gender/sexuality/italy is an online annual, peer-reviewed journal that publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society.
by Ombretta Frau and Juliet Guzzetta
The Guest Editors use a feminist lens to introduce and deconstruct the theme of “Donne di destra / Women of the Right” in the sociopolitical and cultural context of contemporary Italy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15781/kf73-6c95
by Erin Larkin
When looking for literary and cultural genealogies for Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister and co-founder of the ultraconservative Fratelli d’Italia, the women of Italian Futurism offer a revealing perspective. The historical avant-garde provides examples of the rhetoric of exceptionalism that continues to mark conservative feminism, particularly in the work of Benedetta Cappa. Meloni’s refrain—“Io sono Giorgia, sono una donna, sono una madre, sono italiana, sono cristiana”—reflects the same themes of nation,
by Jordi Valentini
Seeking to counteract left-wing youth movements in the shared terrain of alternative publishing, right-wing youth in the 1970s discovered and appropriated Tolkien’s work, partly due to the general disdain or indifference towards him from the Italian left-leaning public and intellectuals. Tolkien’s anti-modern and traditionalist world became a refuge for a disillusioned generation critical of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano), the main conservative party, for its outdated structure and its unwillingness to give younger people a voice.
by Amanda Minervini
Gender neutrality has recently entered the discourse on and within Italian language and culture while the war among genders is still unresolved. Teaching genderneutral/nonbinary Italian is a form of activism, and a way to teach inclusively while responding actively to changes occurring in both US and Italian culture. In this context, which shows how a portion of Italian speakers wants to move towards inclusion and modernity, the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni,
by Sofia Torre
This essay aims to read the relationship between pornographic obscenity and political communication strategies by investigating the cases of Ilona Staller, elected among the ranks of the Radical Party in 1987, and Moana Pozzi, who joined the Party of Love in 1992. Secondly, the essay’s purpose is to analyze the contemporary anti-feminist activism of Valentina Nappi on social networks.The analysis, carried out through the methodological criteria of political communication and media studies,
by Marta Cerreti
In January 2022, I met with Italian contemporary writer Teresa Ciabatti to discuss her latest works and her experience as a woman writer in a male-dominated industry. By drawing on Ciabatti’s best-known work La più amata (2017), the title of this interview addresses a common issue for women writers: they are welcome in the literary industry provided they follow the established rules. Since 2017, Teresa Ciabatti has continuously broken conventions,
by Maura Gancitano
With the advent of social networks, many people in Italy began to know and spread the idea of intersectionality, creating a critical mass that disseminates content on feminism, rights struggles, and the intersection of oppressions. Consequently, people began to spread the idea that the fight against discrimination is a hypocritical whining, the result of an extreme susceptibility and the so-called “dictatorship of the politically correct.” In this article,
by Viviana Pezzullo
Armanda Guiducci’s La donna non è gente (1977) is a volume collecting related autobiographical narratives in which collaboration is the result of the dialogic, polyphonic, and heteroglot relationship between Guiducci and the women narrators she interviews. Guiducci’s work proves how the notion of singular authorship and language of noi is inadequate to capture the diversity of women’s struggles across Italy. In La donna non è gente, the narrators–women from rural areas of north and of south Italy–embody through the alternance of Standard Italian and regional and local dialects the dialectics between urban and rural spaces.
by Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Paola Bonifazio, Ellen Nerenberg
The editorial includes the Editors’ introductions to their respective areas: Nicoletta Marini-Maio announces the topic and guest editors of the Themed Section; Paola Bonifazio presents the Invited Perspectives; and Ellen Nerenberg details the contents of the Open Contributions and the section Continuing Discussions, which hosts informed voices on themes developed in previous issues of g/s/i.
by Julia Heim, Charlotte Ross, SA Smythe
The editorial includes the Guest Editors’ introductions to their respective areas. Julia Heim, Charlotte Ross, and SA Smythe offer a brief critical contextualization of current and ongoing sociopolitical issues undergirding the question of LGBTQIA+ rights in Italy. They reflect on anti-queer/anti-LGBT discrimination within academia, on intersectional solidarity and activism, and on the developing field of “Queer Italian Studies.” The editorial also provides a summary of the articles contained in the volume.
