85157 - Geography of the Historic Towns and Landscapes

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Ravenna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in History, preservation and enhancement of artistic and archaeological heritage and landscape (cod. 9218)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at making theoretical and methodological tools of geography available to students. Such tools are essential to identify and properly enhance towns and landscapes as cultural heritage. Indeed, the territorialized character of such resources needs an approach harmonizing their historic, spatial, and technological features.

At the end of the course, student has basic knowledge and critical skills, put into historical perspective, about the main geographical models of representation concerning the relationship among environment, landscape, and urban civilization.

Course contents

WARNING:

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS NEEDING A CUSTOMIZED SYLLABUS ARE EXPECTED TO CONTACT THE PROFESSOR AT LEAST ONE MONTH BEFORE THE EXAM.

 

Landscapes and historic towns as cultural heritage

Italy, as a country representative of world's historic and cultural heritage with a tourism-oriented huge amount of its GDP, owes its reputation to a paradox. The long tradition of the voyage in Italy (begun with the Grand Tour in 17th century) conveyed an image of Italian landscape and city that comes from vedutism and picturesque. What is at stake is the naturalization of an alien image that came to be accepted and shared as a part of «national» cultural heritage. The course aims at showing how such image took shape, stressing the need to take its role into account in development policies that focus, in Europe as well as in developing countries, on investments in historic and cultural heritage. Moreover, in order to give students as much transdisciplinary an approach as possible to the issues presented, specific attention will be paid to the issue of the sustainability of Italian urban systems, characterized by a complex relationship between historical cores and peripheries.

TOPICS

Common goods and public space. Landscape, urban public space, and formation of the «past that is not lived». Landscape as «nature's image», city as «civilization's image». Space, power, community. Places, identity, sensoria, and individuation. Naturalization of the «past that is not lived» and shared memories. Built environment, landscape, and cultural heritage as symbolic asset and economic investment in development policies. A model of territory's production and sustainable planning.

Readings/Bibliography

  1. M. Neve, Courseware at AMS Campus' teaching materials online repository;
  2. G. Zucconi, La città dell'Ottocento, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2007; F. Miszlivetz (ed.), Creative Cities and Sustainability, Szombathely, Savaria University Press, 2015; M. Romano, La piazza europea, Venice, Marsilio, 2015;
  3. the following essays all downloadable from AMS Campus' teaching materials online repository: M. Neve, The 'comune sentire': Italian Historic Centres as Cultural Heritage, in S. Conti (ed.), Italian Reflections: The Identity of a Country in the Representation of its Territory, Milan: Touring editore, 2004, pp. 137-145; M. Neve, Il paesaggio fuori e dentro i musei. La scultura del paesaggio, in Musei e paesaggio. Da tema di ricerca a prospettiva d'impegno, ed. by Eloisa Gennaro, Ravenna, Provincia di Ravenna, 2010 (Atti del 16. convegno "Scuola e museo", Ravenna 13-14 ottobre 2009);M. Neve, Da una rispettosa distanza, in D. Mazza e A. Penso (cur.), Paesaggi in movimento. Itinerari di formazione in Europa, Bologna, 2015, pp. 8-30; M. Neve, Would Urban Cultural Heritage Be Smart?, «REVISTA DE COMUNICACAO E LINGUAGENS», 2018, 48, pp. 163 - 190.

Non attending students must read the following additional book: U. Morelli, Mente e paesaggio. Una teoria della vivibilità, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2011.

WARNING: THE COURSEWARE IS NOT MEANT AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR EXAM TEXTS, BUT ONLY AS A SUPPORT FOR SYNTHESIS AND REFERENCE. THE STUDY OF THE COURSEWARE ONLY IS INSUFFICIENT TO TAKE THE EXAM.

Teaching methods

Course will be taught through a mixture of formal lectures, discussion classes and web-based discussion. Its aim will be to facilitate interaction between the lecturer and students and to stimulate debate among students.

Class attendance is critical to take advantage of a way of learning not feasible through homework, and it turns out to be crucial in order for the student to adequately satisfy exam requirements.

Assessment methods

The exam consists of an oral examination on the entire syllabus. The aim of the interview is to assess the methodological and critical skills acquired by the student. Given the importance of class attendance for an appropriate training process it will be two grading scales and two separate programs: for attending and non-attending students.


Attending students

Attendance and participation count for 15% of the final grade.

In particular, it will be assessed the ability of the student to participate actively in class, also using multimedia and collaborative tools provided within the course; such capacity, if combined with the achievement of a coherent framework of the topics developed during the lessons , the application of critical sense and suitable means of expression will be considered and evaluated with the maximum grading = A (27-30 con lode).

Attendance, if joint to a predominantly mnemonic acquisition of course's contents and discontinuous language and logical skills will be assessed in a grading range from good (B = 24-26) to satisfactory (C = 21-23).

Attendance, with a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with training gaps or inadequate language and logical skills, it will get as grade ‘barely passing' (D = 18-20).

The absence of a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with inadequate language and logical skills and training gaps, it will produce a fail (E) grading, even in spite of an assiduous attendance.

Non-attending students

Non-attending students will be assessed primarily on the ability to use literature and multimedia tools made available, in order to properly expose the contents of the course. This ability, when combined with the achievement of a coherent framework of the course's themes, the application of critical sense, and suitable means of expression will be considered and evaluated with the maximum grading = A (27-30 con lode).

A predominantly mnemonic acquisition of course's contents along with discontinuous language and logical skills will be assessed in a grading range from good (B = 24-26) to satisfactory (C = 21-23).

A minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with training gaps or inadequate language and logical skills, it will get as grade ‘barely passing' (D = 18-20).

The absence of a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with inadequate language and logical skills and training gaps, it will produce a fail (E) grading.

AS OF JANUARY 2016, THE LIMIT TO THE NUMBER OF ENTRIES FOR EVERY EXAM'S LIST HAS BEEN REMOVED, SO, ONCE THE LISTS ARE OPEN (15 DAYS BEFORE THE EXAM) YOU MAY REGISTER WITH NO LIMITS.


OF COURSE, IF THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS ENROLLED EXCEEDS 20, EXAM WILL LAST MORE DAYS.


THE NUMBER OF EXAMINATIONS FOR EACH ACADEMIC YEAR IS 6, ACCORDING TO THE MINIMUM NUMBER REQUIRED BY THE TEACHING REGULATION OF THE SCHOOL, TWO FOR EACH PRE-EXAM BREAK.


EXAMINATIONS' DATES WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH SEMESTER.

THEY ARE NOT ACCEPTED, FOR ANY REASON, REQUESTS FOR EXAMINATIONS IN DIFFERENT YEAR'S PERIODS.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE NEW EXAMS' SCHEDULE, REARRANGED TO MEETING THE STUDENTS' REQUESTS, THE ORDER OF REGISTRATION TO THE LIST OF EACH EXAM'S DAY WILL NOT BE CHANGED. WHOEVER HAD SPECIFIC REASONS TO TAKE THE EXAM IN A GIVEN DAY (AND CONSIDERING THAT THE EXAMS WILL BE HELD ON MORE DAYS) IS ALLOWED TO CONTACT HIS/HER COLLEAGUES AND ASK FOR SHIFTING THE LIST, PROVIDED THAT THE NUMBER OF EXAMS EXPECTED FOR THAT DAY MUST REMAIN THE SAME.

INFORMATION ABOUT EXAMS AND PROGRAM OF EXAMINATION ARE TO BE FOUND ONLY ON THE DEDICATED WEB PAGES, THROUGH THE TEACHER-STUDENTS' LIST, THROUGH THE TUTOR OF THE COURSE. OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION ARE TO BE CONSIDERED AS UNRELIABLE AND WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED VALID.

Teaching tools

Multimedia tools

Office hours

See the website of Mario Angelo Neve

SDGs

Gender equality Decent work and economic growth Sustainable cities

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.