This volume explores a variety of iconic female characters in Italian literature, art and film who depict distinct representatives of female identity within this national culture. The contributors here apply various methodologies to characterize the evolution of women’s identity and their representation in such expressive modalities, drawing from literature, film, drama, history, the humanities, media and cultural studies. Cross-genre, cross-cultural, and cross-national explorations are also utilised here in order to underline the multifaceted ways in which de facto female characterization occurred.

This volume investigates the ways in which Italian women writers, filmmakers, and performers have represented female identity across genres from the immediate post-World War II period to the turn of the twenty-first century. Considering genres such as prose, poetry, drama, and film, these essays examine the vision of female agency and self-actualization arising from women artists’ critique of female identity. This dual approach reveals unique interpretations of womanhood in Italy spanning more than fifty years, while also providing a deep investigation of the manipulation of canvases historically centered on the male subject. With its unique coupling of generic and thematic concerns, the volume contributes to the ever expanding female artistic legacy, and to our understanding of postwar Italian women’s evolving relationship to the narration of history, gender roles, and these artists’ use and revision of generic convention to communicate their vision.

This volume brings together specialists from a variety of disciplines to develop a deeper understanding of the social, political, and cultural history of women in Italy in the years 1946-1960. Despite being a time when women and the family were at the center of national debates, and when society changed considerably, the fifteen years following the Second World War have tended to be overlooked or subsumed into discussions of other periods. By focusing on the experience of women and by broadening the frame of reference to include subjects and sources often ignored, or only alluded to, by traditional analyses, the essays in this volume break new ground and provide a corrective to previous interpretive models.

This book considers cultural representations of four different types of labor within Italian and U.S. contexts: stories and songs that chronicle the lives of Italian female rice workers, or mondine; testimonials and other narratives about female domestic servants in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century (including contemporary immigrants from non-western countries); cinematic representations of unwaged household work among Italian American women; and photographs of female immigrant cannery labor in California. These categories of labor suggest the diverse ways in which migrant women workers take part in the development of what Antonio Gramsci calls national popular culture, even as they are excluded from dominant cultural narratives. The project looks at Italian immigration to the U.S., contemporary immigration to Italy, and internal migration within Italy, the emphasis being on what representations of migrant women workers can tell us about cultural and political change. In addition to the idea of national popular culture, Gramsci's discussion of the social role of subalterns and organic intellectuals, the politics of folklore (or 'common sense') and everyday culture, and the necessity of alliance-formations among different social groups all inform the textual analyses. An introduction, which includes a reconsideration of Gramsci's theories in light of feminist theory, argues that the lives of subaltern classes (such as migrant women) are inherently connected to struggles for hegemony. A brief epilogue, on a lesser-known essay by photographer Tina Modotti, closes the discussion.

Italy has long been romanticized as an idyllic place. Italian food and foodways play an important part in this romanticization – from bountiful bowls of fresh pasta to bottles of Tuscan wine. While such images oversimplify the complex reality of modern Italy, they are central to how Italy is imagined by Italians and non-Italians alike. Representing Italy through Food is the first book to examine how these perceptions are constructed, sustained, promoted, and challenged. Recognizing the power of representations to construct reality, the book explores how Italian food and foodways are represented across the media – from literature to film and television, from cookbooks to social media, and from marketing campaigns to advertisements. Bringing together established scholars such as Massimo Montanari and Ken Albala with emerging scholars in the field, the thirteen chapters offer new perspectives on Italian food and culture. Featuring both local and global perspectives – which examine Italian food in the United States, Australia and Israel – the book reveals the power of representations across historical, geographic, socio-economic, and cultural boundaries and asks if there is anything that makes Italy unique. An important contribution to our understanding of the enduring power of Italy, Italian culture and Italian food – both in Italy and beyond. Essential reading for students and scholars in food studies, Italian studies, media studies, and cultural studies.

Taking the Noli me tangere and Doubting Thomas episodes as a focal point, this study examines how visual representations of two of the most compelling and related Christian stories engaged with changing devotional and cultural ideals in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. This book reconsiders depictions of the ambiguous encounter of Mary Magdalene and Christ in the garden (John 20:11-19, known as the Noli me tangere) and that of Christ?s post-Resurrection appearance to Thomas (John 20:24-29, the Doubting Thomas) as manifestations of complex theological and art theoretical milieus. By focusing on key artistic monuments of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods, the authors demonstrate a relationship between the rise of skeptical philosophy and empirical science, and the efficacy of the senses in the construction of belief. Further, the authors elucidate the differing representational strategies employed by artists to depict touch, and the ways in which these strategies were shaped by gender, social class, and educational level. Indeed, over time St. Thomas became an increasingly public--and therefore masculine--symbol of devotional verification, juridical inquiry, and empirical investigation, while St. Mary Magdalene provided a more private model for pious women, celebrating, mostly behind closed doors, the privileged and active participation of women in the faith. The authors rely on primary source material--paintings, sculptures, religious tracts, hagiography, popular sermons, and new documentary evidence. By reuniting their visual examples with important, often little-known textual sources, the authors reveal a complex relationship between visual imagery, the senses, contemporary attitudes toward gender, and the shaping of belief. Further, they add greater nuance to our understanding of the relationship between popular piety and the visual culture of the period.

"This book explores the evolution of Italian cinema over the last twenty years, with particular reference to modern masterpieces such as Tornatore's Oscar-winning Nuovo cinema paradiso. The volume focuses on the work of some of the most prominent directors of recent times, combining an auteurist perspective with an incisive overview of the most important thematic and stylistic developments in modern Italian film-making." --book cover.

Can Conservatives represent women? Descriptively of course, they do. Conservative parties and organisations are increasingly feminised; conservative women sit in many of the world’s parliaments; a few women have led conservative parties; and there are, and have been, Conservative Prime Ministers. But whether these women actually stand for women, act for women and re-gender representation is likely to invite greater contestation. Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting. Individual chapters examine women’s participation as conservative movement and party members, supporters, candidates, leaders, legislators and ministers – in countries ranging from Europe, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Turkey and Morocco. Assessment is made of the nature of their representational contribution, and the relationship they have with conservative women’s views in society.

In the age of the Grand Tour, foreigners flocked to Italy to gawk at its ruins and paintings, enjoy its salons and cafés, attend the opera, and revel in their own discovery of its past. But they also marveled at the people they saw, both male and female. In an era in which castrati were "rock stars," men served women as cicisbei, and dandified Englishmen became macaroni, Italy was perceived to be a place where men became women. The great publicity surrounding female poets, journalists, artists, anatomists, and scientists, and the visible roles for such women in salons, academies, and universities in many Italian cities also made visitors wonder whether women had become men. Such images, of course, were stereotypes, but they were nonetheless grounded in a reality that was unique to the Italian peninsula. This volume illuminates the social and cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Italy by exploring how questions of gender in music, art, literature, science, and medicine shaped perceptions of Italy in the age of the Grand Tour.

Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, this volume integrates text and image, essays and object pages to explore the processes inherent in gender representation, rather than resituating women in particular categories or spheres as other scholarly publications and exhibitions have done. Taking its lead from the 'Picturing' Women project on which it reflects and builds, the volume makes a substantial methodological contribution to the analysis of gender discourse and visuality. It offers new and stimulating scholarship that confronts historical patterns of representation that have defined what women were and are seen to be, and presents new contexts for unveiling what art historian Linda Nochlin has called the 'mixed messages' of representations of women.