European Studies

In this course, students compare and analyze European politics, mapping changes and identifying constants. Instead of taking a country-by-country approach, students address key themes that shape politics in general and Europe in particular. Students explore key comparative questions about governance across Europe, including institutions of politics and how society and politics interacts.

This course examines the relationship between ideas and social changes in modern Europe. It also explores the impact of modern European thoughts on contemporary culture in a cross-cultural perspective.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to modern British history, focusing on the continuously improvisational nature of the UK state, the interconnectedness of the UK and the British Empire, and its rise and decline through war. A secondary objective is to introduce students to major historiographical debates about modern British history.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course, students have the methodological and theoretical tools of 'Atlantic History,' which redefines the spatial limits of modern politics, considering Europe, Africa, and the Americas as part of one and the same global experience. This perspective, well-developed in North American universities, is extended to the history of political concepts, with a special attention to antagonistic political cultures and resistance movements, but also to the colonial dimension embedded in the great classics of modern and contemporary political thought. The course deals with the history of modern political thought, with a special focus on the development of fundamental concepts such as sovereignty, state, rights, property and war, in a global perspective, which assumes the opening of the new Atlantic political space and the problems involved in European expansion overseas as a crucial background for understanding the emergence of new discursive strategies and new political categories in the early modern age.

After an initial lecture designed to provide a general overview of the methodology, the subsequent weeks of classes are divided into three distinct but interconnected units. The first unit deals with the theoretical and methodological tools of conceptual history and its redefinition from a global and oceanic perspective. It is argued that the history of concepts has provided an essential framework for understanding and criticizing the foundations of modern politics, but the Eurocentric coordinates underlying the traditional versions of this approach must be radically revised in order to grasp the genealogy of our global present. The second unit addresses the emergence of the Atlantic space and its distinctive phenomena and actors as a decisive factor of historical transformation that radically displaced the traditional coordinates of politics. On this basis, the development of a new political framework and the modern theory of state sovereignty is understood as a response to this crucial challenge. This is illustrated through a close reading and discussion of relevant passages from classical thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Thomas Paine. The third unit offers a spatial reading of the work of the legal scholar Hugo Grotius in the light of the perspective outlined in the first two units. Grotius – who has been traditionally considered one of the founding fathers of modern international law and modern maritime law, but who was also a crucial figure in the context of the creation of the Dutch "seaborne" empire in the East and West Indies – constitutes a compelling case study because his legal and political theory can be situated in a transitional moment between the medieval and humanist tradition on the one hand and the emergence of a modern outlook on the other, while reflecting the entanglements between states and colonies, land and sea, the territorialized order of sovereignty, and the fluid power of commercial empires and trading companies. An analysis of his work can therefore allow us both to grasp the complex origins and characteristics of modern political space and to elucidate the global genealogy of European modernity.

This is the first of a pair courses that build towards an overarching understanding of cultures of the French-speaking world in their historical and geographical diversity. It focuses on a range of primary materials in French that are diverse in various senses, notably: chronologically, in genre/medium, and in terms of the origins and identities of the authors/filmmakers. Students are expected to read and study these works intensively in order to participate fully in seminar discussion, and to get the most from lectures offering a framework of historical contexts and critical approaches. The course eases the transition from school to university through a focused introduction to materials and skills of critical analysis, in writing and more widely, that forms the basis of more advanced study in subsequent years. It is designed for students who have not reached the equivalent of A-level standard in French, with French-language materials studied in translation.

This course studies Western European history, especially focusing on political, cultural and social aspects of French history from medieval to modern times. 

This course introduces the comparative study of European politics, a comparative analysis of political institutions, and political behavior in Europe. On successful completion of this course, students are able to: Analyze politics in a comparative manner; Describe the differences between the political systems in operation across Europe; Identify the role played by political parties in parliamentary democracies; Assess the necessity of political parties and the functions they fulfil; Evaluate the merits of different electoral systems; Differentiate between the workings of different political systems; Assess whether politics can be analyzed via comparative methods; Evaluate the role of non-party actors in parliamentary democracies.

This course explores Italian cinema and the evolution of Italy’s film industry through the critical analysis of key genre categories and filmmaking modes (neorealism, auteur cinema, comedy, spaghetti western, the thriller, political film, migration cinema). These genre categories are represented by a series of films that span from the post-war period to today. Students are introduced to the critical concepts that underpin film analysis, while also developing a strong understanding of genre theory. Through close readings of individual films the course explores how genre categories and conventions can be used to discuss issues of social change and progress throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, it examines questions of national identity, gender representation and the reception of popular genres.

In addition to knowledge of the subjects explored by cultural history and political ideas over the past 25 years, this course introduces the reading and understanding of texts that have shaped European political culture. It also discusses the structures that shape mass culture.