University of Bologna

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course engages the role of language—both as a symbolic code and as a material tool—in the spreading of late/neoliberal capitalism. While most analyses of the world’s current order tend to focus on political and economic aspects, this course explores how certain ways of speaking and using language may partake in producing capitalist forms of reasoning and practical conduct. Throughout the course, students develop tools to analyze the discursive and semiotic forms that characterize our everyday lives. Students learn to view linguistic interactions and graphic artifacts (i.e., street signage, typefaces, letterforms, brands, logos, and other types of graphic media) as socially and politically meaningful semiotic technologies that shape our worlds. Students learn how to analyze new protocols of discourse that characterize our everyday lives: the customer satisfaction survey, the service encounter, the checklist, the logbook, the flowchart, the electoral mission statement, the training session, etc. Despite their apparent ordinariness, these discursive genres/textual artifacts are key for the production of the self-improving and self-reflexive subjects required by the regimes of moral accountability and the forms of market rationality that characterize our contemporary moment. While reading ethnographic analyses of specific technologies of discourse, students engage broader questions: How pervasive are neoliberal structures of practice? To what extent can neoliberalism be represented as an overarching and coherent global trend generated by the homogenizing forces of Western Capitalism? Is our moral and affective experience completely shaped by the extension of economic rationality to all areas of life? The course shows how, within a regime of advanced capitalism, life and labor unfold through complex interplays of semiotic codes, affective registers, and material objects.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students, Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course discusses the economic principles of financial transactions and financial contracts, particularly the main contingencies pertaining to specific types of financial transactions (purchases, loans, mortgages, etc.). The course reviews the risks associated to different contingencies, how to prioritize them, and how to apply economic techniques to correct risks. The course explores topics including economic theories of the firm; the firm as authority; the firm as a nexus of contracts; the firm and specific investment; law and finance; and international perspectives: Italy, Germany, UK, USA, and Japan.

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 first part of the course focuses on the history and development of non-European literature in French, with particular attention to the relationship between literary texts and the historical, artistic, and linguistic context. Special attention is placed on the different methodologies useful for the analysis and interpretation of literary texts. The second part of the course focuses on the issues of diversity and inclusion in French-speaking migrant literatures with particular attention to Quebec, Lebanese, and Senegalese literatures. Special attention is placed on literature written  by migrant authors and literature written by those born in exile. Voluntary or forced mobility generates a literature with a dual focus: towards the country of origin and towards the country of adoption. Migrant writings, in a French-speaking context, give rise to a third space in which identity is renegotiated through writing, a space for the elaboration of diversity in search of similarities. Principal texts by Marco Micone, Antonio D'Alfonso, Fulvio Caccia, Amin Maalouf, and Wajdi Mouawad.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale Program and is intended for advanced level students who have the appropriate background. Places for incoming exchange students are restricted and primarily reserved for students enrolled in art related programs at their home university. This course is designed to identify the broad issues that are shaping visual culture in the 21st Century. Students are introduced to foundational aspects of visual culture theory through a discussion on the social role of images in contemporary culture, with particular attention to the impact of prosumer technologies, the Internet, and emerging forms of artificial intelligence. The course takes into account pictures produced within a diversified set of increasingly interconnected fields, including contemporary art, mainstream media, social movements, speculative design, and visual communication. Most of the case studies discussed elicit the dichotomy between pictures that are the expression of power systems and pictures produced as counter-discourses. Students develop the methodological tools to analyze the visual experience and recognize the main characters of the communication through various media.

This course focuses on some central topics and arguments in the philosophy of mind and language in the tradition of analytic philosophy. The main aim is to engage in detail with arguments and texts that have played a central role in contemporary discussions. Topics include: the nature of linguistic and mental content; the nature of thought and its relation to linguistic understanding; what is reference and meaning and what are their relations to intentionality and concepts; the relation between our inferential and representational abilities and the nature of our rationality; the nature and our knowledge of our mental states; the relation between the physical and the mental domains. Students acquire an understanding of central topics in the philosophy of mind and language and they will be in a position to explain and to engage competently orally and in writing with these problems. More specifically they will be in a position to: master the central concepts in the theory of language and mind; understand the philosophical positions involved on the debates; understand the arguments in favor or against the relevant philosophical theses; have some appreciation of the significance of these issues for other areas of philosophy.

This course examines some central topics in the philosophies of language. We discuss core concepts such as that of truth, meaning, validity, inference. We then focus on the normative role of truth and validity in relation to reasoning. Although this course does not presuppose any specific competence in formal logic, some basic acquaintance in elementary formal logic may help.

This is a semester-long course organized by the UCEAP Bologna Study Center that offers students a chance to practice and improve oral communication skills in Italian. The course is open to all students. Small groups are organized to accommodate all linguistic levels - from beginners to advanced. The course is taught by experts in the field of language acquisition. P/NP grading only.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its strategic implications in terms of: sustainability of business models; the need for innovative managerial paradigms based on stakeholder engagement and cooperation; measurement of the economic, social, and environmental impact of business activities; life cycle assessment; strategic planning of the United Nations 2030 agenda; and communication and reporting methods. The course focuses on the application of these topics to companies, public administrations, and non-profit organizations. The course is divided into two portions, closely linked and integrated: the institutional portion examines the theoretical and methodological bases of CSR, with specific references to the international framework, documents produced by the OECD, and the relationship with social innovation. The course introduces students to the most up-to-date methodologies in the design and development of corporate CSR and accountability systems. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between CSR management systems, communication, and a company's external relations. The monographic portion of the course focuses on the relationships between corporate CSR, environmental sustainability, and consumer demand for ethical and environmentally friendly products and services. It also highlights new service experiences related to corporate welfare and emerging concepts of local social responsibility. Case studies are presented in relation to companies with significant and innovative experiences of CSR, capable of determining managerial evolutions and organizational improvements in a company's managerial structures and in its relationship with the market. A specific section of the course is dedicated to the relationship between CSR, social and environmental sustainability, and circular economy. The final portion of the course is dedicated to designing corporate and local CSR systems capable of producing effective changes in the external perception and communication of businesses. The aim of projects and experiments is to closely and effectively link social and environmental sustainability in businesses. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program in Economics. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course is intended for students who have a strong background in economics. The course focuses on corporate and investment banking activity, with particular attention on venture capital and private equity financing. Topics covered include: investment banking, private equity, venture capital buyouts, structured finance, the venture capital cycle (fund-raising, screening and valuation, deal structuring, monitoring, divestment), financial tools needed to evaluate investments, and financing decisions in high-growth potential firms. Required Reading includes: OPTIONS, FUTURES, AND OTHER DERIVATIVES by J. Hull. Assessment in based on a written in class final exam. Students are offered the option of solving a case study and delivering the solution to the instructor as an additional optional assignment. Students are required to solve the case study as a group.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course examines how in different historical moments ranging from the 16th century to the end of the 20th century some of the most renowned Italian thinkers have figured out the people and the multiple facets this notion has assumed in modern politics. In doing so, this course also explores some important specificities of modern Italian history, society, and culture. After a short methodological and theoretical introduction that provides some basic elements and concepts to frame the overall issue, the course is structured in four parts. The first part of the course focuses on Niccolò Machiavelli’s ideas on popular republic and civil principality, and Giovanni Botero's theories on the reason of state intended as a tool for achieving a firm domination over peoples through a careful government of the population. The second part of the course discusses the way in which 19th century writers such as Giacomo Leopardi and especially Alessandro Manzoni represented the Italian people and envisioned the role of literature in the development of a modern and national consciousness in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The third part of the course discusses Antonio Gramsci's analysis of the shortcomings of the Italian process of national unification and its efforts to reckon with the emergence of modern mass societies and develop new strategies aimed at the involvement of the subaltern classes in political life. The final part of the course examines the critical positions of contemporary thinkers such as Mario Tronti and Giorgio Agamben, who have both challenged the image of the people intended as a unitary and homogeneous political subject in one case from a heterodox Marxist viewpoint, in the other from a biopolitical perspective.