Female Cultural Production in Modern Italy

This book is the first critical interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women's contributions to intellectual, artistic, and cultural production in modern Italy. Examining commonalities and diversities from the country's Unification to today, the volume provides insight into the challenges that Italian women engaged in cultural production have faced, and the strategies they have deployed in order to achieve their objectives. The essays address a range of issues, from women's self-identification and public ownership of their professional roles as laborers in the intellectual and cultural realm, to questions about motherhood and financial remuneration, to the role of creative foreign women in Italy. Through critical analysis and direct testimony from new and typically marginalized voices, including an Arab-Italian writer, an Italian-Dominican filmmaker, and a transgender activist, new forms of ongoing struggle emerge that redefine the culturally diverse landscape of femaleintellectual and creative production in Italy today. The volume rethinks a solely national Made in Italy reading of the subject of female intellectual labor, demonstrating instead the wide network of influences and relationships that have existed for Italian women in their professional aspirations.

First interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women's contributions to cultural production in modern Italy Explores literary, artistic and intellectual labour as collective enterprises Interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a broad range of voices, both within and beyond academia

Auteur

Sharon Hecker is an Independent Art Historian and Curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian art. Her publications include A Moment's Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture (2017), Postwar Italian Art History: Untying 'The Knot' (2018), and Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (2022). She is Editor of the Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts Series for Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Catherine Ramsey-Portolano is Associate Professor and Director of the Italian Studies Program at The American University of Rome, Italy. Her publications include Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Writers and the Woman Question (2020), Performing Bodies: Female Illness in Italian Literature and Cinema (2017), The Future of Italian Teaching: Media, New Technologies and Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives (2015), and The Italianist special issue Rethinking Neera (2010), co-edited with Katharine Mitchell.

Contenu
1 New Perspectives on the Roles of Women in Italy's Modern Intellectual History.- Part I Modeling Female Labor.- 2 Fading Away: Women Disappearing from Literature Textbooks.- 3 Futurist Women Artists and the (Pro)Creative Metaphor.- 4 Elena Ferrante's Women Intellectuals: Writing and the Paradoxical Relationship to the Mother.- 5 Learning from the 1970s: Women's Work Inside and Outside the Home.- Part II Performance as Strategy.- 6 From Art History to Life Writing: Anna Banti's Feminist Resonance.-7 The Body and the Asemantic Writing in the Performance of Tomaso Binga.-8 The Hard Work of Being Women in 1960s Italy: Cecilia Mangini and the Documentary.-9 Marcella Campagnano and the Invention of Femininity.-Part III Questions of Female Authority.-10 Jolanda, Angiolo Orvieto and Cosimo Giorgieri-Contri: Asymmetric Mentoring Relationships.-11 Alda Merini: Stigma and the Struggle for Authority as a Woman Writer.-12 Strike a Pose: Italian Women Artists' Self-Representation in Photographic Portraits in the 1960s and 1970s.-13 Materializing Difference: Visions of Subjectivity in the Intermedia Works of Ketty La Rocca.-Part IV Collaborations, Networks and Support Systems.-14 Reimagining Art Practice, Recasting Myths: The Story of Two Groups of Feminist Artists in Southern Italy in the Late 1970s.-15 Contradictions and the Re-Invention of One's Own Role: The Publishing House Scritti di Rivolta Femminile in the Life/Work of Carla Lonzi .-16 Building a Different Memory Together: The Politics of Feminist Archives in Italy.-Part V Foreigners in Italy.-17 Reconstructing Edmonia Lewis's Roman Life: An Exploration of Her Presence in the Eternal City.-18 Ombra Felice? Jessie Boswell and Daphne Maugham in Felice Casorati's Shadow.-19 Russian Women Artists in Italy Between the Two Wars: Careers, Social Policies, and Intercultural Relations Between Revolution and Fascism.-20 Gender Codes in Art and Industry: Beverly Pepper, an American in Postwar Italy.-Part VI Cultural Exchanges.-21 Mario and Edita Broglio: The Dynamics of an Artist Couple in Fascist Italy.-22 Weaving Connections Between Rome and New York: The Role of Gabriella Drudi.-23 Editors' Conversation with German Art Historians Oona Lochner and Isabel Mehl: Writing Like a FeministIn Dialogue with Carla Lonzi.-Part VII Questioning Boundaries.-24 Pinks, Purples and Shades of Porpora: The Life of Porpora Marcasciano and the Work of Trans Activism.-25 Editors' Conversation with Italian-Dominican Filmmaker Laila Petrone: Visualizing Multicultural Italian Women.-26 Editors' Conversation with Algerian-Italian Author and Translator Amal Bouchareb: Arab Women's Cultural Production in ItalyStruggling Against Stereotypical Representations or Fitting into Neo-Orientalist/White Feminist Paradigms?