Political Science

The course is intended covers issues from a number of different perspectives, specifically considering cultural, political, legal, but also economical aspects, including those relevant outside a Western context. It provides an overview of the legal situation in a national, European, and international setting. Participants gain an understanding of the various forms of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, etc.) and expanding or antagonistic concepts including the creative commons, open access, open source, and piracy. 

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director of Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. Graded P/NP only.

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.

This course introduces the sociology of the state in the Middle East and North Africa region in a historical and comparative perspective. It explores the dynamics that have framed the establishment of state bureaucracies from the former Ottoman, Persian, and Mughal empires, as well as their transformations throughout the political changes of the 20th century, to shed light on the working of contemporary states in the Middle East and North Africa region. While providing an institutional history of the region, the course introduces theoretical resources to study the state and actors that compose it and addresses how modes and patterns of political change (colonization, independences, revolutions) shape the design, staffing, and, ultimately, functioning of states.

Since the mid-18th century, medicine has become a major economic and political concern for those who have governed London, and a profession with extraordinarily far-reaching authority in the management and even definition of human life. The very landscape of London has been framed as a source of sickness, temptation, and pollution.  This course explores the health landscapes of London in both Victorian and contemporary times. This course compares the landscapes of disease and (im)morality of Victorian London with contemporary London, accompanied by an examination of how the intervening world wars and establishment of the welfare state shaped the social and physical landscape of the city in relation to health. This course also includes out of the classroom activites allowing students to explore the history of health, disease, and medicine in four very different London landscapes.

This course examines the major issues of global urban planning and governance of Chinese global cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing with reference to New York, London, and Tokyo. It looks at the structure and institutions of urban government; efficiency/democracy/distribution/developmental goals; types of public policy; urban self-governance and its limits; inter-governmental conflict/competition/cooperation; privatization/partnership/governance grid; theories of pluralism/elitism; metropolitan government school/public choice theory/neo-regionalism/zonal restructuring; economic growth; industrial development; infrastructure; spatial planning; growth machines; urban limits; urban mechanisms; neo-Marxism; the historical institutional school; regulation; developmental state; citizenship and civic participation; neighborhoods and communities; urban social movements; social capital; gender and migration; and political parties and interest groups.