History

3 semester credits. This course focuses on mysteries and crimes committed in Florence, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The course retraces significant historical episodes that shed light over the ways crime and punishment has been framed and dealt with through a series of academic walks in Florence. Topics include the fight between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the persecution of the ill during the Black Death, the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici, magic rituals and with-hunting, the judicial system of the time, and the morbid stories about Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Donatello. A multi-disciplinary model is adopted to cross-analyze criminological, judicial, and social phenomena.

3 semester credits. The course explores some of the key criminal behaviors and the history of criminology in relation to episodes that occurred in Florence from the 18th century until today. Topics include the abolishment of death penalty in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the history of asylums for the criminally insane and the theories of Cesare Lombroso on physical anomalies, the massacres conducted during Fascism, the perpetuation of political homicides by terrorist groups, the investigations of the murders of the first Italian serial killer, Mafia attacks, the practice of murder-suicide, and hate crimes. A multi-disciplinary model is adopted to cross-analyze criminological, judicial, and social phenomena, with a focus on the ways criminology has evolved.

3 semester credits. This course presents the specific structural and phenomenological aspects of the various types of mafia operating in Italy and internationally. Topics analyze contemporary criminal, social, cultural, and political features of mafia-related groups and explore traditional and emerging illegal markets. The course describes main Italian and international law policies and legislations to contrast this type of organized crime and the experiences of leading individuals and groups developing a culture of legality to combat the mafia.

3 semester credits. This course examines the city of Florence with themed walks offering a comprehensive approach to the city as an open-air cultural, historical, and artistic research site from its Roman foundation to its contemporary Zeitgeist. Students will learn the history of the city through its art: they will understand how buildings, streets, squares, and monuments can be mapped as living traces of multiple, overlapping layers of a complex past, and how to encode them in their personal appropriation of the city. Starting from learning how to decode the artistic environment of the city and to unveil its traces – both visible and invisible – the course aims at understanding the main social and cultural reasons underlying the existing shape of the city. The course explores traces and evidences from Roman times through Middle Ages, Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque, up to Art Nouveau and contemporary Florence. Students will be provided with a consistent theoretical background related to relevant historic-artistic landmarks and their social and cultural context and main characters (Guelphs vs. Ghibellines, the Florentine Guilds, Dante, the Medici family, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, Ammannati, Pontormo, etc.). Students will be encouraged to develop their own experiential tools and strategies to approach the city through guided field learning activities that assess research, on-site involvement, and academic outcome for each themed walk in Florence. The classroom approach of this course is based on experiencing the city as the academic space for learning and engagement. Classes are not held in a traditional, frontal-style setting; each lesson is carefully mapped for curricular content and featured locations.

3 semester credits. This course discusses the origins and development of the Mafia in the context of Italian politics, economics, and society from the nineteenth century to the present day. It analyzes the nature of Mafia activities and their international relevance. Special focus will be given to judicial procedures against the Mafia and the experiences of key individuals and groups contrasting their illegal activities.

3 semester credits. This course explores the meaning of the term "Renaissance" when applied to the period of Italian history from circa 1350 to 1550. The subject will be approached from a variety of standpoints: social, political, economic, intellectual, scientific, and artistic. The focus will be on the concept of Italian Renaissance Humanism and on the relationship between art and society during this period. Lectures will be supplemented by a number of visits to key historical sites in Florence. Field activities and museum visits are an integral part of the course.

3 semester credits. This course traces the rich and varied history of the Medici family, whose name has become almost synonymous with the history of Renaissance Florence itself. Beginning with the rise of the Medici bank under the astute and mindful Cosimo the Elder in the early fifteenth century, and concluding with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici and the opulent luxuries of his princely palace in 1737, this course examines the Medici as bankers, statesmen, patrons of the arts, entrepreneurs and, ultimately, as absolute rulers of the state of Tuscany. The role of the family's female counterparts will also be examined, especially in relation to their dynastic marriages that linked the Medici to leading European political powers. Visits to key Medici historic sites (palaces and villas) are an essential component of the course.

3 semester credits. Beginning with an examination of the “how to” advice manuals common to Italian households during the Renaissance period, this course explores various aspects of sexuality in Renaissance Italy. These aspects range from the aforementioned self-help books aimed at instructing young couples in sexual pleasure, to conception and childbirth, and an examination of the differing social roles of the common prostitute (meretrice) and the high-class courtesan (cortigiana). The theme of male homosexuality will also be explored with special focus placed on the intellectual climate of Renaissance Florence where the prevailing interest in Neoplatonic philosophy may have played a part in creating a more lenient moral climate for homosexuals. Discussions will take cue from Renaissance art in which erotic subjects became increasingly popular in courtly circles in the sixteenth century.

3 semester credits. This course guides the student from the rise of society in ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and to the European Renaissance. This span of European history is examined from many viewpoints: intellectual, scientific, cultural economic political and social.

Cross-listed from Economics

Cross-listed from Fashion Communication and Publishing

Cross-listed from Italian Literature

Cross-listed from Italian Cultural Studies

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from Comparative Literature

Cross-listed from Comparative Literature

Cross-listed from Religious Studies

Cross-listed from Religious Studies

Cross-listed from Health Humanities

Cross-listed from Sociology