Italian Women and the City
Italian Women and the City

Author: Janet Levarie Smarr

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780838639658

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Studies of the city, and of women's experiences of the city, have focused primarily on modern times, especially as modernism was defined in large part by urban life. Italy, however, has a long history of urban-centered culture, and women have been a vocal part of that culture since the Renaissance. This volume, therefore, looks at the art and literature of both earlier and more modern periods to investigate the meanings of the city for Italian women, the intensely gendered meanings (for both sexes) of those city spaces that excluded women, and the conditions that permitted a limited permeability of gendered boundaries. Two aspects to the combination of "women" and "city" are salient to these investigations. One involves their metaphorical relationship. Urbs, citta, ville -- the words for city tend to be grammatically feminine, and a long tradition of representation associates the city. with a woman. Women, especially writers, could exploit, modify, or resist the prevailing uses of such metaphors. The second aspect of connection involves social realities. What was or is the relation of the (female) city with the real women who inhabit it? What kind of site has it provided for women seeking a satisfying life for themselves? How has art and literature, by men and by women, represented the relationship of female persons or characters to urban spaces?

Wandering Women
Wandering Women

Author: Laura Di Bianco

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0253064678

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking explores the work of contemporary Italian women directors from feminist and ecological perspectives. Mostly relegated to the margins of the cultural scene, and concerned with women's marginality, the compelling films Wandering Women sheds light on tell stories of displacement and liminality that unfold through the act of walking in the city. The unusual emptiness of the cities that the nomadic female protagonists traverse highlights the absence of, and their wish for, life-sustaining communities. Laura Di Bianco contends that women's urban filmmaking—while articulating a claim for belonging and asserting cinematic and social agency—brings into view landscapes of the Anthropocene, where urban decay and the erasure of nature intersect with human alienation. Though a minor cinema, it is also a powerful movement of resistance against the dominant male narratives about the world we inhabit. Based on interviews with directors, Wandering Women deepens the understanding of contemporary Italian cinema while enriching the field of feminist ecocritical literature.

Living the Revolution
Living the Revolution

Author: Jennifer Guglielmo

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0807833568

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period's most volatile labor strikes. Yet until now, Italian women's political activism

Journeys Among Women
Journeys Among Women

Author: Judith Adler Hellman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the growth of feminism in five strikingly different settings: Turin, Milan, Reggio Emilia, Verona, and Caserta. Tracing the development of the Italian women's movement from the 1960s through the 1980s, the author focuses on the ways in which the specific social and political traditions of the five cities shape the development of a new social movement.

Workshop to Office
Workshop to Office

Author: Miriam Cohen

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780801480058

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cohen examines shifting patterns in the family roles, work lives, and schooling of two generations of Italian-American women, paying particular attention to the importance of these women's pragmatic daily choices.

Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women
Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women

Author: Diane C. Vecchio

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 0252030397

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Challenging long-held patriarchal assumptions about Italian women's work in the United States Diane C. Vecchio's unique study considers the work experiences of Italian immigrant women and their daughters in the previously unexamined regions of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Endicott, New York, during the turn of the twentieth century. Using Italian and American sources and rich oral histories, this study reveals that women in Italy had economic responsibilities that often included work experiences outside of the home, including jobs as midwives and businesswomen. Demonstrating the regional variation of Italian women's work as well as the skills they transplanted to America balances the image of inexperienced and low-skilled laborers that dominates scholarship on Italian working women. Vecchio's research on Endicott sheds light on the gendered nature of life in a "company town" governed by welfare paternalism, while her research on Milwaukee emphasizes how Italian immigrant women turned to small business enterprise when local opportunities for wage-earning were limited. This comparative method helps to move beyond reductionist theories and conventional portraits of Italian women to explore the diverse factors that prompted them to seek certain kinds of occupations to the exclusion of others.

A House in the Mountains
A House in the Mountains

Author: Caroline Moorehead

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-01-28

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 0062686380

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Dramatic, heartbreaking and sweeping in scope." —Wall Street Journal The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet—the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy’s fascist regime during World War II. In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women—Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca—living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women—like this brave quartet—who swelled its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini’s two decades of Fascist rule—with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism—was unrelentingly violent and brutal. Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.

American Woman, Italian Style
American Woman, Italian Style

Author: Carol Bonomo Albright

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0823231755

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With writings that span more than thirty-five years, American Woman, Italian Style is a rich collection of essays that fleshes out the realities of today's Italian American women and explores the myriad ways they continue to add to the American experience. The status of modern Italian-American women in the United States is noteworthy: their quiet and continued growth into respected positions in the professional worlds of law and medicine surpasses the success achieved in that of the general population--so too does their educational attainment and income. Contributions include Donna Gabaccia on the oral-to-written history of cookbooks, Carol Helstosky on the Tradition of Invention, an interview with Sandra Gilbert, Paul Levitt's look at Lucy Mancini as a metaphor for the modern world, William Egelman's survey of women's work patterns, and Edvige Giunta on the importance of a selfconscious understanding of memory. There are explorations of Jewish-Italian intermarriages and interpretations of entrepreneurship in Milwaukee. Readers will find challenges to common assumptions and stereotypes, departures from normal samplings, and springboards to further research. American Woman, Italian Style: Italian Americana's Best Writings on Women offers unique insights into issues of gender and ethnicity and is a voice for the less heard and less seen side of the Italian-American experience from immigrant times to the present. Instead of seeking consensus or ideological orthodoxy, this collection brings together writers with a wide range of backgrounds, outlooks, ideas, and experiences. It is an impressive postmodern collection for interdisciplinary studies: a book and a look about being and becoming an American.