AUR's Professor Cathy Ramsey-Portolano has released a rich new publication听featuring 26 essays by scholars from the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe.
In addition to editing the volume, together with art historian Sharon Hecker, Portolano听co-wrote the chapter 鈥淣ew Perspectives on the Roles of Women in Italy鈥檚 Modern Intellectual History.鈥�
This book is the first critical interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women鈥檚 contributions to intellectual, artistic, and cultural production in modern Italy. Examining commonalities and diversities from the country鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 female intellectual and creative production in Italy today. The volume rethinks a solely national 鈥淢ade in Italy鈥� 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.
Catherine Ramsey-Portolano is Associate Professor and Director of the Italian Studies Program at 星空传媒, Italy. Her publications include听Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Writers and the Woman Question听(2020),听Performing Bodies: Female Illness in Italian Literature and Cinema听(2017), The Future of Italian Teaching: Media, New Technologies and Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives听(2015),听and The Italianist special issue Rethinking Neera听(2010), co-edited with Katharine Mitchell.
Sharon Hecker is an Independent Art Historian and Curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian art. Her publications include听A Moment鈥檚 Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture听(2017), Postwar Italian Art History: Untying 鈥楾he Knot鈥櫶�(2018),听and听Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today听(2022). She is Editor of the Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts Series for Bloomsbury Visual Arts.