University of Bologna

The course focuses on the key grammatical points in intermediate Italian. Students refine their ability to talk about family, studies, and free time and to produce simple texts regarding familiar subjects and personal interests. Students refine their use of the past tense to express events that have already taken place and to use the future tense to describe dreams, hopes and ambitions. Students also refine their use of grammatical structures necessary for expressing opinions. Admission is by entrance exam only. Course is taught by University of Bologna instructors and includes laboratory exercises. Course is graded on P/NP basis.

Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course sheds light on the nature and problems in the relations among the main regional actors in Northeast Asia (including the United States), by examining the changes that have taken place, especially in the last decade. These countries’ economic systems and their characteristics are also carefully discussed. This course is an overview of international relations of the East Asian region, which aims at broadly exploring the economic and political issues surrounding the Asia-Pacific rim. At the end of the course students are able to examine topics related to historical and contemporary patterns of state relations in East Asia, US security alliances in East Asia and the new Asian Pivot, the rise of China, nuclear crise in the Korean Peninsula, territorial disputes, regional multilateral institutions, East Asian development models and economic integration, environmental challenges, energy security, and other related issues.

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 history of the body through the study of the practice of anatomy as it emerged as a scientific discipline through a few key authors and themes. These include medieval medicine and the early anatomical school at Bologna; the role of gender and generation in the development of medieval and renaissance dissection as a university practice; the criminal and the saintly body; the spectacle of dissection; anatomical illustration from Leonardo to Hunter; and malleable bodies: ceroplastic and the tridimensional representation of the human body. The course aims to refine student’s analytical skills and abilities to interpret both the primary and secondary literature to contextualize the history of scientific thought in relation to the history of philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, social and political history, and the institutional history of the time.

This course is part of the LM degree program. The course is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course aims at training students to apply gender studies’ key concepts and theoretical approaches to the analysis of a series of contemporary social challenges and transformations in the fields of culture, sexuality, work, technologies, and politics, amongst others. After completing the course, students can recognize gender as one of the basic principles organizing human society and culture, mobilize the gender studies’ concepts to produce critical knowledge, and apply a gender-sensitive perspective in imagining emancipatory strategies and policies. The course introduces students to the main analytical perspectives of gender studies by analyzing a series of key-concepts developed by literature in women's studies, men's studies, and queer studies. Lectures focus on key-concepts including gender order, intersectionality, heteronormativity, (positive) marginality, care, androcentrism, subjectivity, and performativity. These concepts are analyzed theoretically and, later, applied to the analysis of concrete social phenomena and contemporary social transformation. The course includes lectures, seminars, group readings/discussions, and movie screenings. Students who successfully complete the course, are better prepared to participate in and contribute effectively to the larger public conversation regarding the role of gender in society and are able to apply the critical tools of gender studies in their academic, personal, and work environment.

The course focuses on the methods of gender studies and applies them to the context of medieval historiography. For this purpose, the course highlights narrative sources, legislation, treatises, literature, and iconography. Students are required to write a short paper demonstrating the use of the tools of historical research and communication, and the ability to customize one's own learning path. This course covers the multiple aspects of female monasticism in the Early Middle Ages through the analysis of narrative sources, charters, and iconography. The course illustrates the problem of the representation of female monasticism during the Early and Central Middle Age period. The use of conceptual tools in gender history allows students to identify the shapes assumed in the specific historical contexts through the construction of the social identity of individuals, both male and female.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course is intended for students who have a strong background in media studies and communication. The course focuses on mass media products using the specific tools of semiotic analysis. The course offers an introduction to the notion of the semiotic gaze applied to the media and the role of this gaze as a cultural phenomenon. The course includes a description of the main elements of contemporary media textuality and the increasing, yet ambivalent, process of media convergence, integration and transformation of media contents and forms. Attention is placed on the semiotic mechanisms able to generate links and connections between media objects and environments (games and videogames, TV series, fandom), and to activate a semiotic crossover that expresses itself in narrative, discursive and interactive dimensions. The course concentrates on concrete examples of audiovisual media texts and practices that are analyzed with different semiotic tools and concepts (from the specific dimensions of media textuality to the notions of media genre and format). The ultimate aim is the development of a semiotic gaze on both media-specific elements (the construction of the visible, the audible, rhythms and the syncretism of languages), as well as the relation between media textuality and experience. A special section of the course is devoted to the ways in which contemporary media texts and genres construct gender identities and the intersectionality with elements of race, color, class, age, and disabilities. Required readings include: SEMIOTICA DEI MEDIA. LE FORME DELL'ESPERIENZA MEDIALE and LA CONDIZIONE POSTMEDIALE. MEDIA, LINGUAGGI E NARRAZIONI by R. Eugeni, I MEDIA: STRUMENTI DI ANALISI SEMIOTICA by P. Peverini, MULTI TV. L'ESPERIENZA TELEVISIVA NELL'ETÀ CONTEMPORANEA by M. Scaglioni and A. Sfardini. After the first introductory week, students are invited to prepare class presentations based either on theoretical/methodological questions (related to the required readings), or on the application of different semiotic tools to specific case-studies. Assessment in the course is based on an oral exam and a paper on one of the topics discussed in class (i.e. forms of textuality and media practices, format and genres relating to gender and intersectional identities).

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 and the department. Students are advised to talk to the Professor directly before applying for departmental approval. The course focuses on the urban transformation which took place in Europe in the nineteenth century and the new rapport between the city and the surrounding territory and their conservation. In particular, students are expected to: master theories and methods for reading and planning the historic city and cultural landscapes; interpret the preservation of the historic city as an asset for cultural and economic development; interpret the historic city and landscape as context and object of interest for cultural institutions. Topics covered: the historic city as an urban planning issue; methods of identification and assessment of cultural values to be protected and enhanced; reading and planning the historic city; key experiences in Italy ‘50s – ‘70s, the foundation of an urban planning practice; preserving the historic city, regulatory frameworks for urban conservation in UK, France, and Italy; the World Heritage Convention (1972) and the UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape approach (2011); planning policies and conservation interventions for the World Heritage cities; the role of cultural activities in historic cities.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course content is divided into three distinct parts. The first part of the course discusses the evolution of the discipline from Human Computer Interaction to User Experience Design, focusing on the human, the computer, and their interaction. The second part of the course is on usability analysis and design, topics include a systematic discussion of the techniques and standards for the management of the process of user experience design, with particular attention to the phases of usability analysis (with and without the participation of users), and the user- and goal-oriented usability design methodologies. The third part of the course examines the guidelines, patterns, and methods for usability design. During this section the course discusses, with historical aspects, the framework on which the concrete aspects of usability design is based, and strong attention is given to the problem of usability for web applications and mobile apps.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level student. Enrollment is by consent of instructor. This course provides an overview of the basic tools used by health economists for their empirical investigations, the linear regression model for the analysis of cross-sectional data, and under what conditions the estimated relationship has a causal interpretation. Drawing on critical discussion about some micro-economic applications, the student receives specific data to practice at the computer and learn the basic skills to perform empirical work using the software STATA. At the end of the course, the student is able to understand scientific articles using the linear regression model and is also able to perform their own analysis with this tool. The course discusses topics including an introduction to econometric methods, data, and STATA; simple and multiple regression models (advanced); and a variety of data issues.