University of Bologna

The course discusses two main topics. The first topic is on Etruscans and the Italic peoples: Ancient Italy between Bronze Age and Iron Age. Topics include the transition from the protovillanovian to the villanovian period; transformations of the population, origin of the proto-urban centres and “formation” of the Etruscan ethnos; cultures, languages, and peoples of the pre-roman Italy; Etruscans and their relationships with the other italic peoples: commercial exchanges and cultural connections; and cultural and chronological periods. The second topic is on History and culture of the Etruscans Culture: The Villanovian period (IX-VIII c. BCE). Topics include from the hut to the house and from the village to the town; the early forms of social and political organization; the Orientalizing period (VIII-VII c. BCE): the rise and consolidation of the aristocracy; the culture of the princes; palaces and big funerary architecture; different expressions of the aristocratic ideology; the Archaic period (VI c. BCE): the end of the aristocracies and coming of the demos; big works of urban monumentalizing; cities and their harbors; relations with the oriental Greek Culture; the Classic period (V-IV c. BCE): the dominance of the inner Etruria and the crisis of the coastal Etruria; the artistic issue and the relationships with Greece; the Hellenistic period (IV-III c. BCE): the great “crisis” of the Fourth Century and the return of aristocracies; the relations with Macedonia and Magna Graecia and last great season of the Etruscan culture; and conflict with Rome and decline of the Etruscans.

The course has 2 parts A and B. Students must take both parts. No partial credit is possible. Students who complete a paper on a pre-approved topic are awarder1 extra quarter unit per part. Maxim units for this course are 12, 6 for each part. The course focuses on the history of photography from its origins to the present with particular attention to technical and aesthetic developments. Special attention is placed on the role of photography in 20th century art and the application of photography in cultural industries such as fashion, publicity, and media. A section of the course is dedicated to contemporary artistic research and its applications in the field of communication. Part A of the course focuses on photography and art and the topics include the relationship between photography and art, definition/s of artistry in the 20th century, the role of the author and the production of the work of art, the contribution of technology in contemporary art, and contaminations between visual arts and other disciplines. Part B of the course focuses on photography and reality and discusses topics including the role of photography in 19th and 20th century art, the relationship with reality, the role of technology, painting and “ready-made” art, and the work of art and behavior.

This course is an upper-division introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human language, and to what characterizes human language and makes it different from other animal communication systems and other human cognitive systems. The course introduces the different components that human language is made of and how linguists investigate them. In particular, it looks at sounds (and signs) and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to words (phonetics, phonology, and morphology); it looks at words and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to sentences (syntax); finally, it looks at how words and sentences can be used to convey meaning (semantics and pragmatics). While doing so, it emphasizes the innate cognitive aspects of human language but also touches on those aspects that are sensitive to culture and society and determine some of the variation and differences among human languages. Some of the question the course addresses include: what is a language and what does knowledge of a language consist of; are human languages fundamentally different from other systems of animal communication; are some languages better than others; what's a dialect and how does it compare to a language; how do children acquire language, does our knowledge of language derive entirely from experience, or do humans come “hardwired” with certain innate capacities for language; how do languages develop and change over time? For practical reasons, English is the primary source of data and examples for the course for practical reasons as the lingua franca. Still, data from other languages are presented throughout the course, with special attention to Italian, other languages (aka "dialects") spoken in Italy, and languages spoken by the students in the course.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program in cultural anthropology. The course is intended for advanced levels students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the ways in which women have historically criticized the theoretical justification of their subordination as articulated in Western political and social thought. By applying the fundamental tools of feminist and post-colonial theories, the course provides an historical analysis of political and social concepts – such as authority, freedom, rights, citizenship, society, and labor – as the expression of gendered relations of power. The course explores how, since the beginning of political modernity, feminist political discourses actively dispute the constitutive categories of modern politics and expose them as an expression of historically determined power relationships based on sexual difference. While the course focuses on a selection of fundamental texts chosen from the history of women's and feminist political thought, it questions the very conception of history from this epistemological perspective. The course presents and analyzes the critiques of social and political thought articulated by women and feminists through specific problematic issues including the distinction between the public and private domain and the construction of the modern legitimate political subject; the conception of society as an order, where “natural” hierarchies are substituted by functional power relationships; and the contemporary transformations of State and capitalism and the accomplished global dimension of social production and reproduction. The course explores topics including an introduction to feminist historiography and criticism and early modern feminists, feminism and the critique of modern society, feminism and the political difference, and Black and post-colonial feminism. The course consists of traditional lectures; class discussion is strongly encouraged regarding the readings as well as specific topics presented in class. Assessment is based on a final paper (3,000 words) on a pre-approved topic.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. The course is taught in Italian. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course has two separate modules on two different topics, PART A and PART B. Students who complete a research paper on a pre-approved topic are awarded 1 extra unit for the course. Maximum units for the course are 8, 4 for each part. The course focuses on diachronic aspects of the Italian literary tradition, the critical discussion regarding key issues about texts and authors, and the use of the principal tools of methodological analysis of texts and contexts. The topic for spring 2022 is on types of identity and women writings. Through a conceptual and thematic point of view, the course focuses on female identity in literature. PART A: The first module is dedicated to the writings of Elena Ferrante, Goliarda Sapienza, and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli. PART B: The second module is devoted to Sibilla Aleramo and Anna Banti. The course includes traditional lectures and seminars on specific texts as well as the use of audio and visual materials.

This intensive language course is conducted in Italian and is designed to provide students with basic knowledge of Italian. The course follows the language proficiency guidelines set up by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).  Students in this course generally have an entrance exam that places them between the A1.3 and the A2.1 levels. The course is intended for students who have familiarity with Spanish or French and who have a strong background in grammatical structures which allows them to proceed at a slightly faster pace compared to ITAL 10. At the end of the four-week intensive program, students are expected to be able to express themselves in a simple, fluid, and clear manner and to be able to describe events that have taken place in the past and express personal preferences. The course covers the present tense (regular and irregular verbs), the past tense (regular and irregular) and the use of the correct auxiliary verb and the concordance as well as the future tense. The course is designed to cover the first semester of Italian, roughly akin to Italian 1 and a portion of Italian 2 in the quarter system. All four abilities including speaking, listening, reading, and writing are emphasized with the support of authentic materials (videos) and real-life situations such as visits to local venues and cultural sites. The course follows a communicative approach to language acquisition and involves opportunities for role playing, group activities, games, class discussions, and exchanges with local University of Bologna students. Activities outside the classroom are organized in order to reinforce observation and communication skills that facilitate immersion in Italian culture. The course includes a major field trip. Students select the number of quarter units from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 6. The course is organized by inlingua with supervision from the Study Center. Course materials are provided by inlingua. The basic text for the course is: NUOVO CONTATTO A1 (Loescher, 2018)

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. At the end of the course the student has a sound knowledge of the financial products traded in the market, the differences among them, and the reasons why they were introduced in the market. The products range from standard bonds and stocks to derivatives and structured finance products. The student examines the main agents trading in the market, as fund raisers or investors, as well as financial intermediaries. The course starts by illustrating the role that financial markets play in the economy. Students are introduced to the key finance concepts of time value of money and no-arbitrage valuation. These concepts are applied to the valuation of two asset classes: fixed-income securities and financial derivatives.

The course focuses on the conceptual apparatus regarding linguistic studies based on authentic data. Emphasis is placed on the role of linguistic corpora for language analysis with the support of computational tools. The course highlights methodologies for developing language teaching materials in advanced learning environments. Course topics: what is a corpus, how to use it and the kind of information it provides; parameters for corpus design; representativeness; syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis; concordances, collocations, and lexical association indexes; annotations; electronic texts, coding, mark-up format, and conversion methods; how to collect electronic texts; corpus access and text retrieval; case study: the corpora CORIS/CODIS, BoLC e DiaCORIS; web as corpus; laboratory: querying a tagged corpus; procedures for reading concordances; introduction to machine learning; part-of-speech tagging–parsing and formal grammars; lexical semantics–wordnets; laboratory of computational linguistics.

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 health-related behavioral determinants and offers an overview of some recent policies aimed at improving population lifestyles. The course highlights the following topics: 1) the demand for health and health capital; 2) the behavioral determinants leading to unhealthy outcomes such as obesity and addiction; 3) the trade-offs between health and welfare objectives; and 4) policies aimed at modifying health-related behavior and lifestyles. The course combines theoretical analysis and class discussion of case-studies. The course combines theoretical analysis and discussion of case-studies.