Cultural Heritage Regulation, Protection, and Valorization in Italy
Lecturer: Prof. Antonello De Oto
Duration: 4 hours
Category: Type E seminar (in-person, blended, or online)
Date and time: Friday, March 20 and Friday, March 27, 2026, 16:00–18:00
Aula: Colonne (via Barberia 4)
Credits awarded:
Description:
The seminar provides an introductory overview of the regulation and management of cultural heritage in Italy, in light of the most recent legislative changes, including constitutional reforms.
During the first two hours, the functions of the MIC (Ministry of Culture) and of the Superintendencies will be presented, offering participants knowledge and practical tools for the protection and valorization of cultural heritage in Italy and Europe.
The second part will focus on functions related to university dynamics and research projects, with in-depth insights into competencies, procedures, and public offices involved.
Independent study hours: 2
Introduction to Competitive Research Calls
Lecturer: Matteo Paoletti
Duration: 4 hours
Category: choose between E (in-person, blended, or online seminar) or D (seminar with a significant amount of independent study)
Date and time: February 2th and 3th, 12:00–2:00 pm
Room: Aula colonna
Credits awarded:
Description:
This seminar provides an introductory overview of competitive research calls, highlighting common elements among European, national, and local funding programs.
Starting with an analysis of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie calls, it examines the structure of project proposals, the main critical issues encountered during application drafting, and the evaluation process.
Between 11:00 and 13:00, PhD students will be asked to prepare a one-page proposal, which will be reviewed between 13:00 and 15:00.
Independent study hours: 2
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Lecturer: Pasquale Cascarano
Duration: 16 hours
Category: B – Courses for transversal skills
Date and time: March–April 2026
Classroom: Leydi
Credits awarded: 1 CD
Description:
The PhD course “Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies for the Creative Industries” aims to explore and enhance the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR) as tools for innovation in research, production, and communication within the creative industries and the humanities. The training program provides participants with theoretical knowledge and practical skills to understand and integrate these technologies into research projects, fostering a critical and informed perspective on their use. Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and guided experimental activities, the course introduces the fundamental principles of AI and its creative applications, delving into tools for data analysis and generation as well as for the design of immersive and interactive experiences. The goal is to offer students and researchers an interdisciplinary environment in which to develop and apply immersive technologies, artificial intelligence, and scientific communication practices in the field of creative industries, promoting new forms of research, cultural production, and digital dissemination. No advanced IT knowledge is required.
Monday, 24 November 2025, 11:00, Salone Marescotti
The Meaning of Criticism in the Age of the Society of the Spectacle
Nicola Perullo (University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo)
Thursday, 27 November 2025, 17:00, Aula Colonne
Framing Animation Studies: A Minimal Overview and the Case of Science Communication
Marco Bellano (University of Padua)
Thursday, 22 January 2026, 17:00, Aula Donatoni
Film Censorship in the Italian Republic: The Digital Archive
Chiara Boatti and Francesca Tesi (University of Bologna)
Thursday, 29 January 2026, 17:00, Aula Camino
Film Censorship in the Italian Republic: Case Studies
Chiara Boatti and Francesca Tesi (University of Bologna)
Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 February 2026, 17:00, Aula Camino
The Multiverse of Storytelling. Film, Fashion & Transmedia Communication. Part One and Part Two
Suncana Tuksar (University of Pula, Croatia)
Wednesday, 11 February 2026, 17:00, Salone Marescotti
Why Study the Classics? Reasons for a History of the Televised Novel (Rai, 1957–1975)
Elena Dagrada (University of Bologna)
Monday, 16 February 2026, 16:00, Room to be defined
Final Workshop of PRIN PNRR 2022 CELEBR-AGE
Roy Menarini (University of Bologna) and the research team
Wednesday, 18 February 2026, 17:00, Salone Marescotti
The Comic Compromise: Politics and Comedy in 1970s Rai
Matteo Marinello (University of Bologna)
Wednesday, 4 March 2026, 17:00, Salone Marescotti
Narrative Ecosystems. Analytical Frameworks and Quantitative Methods. Part One
Guglielmo Pescatore and Allegra Sonego (University of Bologna)
Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 17:00, Salone Marescotti
Narrative Ecosystems. Analytical Frameworks and Quantitative Methods. Part Two
Lorenzo Cattani and Guglielmo Pescatore (University of Bologna)
Studying Music: Historical-Analytical and Ethnographic Research Methodologies
Contact person: Anna Scalfaro (Music)
The Opera Libretto Between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Philology and Textual Criticism
Lecturer: Nicola Badolato
Duration: 6 hours
Category: choose among E
Date and time: January 19 and 26, 2025, 11:00–14:00
Aula: Camino
Description:
The seminar aims to provide practical guidelines for studying opera librettos from a philological and textual-critical perspective, through the analysis of several modern editions and transcription exercises from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources.
Independent study hours: 2
Methodologies of Ethnomusicological Research
Lecturer: Nico Staiti
Duration: 6 hours
Category: choose among E
Date and time: March 23, 11:00–17:00
Aula: Donatoni
Description:
The seminar explores the specificities of ethnomusicological research, focusing on historical sources (figurative and literary), oral traditions, techniques of fieldwork and audiovisual documentation.
It will also consider new research perspectives emerging from the circulation of self-produced materials on social media.
Independent study hours: 2
The Sacred in the Digital Realm: Rituals and Music of Morocco on Online Platforms
Lecturer: Silvia Bruni
Duration: 6 hours
Category: choose among E
Date and time: March 25, 11:00–17:00
Aula: Camino
Description:
The seminar includes an introductory part and collective analytical sessions of audiovisual materials. After an overview of Moroccan ritual and musical practices, emblematic cases of their transposition into digital spaces will be discussed, focusing on modes of online representation and on audience reception.
Independent study hours: 2
Teaching Musical Composition and Creative Sound Processes: Methodological Research
Lecturer: Carla Cuomo
Duration: 9 hours
Category: choose among E
Date and time: May 7, 14, and 21, 2026, 15:00–18:00
Aula: Colonne
Description:
The seminar aims to familiarize PhD students with methodological and didactic research at the Department of the Arts, particularly within the chair of Pedagogy and Music Didactics.
It will focus on the study and development of musical composition and creative sound processes, as practiced in formal educational contexts—universities, schools, and conservatories.
Independent study hours: 3
Analytical Tools for Experimental Music on Online Platforms
Lecturer: Anna Scalfaro
Duration: 6 hours
Category: choose among E
Date and time: June 8, 11:00–18:00
Aula: Donatoni
Description:
The seminar focuses on how certain contemporary compositional practices have evolved through the creative and original use of social media logics.
Selected case studies will illustrate how features such as brevity, playfulness, and participation are particularly suited to the audiovisual format of social networks.
Independent study hours: 2
Forms, Languages, Realities
Contact person: Anna Maria Lorusso (no specific area)
November 7, 15:00
Semiotics and Identity
Workshop coordinated by Anna Maria Lorusso
Theme: “Memory, Oblivion, and New Technologies”
Date: December 2025
January 2026
Cycle of Three Lectures in Italian
Lecturer: Stefano Marino
Title: Art and Truth in the Twentieth Century
Description:
This cycle of lectures will focus on twentieth-century philosophy in its various strands (phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, pragmatism, etc.) and will explore how the relationship between art and truth—particularly within twentieth-century art itself—has been addressed from different theoretical and methodological perspectives by key figures in these traditions.
March 2026
Cycle of Three Lectures in English
Lecturer: Prof. Samir Gandesha (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; Visiting Professor at DAR in 2025, by invitation of Anna Maria Lorusso)
Title: Art, Dialectics, Critical Theory
Description:
This cycle will focus on aesthetic and critical theory, with special attention to Theodor W. Adorno’s thought. Professor Gandesha, a renowned international scholar of Adorno, will explore how dialectical reasoning and critical theory intersect with the analysis of modern and contemporary art.
Late March / April 2026
Seminar by Dr. Mario Panico
Title: Re-imagining Conflicts, Anticipating the Future: Images, Artificial Intelligence, and Memory Cultures
Description:
The seminar explores the use of AI-generated images in various contexts related to contemporary conflicts. Drawing on examples from the war in Ukraine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it will address two main questions:
How do these images activate specific emotional rhetorics, iconographic models, and mnemonic references?
This part will focus on the concept of the “archive of the present” and how AI-generated images draw upon pre-existing visual repertoires to appear culturally credible, thereby redefining what can be perceived as memorable.
How is the future “prescribed”?
The second part will analyze how temporality is rearticulated through the representation of future scenarios, oscillating between coping strategies, prediction, and plausibility
Forms, Languages, Realities
Contact person: Anna Maria Lorusso (no specific area)
November 7, 15:00
Semiotics and Identity
Workshop coordinated by Anna Maria Lorusso
Theme: “Memory, Oblivion, and New Technologies”
Date: December 2025
January 2026
Cycle of Three Lectures in Italian
Lecturer: Stefano Marino
Title: Art and Truth in the Twentieth Century
Description:
This cycle of lectures will focus on twentieth-century philosophy in its various strands (phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, pragmatism, etc.) and will explore how the relationship between art and truth—particularly within twentieth-century art itself—has been addressed from different theoretical and methodological perspectives by key figures in these traditions.
March 2026
Cycle of Three Lectures in English
Lecturer: Prof. Samir Gandesha (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; Visiting Professor at DAR in 2025, by invitation of Anna Maria Lorusso)
Title: Art, Dialectics, Critical Theory
Description:
This cycle will focus on aesthetic and critical theory, with special attention to Theodor W. Adorno’s thought. Professor Gandesha, a renowned international scholar of Adorno, will explore how dialectical reasoning and critical theory intersect with the analysis of modern and contemporary art.
Late March / April 2026
Seminar by Dr. Mario Panico
Title: Re-imagining Conflicts, Anticipating the Future: Images, Artificial Intelligence, and Memory Cultures
Description:
The seminar explores the use of AI-generated images in various contexts related to contemporary conflicts. Drawing on examples from the war in Ukraine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it will address two main questions:
How do these images activate specific emotional rhetorics, iconographic models, and mnemonic references?
This part will focus on the concept of the “archive of the present” and how AI-generated images draw upon pre-existing visual repertoires to appear culturally credible, thereby redefining what can be perceived as memorable.
How is the future “prescribed”?
The second part will analyze how temporality is rearticulated through the representation of future scenarios, oscillating between coping strategies, prediction, and plausibility.
Seminar in Contemporary History
Lecturer: Stefano Cavazza
Category: E
Schedule:
First or second Friday of the month, 15:00–19:00, from January to September (excluding August).
The full calendar will be published in January.
First lecture: Comparison and Historical Methodology – January 16, 15:00–19:00
Aula:
January and March → Aula Camino
February and from April to September → Aula Colonne
Credits awarded: 1.5
Description:
This activity, totaling 30 in-class hours, will be conducted in Italian and English and taught by Italian and international lecturers.
The seminar is structured as a lecture followed by a discussion. For each session, specific readings will be assigned for preparation and in-depth study.
The topics covered will address the main methodologies of both national and international historiography, as well as research themes in political, social, and cultural history.
The chronological scope extends from the French Revolution to the present day.
Each lecture will focus on the analysis of individual case studies or historical issues, interweaving national perspectives with comparative or transnational approaches.
Independent study hours: 15
Theatre, Dance, Performance: Developments and Perspectives
Contact person: Elena Randi (Theatre)
Hamlet and the Musical Theatre
Lecturer: William A. Everett (University of Missouri–Kansas City)
Date and time: October 20 and 22, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Aula A, Azzo Gardino 23
The Actress and the Philosopher: Naïveté and Repetition
Lecturer: Franco Perrelli
Date and time: November 14, 9:00–11:00
Aula: Camino, via Barberia 4
Description:
The Danish actress Johanne Luise Heiberg, one of the most prominent performers of the nineteenth century, was the subject of a celebrated essay by Søren Kierkegaard.
Starting from her mature interpretation of Shakespeare’s Juliet, Kierkegaard explores the notion of stage time and elaborates his philosophical concept of “repetition.”
Typically, this text is read as an instance where philosophy illuminates acting practice; however, it can also be interpreted inversely, as an example of how nineteenth-century acting conventions influenced philosophical reflection.
The lecture aims to trace the connections between theatre history and philosophical speculation.
The Commedia dell’Arte in Nordic and Modern Theatre: From Ludvig Holberg to Dario Fo
Lecturer: Bent Holm
Date and time: November 17–18, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Camino, Palazzo Marescotti, via Barberia 4
Description:
In 1722, a professional theatre in the Nordic language was founded in Copenhagen, whose “father” was playwright Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), deeply inspired by the Italian Commedia dell’Arte.
After World War II, Italy witnessed a scholarly and artistic rediscovery of Commedia dell’Arte, in which Dario Fo (1926–2016) played a crucial role.
The lecture examines Holberg’s and Fo’s innovative art within a critical and historical context.
How to Become Famous Overnight
Lecturer: Emanuele Aldrovandi
Date and time: November 21, 17:00–19:00
Aula: Ferrero, via Barberia 4
Description:
A dialogue between playwriting and directing: a philosophical reflection on the value of theatrical experience and its ability to question the present.
The Critical Edition of Petipa–Drigo’s Arlequinade: Issues and Research Perspectives
Lecturer: Stefania Onesti
Date and time: November 24, 17:00–19:00
Aula: Colonne, via Barberia 4
Description:
Using the example of the choreographic score of Arlequinade by Marius Petipa and Riccardo Drigo (Sergeev Collection – Harvard Library), this lecture revisits key methodological issues encountered when reconstructing a ballet both on paper and in performance.
Presentation of Cinema Cielo
Conversation on the performance “Dear Spectators”
With Danio Manfredini
Thursday, 27 November
from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
ROOM A, Ground Floor, Molino Tamburi Teaching Complex, Via Azzo Gardino 23
Description:
A conversation on the cornerstones of Manfredini’s artistic career—his research, stage poetry, and the memory of contemporary theatre.
Theatre History Textbooks on the Twentieth Century
Lecturer: Gerardo Guccini
Date and time: December 1, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Camino, Palazzo Marescotti, via Barberia 4
Description:
The lecture compares historiographical methods and the logic of theatrical historiography manuals, analyzing their convergences and divergences, and exploring how methodological rigor and dissemination interact in both Italian and Anglo-Saxon scholarship.
The Reception of Noh Theatre in Italy
Lecturer: Diego Pellecchia (Kyoto Sangyo University)
Date and time: December 2, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Aula delle Colonne, via Barberia 4
Coordinator: Matteo Casari
Description:
This lecture examines how the traditional Japanese Noh theatre has been received and reinterpreted in Italy—through translations, publications, stage adaptations, and artistic contaminations.
By analyzing available sources, the session will highlight the critical aspects and specificities of this reception, its evolution over time, and how Noh has become a privileged space for intercultural reflection that intertwines aesthetic practices, historical dynamics, and cultural mediation processes.
The Impact of the Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution on the Choreography of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s
Lecturer: Lester Tomé
Date and time: December 3 and 10, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Camino
Description:
Professor Tomé will give a lecture on the history of the ballet Giselle in Cuba from the nineteenth century to the present day, highlighting the importance of this work as a cornerstone in shaping the artistic legacy of Cuban dancers and in establishing their authority within the style of Romantic ballet. This lecture expands on the chapter devoted to Giselle in Cuba included in a recently published volume on the international history of this repertoire landmark, edited by Elena Randi. In the second part of the event, Tomé will engage in a conversation with Randi and Cervellati on the transmission and evolution of ballet repertoire, as well as on issues concerning the writing of ballet history from different international perspectives.
Dance Historiography: Issues and Perspectives
Lecturer: Alessandro Pontremoli
Date and time: December 5, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Camino, via Barberia 4
Description:
Dance studies have challenged historiographical assumptions rooted in nineteenth-century positivism, introducing key methodological concepts that open research to other disciplinary fields—such as aesthetics, anthropology, and sociology.
This lecture will address Renaissance dance historiography through this interdisciplinary lens.
The Paradoxical Subject: The Actor According to Diderot
Lecturer: Valentina Sperotto
Date and time: December 11, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Camino, via Barberia 4
Description:
A discussion on Denis Diderot’s The Paradox of Acting, the essay that questions the relationship between emotion and technique, reality and fiction, offering a still-relevant reflection on the art of acting.
The Curtain Is Our Flag: Craig, Lees, and Guilbert Between the Great War and Fascism
Lecturer: Gabriele Sofia (Università di Roma Tre)
Date and time: January 20, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Aula delle Colonne, via Barberia 4
Participants: Monica Cristini (Università di Verona), Samantha Marenzi (Università di Roma Tre)
Coordinator: Matteo Casari
Description:
Edward Gordon Craig was one of the most influential theatre theorists of the twentieth century and a keen observer of his era’s political and cultural context.
This lecture examines his correspondence and unpublished writings, focusing on the years from the outbreak of World War I to the rise of totalitarian regimes.
Through his letters to collaborators such as Dorothy Nevile Lees and Yvette Guilbert, and to his actors at the front, we access an “intimate” layer of theatre history that reveals motivations, circumstances, and power relations behind artistic choices.
It thus becomes possible to see how theatre artists inhabited an era of deep divisions and oppositions, using the stage as a space of anomaly and the curtain as their banner.
The Time of the Story
Lecturer: Giordano Ghirelli
Date and time: February 17, 15:00–17:00
Aula: Camino, via Barberia 4
Description:
A reflection on how writing and orality intertwine in playwriting, redefining the boundaries between lived and imagined time, between narration and action.
Between Immediacy and Hypermediality: The Remediation of Theatre in Italian Cinema
Lecturer: Laura Cesaro
Date and time: April 22, 11:00–13:00
Aula: DamsLab, Piazzetta Pasolini
Description:
The relationship between theatre and cinema has been a fertile ground for contamination and reinterpretation since the birth of film.
The concept of “remediation” provides a theoretical framework to investigate these dynamics, showing how cinema not only transposes theatrical languages but re-elaborates them through processes of intersemiotic translation and re-semantization.
The Self-Historicization of Twentieth-Century Theatre Masters
Lecturer: Gerardo Guccini
Date and time: May 6, 11:00–13:00
Aula: Salone Marescotti, Palazzo Marescotti, via Barberia 4
Description:
In the twentieth century, theatre ceased to be solely a differentiated space of creative processes aimed at performance, becoming itself the object of new creative and reflective processes.
The great theatre masters of the century contributed to this reform of thought and practice through both their artistic work and their theoretical or autobiographical writings, embodying the transformations of their era.
Speaking Straight to Our Future: The Cultural and Historical Roots of a World Imagined as Better
Lecturer: Daniela Piana
Date and time: May 9, 17:00–19:00
Aula: Camino, via Barberia 4
Description:
Do we have a grammar for speaking the language of the future?
At first glance, the question may seem rhetorical, yet it captures the essence of research: constructing knowledge capable of confronting the future.
In an age of data abundance, what is missing are interpretive functions—the ability to generate meaning from within structures and anchor it to lived experience.
The seminar provides PhD students with a framework for bringing different disciplines into dialogue, beginning with their epistemological foundations.
Knowledge and Valorization of the Visual Arts: Theories, Methods, Practices, and Projects
Contact person: Sandra Costa (Arti)
Art, Sound, Environment. Toward a New Ecology of Listening
Lecturers: Pasquale Fameli, Monica Sassatelli
Duration: 8 hours
Category: E (in-person seminar)
Date and time: November 20, 2025, 15:00–20:00; November 21, 2025, 10:00–13:00
Aula: Teatro del DAMSLab, Piazzetta P. P. Pasolini, 5/b – Bologna
Credits awarded: 0.4 CD
Description:
Conference organized within the framework of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project Art Sound Environment. Towards a New Ecology of Landscape, addressing topics related to the relationship between art, landscape, and listening practices.
AVEC #8
Lecturer: Francesco Spampinato
Duration: One-day workshop, 10:00–18:00
Category: E (in-person, blended, or online seminar)
Date and time: December 16, 2025
Aula: Teatro DAMSLab
Description:
AVEC – Arts, Visuality and Electronic Culture is an interdisciplinary Graduate Student Workshop born as an extension of the Visual Studies course taught by Francesco Spampinato as part of the Second Cycle Degree Programme in Visual Arts, Curriculum AMaC – Arts, Museology and Curatorship at the Department of the Arts (DAR), University of Bologna.
AVEC’s goal is to engage researchers, curators, artists, philosophers, and collectives in work-in-progress dialogues on the intersections between contemporary art, visual studies, and electronic culture.
Active since 2022, AVEC takes place once per semester at the Complesso di Santa Cristina and its Metaverse on Spatial, providing an opportunity to reflect on our complex post-pandemic condition and the ongoing blurring of boundaries between the real and the virtual.
The Wednesdays of Santa Cristina
Lecturers: Fabio Massaccesi and Francesco Spampinato (organizers)
Duration: Series of 10–15 conferences, each lasting two hours, 17:00–19:00
Category: E (in-person, blended, or online seminar)
Date and time: February–May 2026, weekly
Aula: Aula Magna, Complesso di Santa Cristina
Description:
With the aim of promoting a stimulating and open exchange, the Visual Arts section of the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna opens its doors to the city through a cycle of conferences and book presentations dedicated to topics in art history across its diverse manifestations and methodologies.
The initiative seeks to highlight the vitality and richness of perspectives that characterize contemporary research and teaching in art-historical disciplines.
Sacred Spaces and Objects in Contemporary Society
Lecturer: Sandra Costa
Duration: 13 hours over two days
Category: E (in-person, blended, or online seminar)
Date and time: September 25–26, 2026
Aula: Auditorium DAMSLab
Credits awarded: 0.5 CD
Description:
The workshop examines the processes of musealization of collections related to the sacred and the critical questions they raise in terms of interpretation and accessibility.
It addresses both the material and immaterial dimensions of these testimonies, recognizing them as key elements in shaping a shared cultural identity.
Through a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, the workshop aims to highlight the complexity of cultural heritage valorization processes—whether located in secular museums or spread throughout the territory—and to foster dialogue among scholars, professionals, and civil society, in accordance with essential principles of inclusion, accessibility, and sustainability.
Lecturer: Pasquale Cascarano
Duration: 24 hours
Category: D – Seminars with a significant amount of independent study
Date and time: March–April–May 2026
Classroom: Leydi
Credits awarded: 3 CD
Description:
The course “Introduction to Unity for Human–Computer Interaction” introduces students to the use of Unity as a platform for creating interactive and immersive experiences, providing both a theoretical and practical overview of the fundamental principles of digital design and the application of such tools within Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) contexts.
During the lectures, projects and concepts developed in the field of interactive technologies are presented, case studies are analyzed, and state-of-the-art works are showcased to offer a thorough understanding of the latest research and practices in the sector.
At the same time, students acquire the operational basics of Unity, exploring its interface, main components, and the logic behind developing three-dimensional environments and digital interactions.
The course aims to combine critical reflection with technical experimentation, encouraging creative design and the application of innovative methodologies in the creation of interactive experiences.
By the end of the course, each student will be required to develop a final project in Unity, putting into practice the theoretical and practical skills acquired throughout the program. Advanced computing skills are required.
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