have the ability to integrate knowledge and formulate hypothesis, and clearly communicate their achievements.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. During the course, students learn how to critically engage with the historiographical debates that characterize the fields of Indian Ocean Studies and African History. They reflect on the historical and cultural connections between the African continent and the Indian Ocean World and what this meant for the societies involved. Students gain an understanding of processes of South-South relations within the Global South and learn how to adopt a longue-durée perspective in the study of history. Thanks to the reading of archival sources, historical novels, and scholarly works, students are able to conceptualize the movement and circulation of people, goods, and ideas beyond landlocked nation-states and land-based histories, without necessarily starting from Europe. At the end of the course, students reach an understanding of the history of Africa and its relations to Indian Ocean cultures, economies, and societies, and are able to engage with a non-Eurocentric approach to historical processes of globalization. The course is separated into three parts: The spatial and chronological boundaries of the Indian Ocean; East Africa and the Indian Ocean; and the circulation of people and commodities in the Indian Ocean world.

At the end of the course, the student has acquired knowledge of the romance languages and literatures of the Middle Ages and their formation, with particular regard to French and Occitan. The student acquires the skills for adopting the instruments of textual criticism, in order to be aware of the transformations of texts and languages through the centuries. The course content is divided into 3 parts:

I. Linguistics: From Latin to the Romance languages (phonetics, morphosyntax, lexicon); The Romance languages across space and time; Characteristics of Gallo-Romance, with particular reference to Old French and Old Occitan.

II. Textual Criticism: The concept of textual tradition; The manuscript; Elements of textual editing.

III. Literary History: Origins of Romance literatures; Comparative history of the literatures of langue d’oc and langue d’oïl: genres and texts (hagiography, epic, lyric, romance, tale, allegorical-didactic literature); Elements of metrics.

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 provides students with the most up-to-date methods of analysis of the literary text. In particular, it focuses on the reception of authors and works that have gained success through international circulation and on the cultural impact of the images and models of “Italianness” that they promote. Italian literary and audio-visual products circulate in various markets, spreading – at national and international levels – images and models (stereotypes and/or counter-stereotypes) of “Italianness”. Such images of Italy are tightly connected to the processes through which cultural products reiterate certain privileged aspects of Italian life: politics, crime, religious institutions, landscapes, cultural heritage, food, lifestyle, fashion, the entertainment industry, etc. The student possesses in-depth knowledge of Italian women's literature and is able to apply practical methodologies for the analysis and the interpretation of the literary text. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Students acquire knowledge of medieval art history and develop the skills necessary to familiarize themselves with the artistic production of the period. In particular, they analyze how medieval art is perceived and how it is valued in contemporary culture and in museum and exhibition systems. By the end of the course, students are able to analyze historically the main works of medieval art history and are able to implement specific choices for the knowledge and dissemination of medieval heritage. The first part of the course focuses on the study of artistic phenomena and their development in the medieval age (XII-XV century) and their revival in the contemporary age. The second part focuses on the study of heritage and museum and archive studies and digital heritage, media, and communication. This course addresses state-of-the-art initiatives, as well as challenges and strategic issues, in developing a digital medieval heritage ecosystem within the broader context of an emerging digital culture. Case studies are drawn from Italy and showcase the breadth of innovative ideas in delivering, communicating, interpreting, and transforming cultural heritage content and experiences through multi-modal, multimedia interfaces. Aiming to offer a balanced overview of digital heritage and culture issues and technologies.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. In this course, students acquire the capacity to use an entangled history methodological perspective using primary sources and literature on cross-cultural exchanges, mobilities of people and goods, and social interactions between different parts of the world but also within the same geographical space in the 18th and 19th century. Students develop a critical ability to analyze interconnected phenomena concerning cultural and religious aspects, trade, forms of labor coercion and enslavement. At the end of the course, students demonstrate a sound theoretical framework within which specific research interests could be developed.

The course explains the concept of Entangled history and its different uses in research on the Early Modern and Modern period. The main focus of this course is the social, economic and cultural exchanges between actors and goods in a global perspective. The interconnections between different societies or people is analyzed going beyond the concepts of nation, empire, and civilizations to understand better the complexity of the past and its multiple voices. The course is structured in five modules: 1) What is Entangled History? Comparison with other historiographical methodological approaches 2) Social interactions between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean worlds; Race and Ethnicity 3) Global circulation of enslaved people 4) Entangled Empires: Merchants, Sailors, Workers 5) Cultural connections: Travelers, Interpreters, Missionaries. 

By the end of the course, students develop advanced expertise in formulating and implementing statistical approaches to practical problems in a wide variety of subject areas. Students learn to integrate material covered in various lecture courses with skills developed through practical work in order to solve real-world problems. Students learn to: formulate questions of interest and identify relevant informal and formal statistical methodology for a wide variety of practical contexts; implement the various stages of advanced statistical analysis appropriately in R; interpret the output of R procedures; critically collate results and conclusions; present the main results and conclusions in the form of concise summaries; present results of analyses in the form of written reports; critically assess published applications of statistical analysis; and work independently on practical data analysis problems. The course uses a number of case studies covering different areas such as missing values, modelling, regression and related methods, data visualization, and analysis of ordinal and categorical data.