29424 - Seminars (1) (LM) (G.G)

Learning outcomes

The Philosophy Seminars propose the following educational objectives specific to seminar teaching: (1) to train students in philosophical argumentation by encouraging discussions on themes and texts, including in their original language, presented in meetings with Italian and foreign scholars; (2) to broaden and deepen philosophical knowledge through participation in conferences held by specialists from various fields of philosophical knowledge; (3) to compare different methodological approaches to philosophy as a complement to curricular teaching.

Course contents

The seminar follows a transdisciplinary approach and is centered on the study of the material and practical dimension of knowledge. This is the meaning of the concept of "knowledge infrastructures," understood as consolidated networks of people, artifacts and institutions for the generation, sharing, and maintenance of specific knowledge about the human and natural world.

• What are knowledge infrastructures?
• What kind of knowledge is produced and materialized from infrastructures?
• What type of actors do they mobilize?
• What technopolitical orders do they make durable?
• How to repair or mantain knowledge infrastructures?
• What happens when a knowledge infrastructure reaches a breaking point?
• What is the relationship between infrastructures, knowledge, non-knowledge, and digitization?

During the seminar we will host contributions from scholars that will allow us to observe knowledge infrastructures at work in different fields: scientific knowledge, local knowledge, health, work, migration, energy, climate change.

Focus: knowledge infrastructures of ice and fire

In this edition, part of the course will be dedicated to the natures, politics and cultures of the cryosphere and pyrosphere and to the knowledge infrastructures built to govern and understand them.

Why ice? First, because we will see less and less of it. Second, because ice represents an "interscalar vehicle": ice allows us to follow the tangle of practices, knowledge, and relationships straddling politics, economy, society, science, technology, between the human and the non-human, life and death, putting us in contact with the deep past and future of the planet.

Why fire? Because it is everywhere. From the progressive rise in the planet's average temperatures to fires that devastate increasingly extensive territories, to energy policies based on fossil fuels and investments in nuclear fusion, to wars, fire - in its technoscientific, social and political forms - is a defining element of the Anthropocene. Like ice, fire crosses the boundaries between local and global, between matter and power, past and future, questioning us about the contradictions of "carbon democracies" and about issues of energy and climate justice.

Readings/Bibliography

Here below you can find some of the bibliographic references we will work with during the seminar, which will be integrated with materials shared on the virtual course space.

• Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Star, Susan Leigh (1999) Sorting things out: classification and its consequences, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
• Conway, Erik M. and Oreskes, Naomi (2014) Merchants of doubt, London, Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Cruikshank, Julie (2005) Do glaciers listen? Local knowledge, colonial encounters, and social imagination, University of British Columbia Press.
Cruikshank, Julie (2005) Do glaciers listen? Local knowledge, colonial encounters, and social imagination, University of British Columbia Press.
• Edwards, Paul N. (2013) A vast machine: computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming, Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England, The MIT Press.
• Hecht, Gabrielle (2018) Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence, in "Cultural Anthropology", 33 (1), pp. 109–141.
• Lemke, Thomas (2024) Anticipating and suspending: the chronopolitics of cryopreservation, in "BioSocieties", 19 (4), pp. 556–573
• Mitchell, Timothy (2011) Carbon democracy: political power in the age of oil, London, New York, Verso.

Teaching methods

The seminar will be conducted through lectures, exercises and workshops, encouraging discussion, interaction and collaboration through the use of audiovisual materials and texts shared on the virtual and collaborative course page.

After the lesson, it will also be possible to interact through the forum that will be active on virtuale.unibo.it.

The seminar includes inviting guest lecturers to give lessons on specific topics. Furthermore, if seminars and conferences relevant to our topics are held in the Department, I will invite you to participate, naturally on a voluntary basis.

Finally, it will be possible for some lessons to be integrated outside of class hours in the form of film screenings in dedicated venues.

Assessment methods

The seminar requires students to attend at least two-thirds of the lessons. The assessment aims to evaluate:

• Understanding of the topics covered in class and the reference texts;
• understanding of the problem of knowledge and its social and material dimension;
• the ability to present the seminar topics in an orderly and clear manner, orally or in writing;
• the critical capacity that students are able to exercise on the proposed topics.

Learning assessment will take place through workshops, which may include collective discussions on seminar topics and proposed texts, raised-hand interventions, scheduled oral presentations, written assignments, participation in collaborative pages.

At the end of the course, students will be required to produce, present and discuss a paper on the seminar's focus. Should they be unable to do so for justified reasons, the presentation will be made up during the exam sessions in the months indicated below.

Exam sessions

During the 2025/2026 academic year, exam sessions are scheduled in the following months: April, May, June, July, September, October

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders have the right to special adjustments according to their condition, following an assessment by the Service for Students with Disabilities and SLD. Please do not contact the instructor but get in touch with the Service directly to schedule an appointment. It will be the responsibility of the Service to determine the appropriate adjustments.

For more information, visit the page: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students .

It is recommended that students contact the University office in advance. Any proposed adjustments must be submitted at least 15 days in advance for the instructor’s approval, who will evaluate their appropriateness in relation to the learning objectives of the course.

Teaching tools

The course is associated with a module on the University's e-learning platform (virtuale.unibo.it) and a collaborative page. Through the platform, a discussion forum will be activated; the site will also be used for the distribution of additional material and notification of events, calendar changes, etc. Anyone who wants to take this exam must register on Virtuale.

The slides projected during the lessons will be made available through this site.

Office hours

See the website of Claudio Coletta