Political Science

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 specificities that characterize contemporary Italian history and in particular of the social, political, economic transformations, in addition to those related to the mentality and customs, of Italy in the twentieth century. The course examines the methodological competences necessary for reaching an adequate level of critical and interpretative awareness in the field of contemporary Italian history.

This course provides an overview of the key theoretical perspectives and empirical research examining the relationship between citizens and their representatives in Japan. The course evaluates how and if the interests of various social groups and popular preferences on major issues, such as economic inequality and foreign policy, have been reflected in electoral competition and decision-making. This seminar further delves into the current challenges affecting the quality of democratic processes in Japan, such as corruption, citizens’ disaffection with politics, as well as gender and generation gaps in representation.

This course examines the history and sociology of political violence as well as offers an overview of the most important recent ideas and debates on the subject. The course objective is to develop advanced knowledge and understanding of various forms and aspects of political violence and to provide students with the tools to disaggregate and analyze phenomena such as (civil) wars, revolts, terrorism, and revolutions. Using a variety of case studies, the overarching goal of this course is threefold: to explore and study what collective political violence is; to explore and study if and how collective political violence changes over time; to explore and study the sources of collective political violence.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program in History and Oriental Studies. The course is intended for advanced levels students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on neoliberal political economy and its social impacts on local contexts. Emphasis is placed on a critical approach to the aid industry as a key issue for understanding global governance processes. Students create a research project and bibliography autonomously on a topic related to the course. Since the end of the cold war and the triumph of a neoliberal order, Africa has faced a huge number of conflicts and devastating social effects. Starting with the analysis of selected ethnographic cases (Congo, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leon, etc.), the first part of the course explores the etiology of contemporary African wars focusing on the link between local violence and global economic and political processes. Special attention is placed on the relationship between youth and war and the social imaginary. The course explores topics including neoliberalism and inequality, the African State, globalization in Africa, African conflicts, war economy, young people and children in Africa, witchcraft in contemporary Africa, and development enterprise. The course includes traditional lectures and group discussions. The instructor focuses on the general topics in order to introduce the various scholarly debates. Specific examples are discussed in order to give a concrete idea of the different topics. Students are encouraged to work autonomously, comment, and ask questions. The course includes visual resources (i.e. documentaries, maps and photos).

This course engages the points of contention around the theorization and conceptualization of war as these arise from the debates and conversations between differing perspectives and schools of thought in IR, political studies, and the social sciences, including a specific emphasis on critical approaches. The course questions whether war has fundamentally changed in late modernity, or if it reveals a transhistorical continuity in its core nature, or, if people can identify a common logic in its aims, motivations, methods, practices and effects. Secondly, the course explores the transformative impact and effects of war. In this, it frames war as disruptive of certainties, highlighting the way it regularly undermines expectations, strategies and theories, and along with them, the credibility of those in public life and the academy presumed to speak with authority about it.