Political Science

This course examines political institutions and their impact through institutional analysis and modern institutional theory. Students learn about particular institutions, and they create a framework for analysis that allows for comparative analyses. The empirical examples are drawn from across the world, and the assignments allow students to work on a problem they are interest in.

The course focuses on the development of the American mass media and how different media, mainly television, convey knowledge about politics and social issues in the USA. The course illuminates media developments from a historical perspective and takes up the question of how various media, primarily television, convey knowledge about politics and social issues in today's US.

This course focuses on an active and passive knowledge of the German language. It prepares students to be able to read, take notes, follow a discussion in German, and address the political and media language in German-speaking countries. The focus is on terminology used in twentieth-century German politics and institutions. The course focuses on examining and exercising the main syntax and grammatical structures needed to reach the B1 level of knowledge of the German language according to the European Reference Framework for Languages. All class materials are primary sources in the field of political science written in German. Enrollment in the course is reserved for students who have at least an A1+ level in German, but preferably an A2 level. Main text for the course is: TEDESCO PER FILOSOFI by G. Scotto. The course includes lectures, in-class exercises, and graded homework assignments. Assessment is based on a written and oral examination. Students must pass the written exam to be admitted to the oral exam.

This course provides a critical analysis of social problems and conflicts deriving from the characteristic processes of social restructuring and change in post-industrial societies and examines the major social problems that affect contemporary societies in a globalized world. It looks at the conceptualization and representation of social problems, including theoretical and methodological perspectives and the dynamics of the emergence, formation, and representation of problems. The course also uses case studies to look at social cohesion and exclusion, globalization and the new post-industrial economy; challenges for governance; environment and sustainability.

This course analyzes the legal and political issues raised by the development and functioning of intergovernmental organizations in the globalized world. Since the end of twentieth century, however, the term “globalization” has been an all-purpose catchword not only in public opinion but also in scholarly debate. Today, it is impossible to understand world affairs without grasping the contemporary phenomenon of globalization. But, what is globalization? What are its main issues? This course conceptualizes globalization and its diverse dimensions such as political, economic, cultural, ideological, and environmental. Parallel with the discussion of these dimensions, different organizations including the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are examined.

This course suggests re-visiting the criticisms often applied to the United Nations (naive idealism, paralysis, bureaucratization, power politics, etc.) not through the lenses of International Relations (IR) theories but from the perceptions of writers and movie directors. Through their professional activity and art, they have shared their representations of the United Nations. This course carefully considers these representations and to what extent they accurately reflect what actually happens within the United Nations and its field of action. Also discussed are how these representations are spread and received and how these works articulate fiction with politics. While priority is given to the analysis of a corpus of selected documents (books and movies), attention is also paid to some theoretical works (in political science, sociology, and history) in order to understand the way in which particular media may influence our own representations of international institutions. Thus, this course aims at bridging the gap between popular representations and academic knowledge, not in a confrontational way but through a better understanding of their respective production mechanisms and goals. This course is open to any student who has an interest for international politics, international organizations, and media studies in general.

This course explores the history of secularization in France and its influence on the French Constitution and politics. The following events in French History are discussed in the course: the impact of the religious wars in the sixteenth century; the role of the Catholic church in the Ancien Regime; the development of the idea of secularism in the Enlightenment; the installation of a model of modern secularism under the Republic (nineteenth and twentieth centuries); the existence of a culture of anti-clericalism; the scholarly debate; the new situation imposed by the progression of Islam since the 1970s and the idea of a crisis of secularism today.

The lecture deals with different traditional strands of the concept of resistance. It covers the epistemological, the psychoanalytic, the aesthetic concept of resistance and not least the history of the right of resistance, with theories of revolution as well as with concepts of civil disobedience. The course considers in which situations resistance becomes political.