Category Archives: Spring

Political Science        Chiara Fiorelli

Focusing its attention on the Italian political system, the course introduces students to the basic concepts of political science. Despite its (brief) history, Republican Italy (1946 +) represents a peculiar case study insofar as its political system has undergone several institutional changes.  The course aims to offer a reconstruction of the institutional structures and political actors who have played and still play a role in the Italian system. Political parties of the present and the past will be examined and discussed to show the organizational and historical transformations they have experienced. Active in-class participation on the part of students will be facilitated through readings and collective discussion led by the instructor.… Continue reading

Urban Studies/History of Architecture   Francesco Ceccarelli

Based on the study of selected Italian cities in the north-central region, the goal of this course is to provide the tools to identify the historical and urban factors that have shaped the region Emilia-Romagna and its urban centers, primarily Bologna. Thanks to its well-preserved ancient historical center, Bologna lends itself to being read as a case study for understanding the city’s spatial organization, its architecture and the palimpsestual layering of the buildings constituting its patrimony. The course will alternate between a series of classroom lectures dedicated to the comprehension of diverse evolutionary phases of construction, and site visits to different aspects of Bologna’s urban fabric.… Continue reading

Film Studies     Piero Di Domenico

Italian cinema has always been concerned with landscapes, including the films of directors as Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. These filmmakers, whose formative experiences took place while filming Emilia-Romagna, made its landscapes memorable in films like Visconti’s Ossessione (and its depiction of the ‘bassa ferrarese’) or the last episode of Rossellini’s Paisà (set in the delta of the Po river). This course centers on the filmed landscape that takes on the status of character (whether protagonist or antagonist) in a dozen films directed by filmmakers from Emilia-Romagna and which stretch from the post-WWII period to today.… Continue reading

Theater and Italian Society    Paolo Rota

Students will explore the offerings in theaters in Bologna and possibly in other cities. This course helps prepare students for the performances of specific plays that are on in Bologna in the Spring semester. The course unfolds in three discrete steps that correspond to its title: (1) study and discussion in the classroom of the dramatic text (if one exists, for the performance; if not, a text in relation to the subject of the performance); (2) field trips to the theater; and (3) evaluation of the performance through classroom discussion and writing assignments.

Not all theater performances are textual.… Continue reading