Women’s & Gender Studies

In this course, students learn from a theoretic and empirical point of view, how economists study gender and ethnicity in the economy. This includes considerations of the education system, the labor market, and the role of the state. The course uses applications of microeconomic theory and modern empirical methods to establish the facts about the effects of gender and ethnicity differences in the economy and to evaluate policies designed to address these effects. This course uses a flipped learning method. 

Islamic feminism is a field of study that has been marginalized in both contemporary Islamic and feminist discourses. This course counters this marginalization by exploring the diverse theoretical frameworks and methodologies used in Islamic feminist scholarship. It takes an intersectional perspective to examine the different strategies that Islamic feminists have developed to challenge multiple constellations of power, such as sexism, patriarchy, and (feminist) neo-Orientalism. The course aims for the decolonization of knowledge on Islam, gender, and feminism. This is achieved by the inclusion of life experiences and knowledge production from different regions in and outside the "Muslim World."

This course exposes students to public and scientific debates pertaining to colonial past, and the gender studies, research methods, and writing of contemporary history. It explores these concepts through several lenses over three parts of the course: historical approaches to the colonial past, the use of gender studies, and the new history of colonial wars. Each theme includes an introduction to the field of research, discussions and presentations based on readings, and scientific articles and archives.

Employing recent theories from gender and postcolonial studies, as well as media studies, this course analyses a wide range of case studies from contemporary visual culture, across a broad scope of genres and technologies. The course requires participants to critically think about concepts such as visuality, visual culture, representation, and technology. A novel approach to art, culture, and technology by challenging the primacy of vision and by mobilizing an intersectional perspective is provided. Visual methodologies and analytic tools from the fields of semiotics and psychoanalysis to be able to critically assess how social and cultural norms are disseminated in visual ways are learned. The course provides a toolkit for thinking through the growing and often overwhelming array of images we are confronted with daily in our media-saturated culture.

This general sociology course systematically integrates gender studies to revisit the important questions of this discipline. The course examines themes of family, school, work, politics, health, and sexuality through the lens of gender while integrating a certain number of fundamental theories. It discusses gender sociology texts based on concepts examined during the lectures, considers the relationship between public policies and contemporary debates, and develops axes on which to read the social world through the prism of gender: paying attention to gender inequalities in their different constructions and how gender is integrated into different categories of thought.

This course considers the following questions: to what extent do processes such as the transnationalization of production, world trade, or migration processes impact gender inequalities? What are the emancipatory effects of these processes? In order to be able to answer these questions, the seminar first discusses the theoretical foundations for a gender analysis in globalization research. Different theoretical approaches of gender research –from liberal, Marxist, social constructivist to postcolonial and intersectional approaches –are presented and critically reflected. Along the theoretical discussion, the various approaches to gender as an analysis category are worked out, discussed with regard to their methodological consequences, and tested on the basis of selected topics. Finally, various feminist strategies and approaches to the gender-equitable organization of globalization are presented and examined with regard to their gender implications.

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. The course focuses on women's popular culture with specific reference to travel literature and critical utopias, within a gender perspective. This course explores the multi-layered meanings that utopia as a literary genre and utopianism as a form of thought acquire for women’s access to writing and to the public and contemporary debates. Starting from the analysis of some emblematic texts written by male authors, for example UTOPIA (1516) by Thomas More and NEW ATLANTIS (1628) by Francis Bacon, the course investigates the way in which this hybrid genre initiates a dialogue with classical utopianism and the great tradition as well as intertwining it with other contemporary emergent literary genres (travel writing, romance, novel, closet drama, theater and scientific treatises). The course then explores female forms of utopia from the 17th century to the 20th century and examines the ways in which female writers read the utopian paradigm and interpret it as a possible space for female agency and empowerment. The course also questions how women used the utopian paradigm to discuss the obstacles and possibilities in women’s private and public life and to propose social and political changes.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course is graded on a P/NP basis. The course introduces students to the Italian literary culture of the 16th and 20th century. It provides a wide historical background on the issue, together with the basic tools for reading, analyzing, and contextualizing Italian works of the Renaissance, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Course topics vary each term. For the most up to date version of the course topics, access the University of Bologna Online Course Catalog. The fall 2023 lectures are organized in four modules, and focus on a diverse range of literary topics. Module one focuses on women, female characters, and gender between Renaissance and post-unification Italy. Module two focuses on Women’s Education in Early Modern Italy: Theory and Actuality. Module three is on Women and society in the Italian peninsula (c. XIX). Module four introduces topic Of Ladies, of Passions and of Wars: Representation of Women in the Italian Resistance.

Gender, as an institution and a social structure, influences the way we define ourselves, behave and speak and further determines our place within the family, at school, in workplaces, and in the broader society. We will use this course to explore how gender shapes our identities, opportunities, and everyday life. The course includes seven themes: (1) conceptual tool kits; (2) gender, space, and place; (3) gendering work; (4) gender and family; (5) transgender; (6) intersectionality; (7) gender in the global context. Theme One ‘Conceptual Tool Kits’ introduces main theories and key literature on gender. Theme Two discusses the relationship between gender and space by reading literature on feminist geography. Theme Three focuses on gender in labor markets, organizations, and everyday workplaces. Theme Four ‘Gender and Family,’ looks at gender relations between couples and family members. The course then briefly explores the multi-faceted connections between gender, sex, sexuality, and other social characteristics, such as class and race, in Themes Five and Six. Theme Seven looks at the differences and similarities in gender relations in various cultural and social contexts in the globalized world.  

The course provides students with a map of contemporary feminist approaches to issues of gender, ethnicity, and religious practices in a European context. Each session deals with a different set of interpretations, theories, topics, and case studies analyzed from social, political, historical, and cultural perspectives. Feminist theory and intersectional theory are used to unpack the entanglement of the operations of race, gender, class, religion, and sexuality in contemporary societies. These approaches are in critical dialogue with each other, as well as with several other overlapping scholarly fields such as postcolonial theory and cultural studies. Special attention is given to the debates about multiculturalism, Islam, and migration.