Institutional course: to know, to understand and to be able to anlyze concepts, theories and methods of Sociology, also in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective; Specialized course: to acquire the tools in order to be able to analyze contemporary society, and to becone aware of the social and cultural dynamics charachterizing it, with a particular focus on the scientific and religious spheres and their social impact.  

Please note that this is a mixed course: the institutional course is taught in Italian, while the specialized course is taught in English. The institutional course will analyze the main theoretic approaches in Sociology and the methods of sociological inquiry. The specialized course will explore the relationships between religion and science in contemporary Western societies. In particular, the following themes will be analyzed: the historical roots of the fracture between religion and science: Galileo; the continuing of the fracture: Darwinism and the theory of evolution; religion, science and moral implications; Robert Merton and the birth of the Sociology of science; how science and technology changed contemporary societies; new issues in bioethics; religion, science and politics today; religion and science in Bauman’s “liquid society”; a space for dialogue and reconciliation?

With regard to General Sociology, students must show: that they know the contents of the discipine at a specialized lever, that they understand its advanced concepts and that they know how to use its patterns of knowledge and concepts, in order to reason in an authonomous manner on the problems inherent to the discipline itself.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Seminar in English taught by prof. Rowena Coles: "Religion and the Shaping of British Identity". 

Course books

1. Ruth A. Wallace & Alison Wolf, La teoria sociologica contemporanea, a cura di Massimo Baldini, il Mulino, Bologna 2008 (pp. 279) (original version: Contemporary Sociological Theory. Continuing the Classical Tradition, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (NJ) 1991).

2. Thomas Dixon, Scienza e religione, a cura di Fjodor Ardizzola, Codice, Torino 2009 (pp. 115) (original versione: Thomas Dixon, Science and Religion. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008).

3. Robert K. Merton, Scienza, religione e politica, a cura di Massimiano Bucchi, il Mulino, Bologna 2011 (pp. 351) (Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1979).

Assessment

Oral exam. For the esam, international students are free to choose their preferred language: Italian, English or French

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.