Suchergebnisse

My project explores and compares different forms of gender performance in contemporary art and visual culture according to a perspective centered on photography. Thanks to its attesting power this medium can work as a ready-made. In fact during the 20th century it played a key role in the cultural emancipation of the body which (using a Michel Foucault's expression) has now become «the zero point of the world». Through performance the body proves to be a living material of expression and communication while photography ensures the recording of any ephemeral event that happens in time and space. My questioning approach considers the gender constructed imagery from the 1990s to the present in order to investigate how photography's strong aura of realism promotes and allows fantasies of transformation. The contemporary fascination with gender (especially for art and fashion) represents a crucial issue in the global context of postmodernity and is manifested in a variety of visual media, from photography to video and film. Moreover the internet along with its digital transmission of images has deeply affected our world (from culture to everyday life) leading to a postmodern preference for performativity over the more traditional and linear forms of narrativity. As a consequence individual borders get redefined by the skin itself which (dissected through instant vision) turns into a ductile material of mutation and hybridation in the service of identity. My critical assumptions are taken from the most relevant changes occurred in philosophy during the last two decades as a result of the contributions by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze who developed a cross-disciplinary and comparative approach to interpret the crisis of modernity. They have profoundly influenced feminist studies so that the category of gender has been reassessed in contrast with sex (as a biological connotation) and in relation to history, culture, society. The ideal starting point of my research is the year 1990. I chose it as the approximate historical moment when the intersection of race, class and gender were placed at the forefront of international artistic production concerned with identity, diversity and globalization. Such issues had been explored throughout the 1970s but it was only from the mid-1980s onward that they began to be articulated more consistently. Published in 1990, the book "Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity" by Judith Butler marked an important breakthrough by linking gender to performance as well as investigating the intricate connections between theory and practice, embodiment and representation. It inspired subsequent research in a variety of disciplines, art history included. In the same year Teresa de Lauretis launched the definition of queer theory to challenge the academic perspective in gay and lesbian studies. In the meantime the rise of Third Wave Feminism in the US introduced a racially and sexually inclusive vision over the global situation in order to reflect on subjectivity, new technologies and popular culture in connection with gender representation. These conceptual tools have enabled prolific readings of contemporary cultural production whether fine arts or mass media. After discussing the appropriate framework of my project and taking into account the postmodern globalization of the visual, I have turned to photography to map gender representation both in art and in fashion. Therefore I have been creating an archive of images around specific topics. I decided to include fashion photography because in the 1990s this genre moved away from the paradigm of an idealized and classical beauty toward a new vernacular allied with lifestyles, art practices, pop and youth culture; as one might expect the dominant narrative modes in fashion photography are now mainly influenced by cinema and snapshot. These strategies originate story lines and interrupted narratives using models' performance to convey a particular imagery where identity issues emerge as an essential part of fashion spectacle. Focusing on the intersections of gender identities with socially and culturally produced identities, my approach intends to underline how the fashion world has turned to current trends in art photography and in some case turned to the artists themselves. The growing fluidity of the categories that distinguish art from fashion photography represents a particularly fruitful moment of visual exchange. Varying over time the dialogue between these two fields has always been vital; nowadays it can be studied as a result of this close relationship between contemporary art world and consumer culture. Due to the saturation of postmodern imagery the feedback between art and fashion has become much more immediate and then increasingly significant for anyone who wants to investigate the construction of gender identity through performance. In addition to that a lot of magazines founded in the 1990s bridged the worlds of art and fashion because some of their designers and even editors were art-school graduates encouraging innovation. The inclusion of art within such magazines aimed at validating them as a form of art in themselves supporting a dynamic intersection for music, fashion, design and youth culture: an intersection that also contributed to create and spread different gender stereotypes. This general interest in fashion produced many exhibitions of and about fashion itself at major international venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Since then this celebrated success of fashion has been regarded as a typical element of postmodern culture. Owing to that I have also based my analysis on some important exhibitions dealing with gender performance like "Féminin-Masculin" at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (1995), "Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose. Gender performance in photography" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (1997), "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum (2007), "Female Trouble" at the Pinakothek der Moderne in München together with the workshops dedicated to "Performance: gender and identity" in June 2005 at the Tate Modern of London. Since 2003 in Italy we have had Gender Bender - an international festival held annually in Bologna - to explore the gender imagery stemming from contemporary culture. In few days this festival offers a series of events ranging from visual arts, performance, cinema, literature to conferences and music. Being aware that any method of research is neither race nor gender neutral I have traced these critical paths to question gender identity in a multicultural perspective taking account of the political implications too. In fact, if visibility may be equated with exposure, we can also read these images as points of intersection of visibility with social power. Since gender assignations rely so heavily on the visual, the postmodern dismantling of gender certainty through performance has wide-ranging effects that need to be analyzed. In some sense this practice can even contest the dominance of visual within postmodernism. My visual map in contemporary art and fashion photography includes artists like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Hellen van Meene, Rineke Dijkstra, Ed Templeton, Ryan McGinley, Anne Daems, Miwa Yanagi, Tracey Moffat, Catherine Opie, Tomoko Sawada, Vanessa Beecroft, Yasumasa Morimura, Collier Schorr among others.

Sky Lee is one of ethnic writers who dare to challenge the long-run silence of marginalized group, by the means of writing in English about historical experience of her community. Her book, Disappearing Moon Café which was published in Vancouver in 1990, immediately caught the public attention and won the City of Vancouver Book Award while being nominated the Governor General's Literary Award. Lee, as a female writer, cares very much about females' struggle for identity from one generation to the next. With the influence of postcolonialism and women's movements, identity became more and more concerned by the minority groups. Postcolonialists hold that women from the Third World countries are under the dual oppressions. On the one hand, they are subjected to racial and cultural discrimination under Euro-American dominated society; on the other hand, they suffer from gender prejudice in both white hegemony and patriarchal doctrines. For more than one century of racial discrimination and segregation, Chinese Canadians have been on the brink of mainstream society. Whereas the females have a crueler condition as they are the victims of being marginalized from racism and gender prejudice simultaneously. In Disappearing Moon Cafe, all female characters have suffered self-loss to some extent. Therefore, how to construct its own identity becomes an urgent problem that needs to be solved. This thesis will introduce the living conditions of Chinese Canadian women and the identity crisis they encounter by the means of rereading the novel Disappearing Moon Cafe. Based on the theories of postcolonialism, feminism and other identity theories, this thesis will conduct a multi-dimensional study on the self-identification of Chinese Canadian women through the in-depth analysis and study of the novel Disappearing Moon Cafe. Mainly divided into two parts, it focuses on how Chinese Canadian women form their own identities in terms of cultural and gender perspectives. First of all, being aware of the conditions they are in, Chinese Canadians have to trace back to their origin and gain power from their own profound traditional culture while challenging and resisting the cultural hegemony in Canadian society. They should rediscover the silent history of its own ethnic culture and aware the great contribution the ancestors made to the development of Canada. Canadian born ethnic Chinese are easy to get confused for self-identity as they are not accepted by white race on account of physical appearance while being considered as not pure Chinese at the same time. Thus, they have to find a comfort in the marginalized state and establish the unique hybrid culture. Secondly, the prejudice toward females demands for a solution. This thesis summarizes three necessary approaches for the establishment of female identity by analyzing the image of women in Disappearing Moon Café: gaining for political, vocational and educative rights while awakening of female consciousness as well as breaking silence through female discourse. Nowadays, equality between races and sexuality is becoming increasingly important. While marginalized groups are receiving more attention in literature field, it is of great historical and practical significance to study the Chinese Canadian women's experiences in the mainstream culture of Canada while to explore their identity formation in both cultural and sexual perspective.

Conoscere, riconoscere, far conoscere sono tre dinamiche fondamentali dei processi di costruzione delle identità: le scienze sociali, in particolare la sociologia, hanno da tempo svelato gli intrecci profondi che legano queste azioni, i meccanismi di potere che esse riflettono e riproducono, e le conseguenze che, in presenza di bias e distorsioni prospettiche, esse possono produrre nell'ordine sociale in termini di discriminazioni, ingiustizie, mantenimento nell'invisibilità di intere categorie sociali. In letteratura come nelle pratiche educative, l'esercizio di tale sguardo critico tende sempre però ad applicarsi all'esterno, all'altro da sé. Il versante interno, intrasoggettivo dell'esperienza sociale dell'identità rimane spesso buio. Il discorso sull'identità di genere, per esempio, è quasi sempre un discorso in prima persona quando la donna denuncia soprusi e ingiustizie e rivendica diritti; ma diviene facilmente discorso sull'altro quando il tema è il problema sociale irrisolto, l'identità problematica. Questa scarsa auto-riflessività rischia di impaludare il potenziale euristico e politico che il discorso sul genere ancora dovrebbe avere, in una società in cui le categorie che soffrono invisibilità o discriminazioni legate all'appartenenza o agli orientamenti sessuali sono ancora numerose. La situazione appare più delicata per le nuove generazioni, che non hanno vissuto direttamente l'epoca delle contestazioni, con i dibattiti il movimentismo diffuso che le caratterizzava, e che ad oggi si ritrovano sprovviste di luoghi e di occasioni di confronto. Nello scenario appena tratteggiato si colloca la proposta degli autori. Il saggio intende raccontare le prime evidenze di un progetto di ricerca pluriennale condotto con la collaborazione degli studenti di due cattedre della Sapienza, che ha condotto alla raccolta di diverse centinaia di testi autobiografici focalizzati sull'esperienza di genere. Nello specifico, gli studenti e le studentesse coinvolti, dopo alcune lezioni introduttive sulla rilevanza delle questioni di genere nelle società contemporanee, erano stati invitati a narrare le vicende del proprio percorso di vita che essi percepivano come più significative rispett tema. Il valore del corpus (in corso di implementazione) è dato sia dalle sue dimensioni, che dalla sua originalità. Per l'occasione di questo articolo, i 3 autori si impegnano a ricostruire il quadro dei temi emergenti (perché ricorrenti o perché più significativi) dalla prima analisi del contenuto effettuata sul corpus. ; Knowing, recognizing and making known are three fundamental elements of identity construction processes. The social sciences have already revealed the deep plots that link these actions and the mechanisms of power that they reproduce. In the same way the social sciences have highlighted the consequences that, in the case of perspective distortions, they can produce in the social order in terms of discrimination, injustice and invisibility of social categories. In literature as in educational practices, the exercise of this critical view always tends to apply to the other by itself. The intra-subjective side of the social experience of identity often remains hidden. Considering that identity is a relational process, the awareness of one's position regarding the phenomenon is indispensable in the work of understanding "the other". Instead, the discourse on the social problem often remains only a speech on the other. For examples, the discourse on gender identity is almost always a first-person speech when the woman denounces abuse and injustice and claims rights. This scarce self-reflexivity risks to impoverish the heuristic and political potential that the discourse on gender should still have, especially in a society where the categories that suffer invisibility or discrimination related to gender or sexual orientation are still numerous. The situation is even more delicate for the new generations who, not having directly experienced the period of widespread demonstrations and movement, are today mostly deprived of places and opportunities for discussion. The authors' proposal fits into this scenario. The contribution intends to tell the first evidence of a multi-year research project conducted with the collaboration of the students of two courses in Sapienza University. The authors have collected a hundred autobiographical texts focused on the gender experience. Specifically, the students involved were invited to narrate the events of their life path that they perceived as more significant in relation to the theme. Using a purely qualitative research approach, the authors reconstructed the set of emerging themes from the first analysis of the corpus. Considering that this is a work in progress, the authors return the first evidences on two themes that undoubtedly appear to be very topical subject in the international literature on gender issues: the construction of gender identities in young people and the relationship with "the others" considered significant for this construction; the phenomenon of bullying related to gender issues.

Questo saggio si propone di fare una ricognizione degli studi che in Italia, a partire dagli anni Sessanta, hanno trattato il tema del Servizio sociale e della propria identità di genere. A tale scopo viene svolta una desk analysis e una literature review sul tema dei livelli occupazionali degli assistenti sociali che si incrocia inevitabilmente con quello del genere. Sotteso al tema occupazionale è quello ben più spinoso del posizionamento di ruolo negli organigrammi lavorativi dei professionisti e delle professioniste. La tematizzazione critica del gender mainstreaming come strategia di policy making interseca, infatti, il rapporto tra democrazia e potere, insieme alle ricadute e le implicazioni pratiche che si collegano al tema delle diseguaglianze del mercato globale del lavoro e nei contesti lavorativi. Il tentativo fatto è quello di evidenziare come il valore strategico del benessere collettivo passi necessariamente attraverso una professione tradizionalmente femminile esercitata mediante capabilities di genere di cui sono portatrici le assistenti sociali. E tale evidenza - numerica (l'80% dei social worker sono donne) e metodologica-procedurale (esercizio della cura, presa in carico, empatia ed strategie di empowerment della persona) - non consente ancora di affermare che la professione dell'assistente sociale sia un mestiere unisex. ; This essay aims to make a survey of the studies that in Italy, since the 1960s, have dealt with the theme of social work and one's gender identity. To this end, a desk analysis and a literature review are carried out on the issue of employment levels of social workers which inevitably intersects with that of gender. Underlying the employment issue is the much more thorny one of role positioning in the work organization charts of professionals. The critical thematization of gender mainstreaming as a policy making strategy intersects, in fact, the relationship between democracy and power, together with the repercussions and practical implications that are connected to the issue of inequalities in the global labor market and in working contexts. The attempt made is to highlight how the strategic value of collective well-being necessarily passes through a traditionally female profession exercised through gender capabilities of which social workers are carriers. And this evidence - numerical (80% of social workers are women) and methodological-procedural (exercise of care, taking charge, empathy and strategies of empowerment of the person) - does not yet allow us to affirm that the profession of the social worker be a unisex craft.

Secondo il Report IFAD sulla povertà rurale, nel 2008, circa due terzi della popolazione africana viveva nelle aree rurali ed era in qualche modo coinvolta in attività agricole commerciali o di sussistenza (IFAD, 2011). L'agricoltura rappresenta il più importante settore economico per la popolazione africana e le donne risultano cruciali per la produzione agricola: rappresentano infatti il 62,8 per cento della forza lavoro (FAO, 2014). Dopo la crisi alimentare del 2007-2008 si è andato intensificando il fenomeno delle acquisizione di terre su larga scala in paesi del Sud del mondo, in particolare nel continente africano, da parte di multinazionali, governi, aziende nazionali e singoli soggetti privati. Questo processo è stato denominato anche land grabbing dalle principali organizzazioni internazionali e della società civile e ha avuto grande impatto mediatico a livello internazionale. L'intensificarsi del fenomeno ha portato a una progressiva perdita di controllo e accesso ad ampie porzioni di territorio da parte delle comunità locali, che non possono più disporre delle risorse naturali collegate alla terra. La cessione di ampi terreni avviene in molti casi senza trasparenza informativa, con violazione dei diritti umani e senza il consenso delle comunità che vi abitano e che coltivano tali aree, e a cui viene imposto un cambio radicale di vita. La terra è una risorsa centrale per l'identità, il sostentamento e la sicurezza alimentare di una comunità, dunque le conseguenze sono molteplici a livello sociale, culturale, economico e politico. Gli impatti sulle relazioni di genere e in particolare sulle donne delle comunità rurali risultano essere cruciali nel discorso sullo sviluppo. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro è indagare come le relazioni di genere, a seguito delle trasformazioni nella gestione della terra, si modificano amplificando squilibri già esistenti e creando conseguenze sulle logiche di potere delle comunità rurali e sulle vite delle persone che ne fanno parte. ; According to the IFAD Rural Poverty Report, in 2008 about two thirds of the African population lived in rural areas and were involved in agricultural activities in some form, either for commercial purposes or subsistence (IFAD, 2011). Agriculture is the most important economic sector for the African population and women are crucial within its production, representing 62,8 % of the workforce (FAO, 2014). After the food crisis of 2007-2008, the phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries by national and transnational companies, governments and individuals has been intensifying, particularly seen in Africa. This process, also referred to as land grabbing by the main international organisations and civil society has had a strong media impact at an international level. The intensification of the phenomenon has led to local communities progressively losing control and access to large pieces of land, no longer able to use the natural resources derived from it. As land is fundamental for the identity, the sustenance and the alimentary safety of a community, land grabbing therefore has had a variety of consequences at a social, cultural, economic and political level. The transfer of control often takes place without informative transparency or agreement from the local communities living and working in these areas, who are forced into a radical change of life, often accompanied by human rights violations. The impacts on gender relations are crucial to this narrative, in particular how women from rural communities are affected. The aim of this work is to investigate how these gender relations are changed as a consequence of the shifts in the management of land, where existing imbalances are amplified, with a strong impact on the distribution of power in rural communities and the lives of the people who belong to them.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the figure of the female protagonist in Gade's silent film version of Hamlet (1921), Asta Nielsen, the first internationally renown screen star. She is not only the heroine of the melodramatic plot who is trapped in a feigned male identity imposed on her by external circumstances and political reasons (according to Vining's controversial reading of the original play), but because of her avant-guarde acting style and performance, and her androgynous look she becomes the symbol of Weimar 'gender crisis'.

This paper shows the fundamental connection between feminism, anarchism, transindividualism and ecology, and argues that an anarcha-feminism – a feminism without hierarchies – is the key to defeating all forms of oppression, whether they are perpetrated on a political, sexual, economic, or racial basis. Beginning with a description of the condition of minority-status and exposure to violence in which women all over the world find themselves, the paper identifies the traditional tools of domination that the "first sex" uses to maintain its primacy. The most powerful of these tools is the State, in which almost all of the key roles are held by men. On these grounds, this manifesto points out that overthrowing the patriarchy is not possible without the simultaneous subversion of the current juridical-political-economic structure, namely without overcoming national borders and freeing ourselves from the most subtle form of state control: the control over gender identity. This is because, as the paper argues, drawing insights from an ontology of the transindividual, bodies in general and women's bodies in particular, are not individuals, objects given once and for all, but rather never complete processes. In this social ontology, the environment turns out to be constitutive of our individuality; therefore, a transindividual approach to feminism naturally leads to a form of eco-feminism in which not simply human forms of life but all animate and inanimate bodies are involved. Anarcha-feminism means that all forms of oppression are somehow connected because all bodies are connected and it is therefore not possible to fight one form of domination without fighting them all.

The Great Recession changed the political landscape of the European democracies with the electoral success of populist protest parties in different countries. In this article, we wonder if there are features that characterized these political parties about the issues of gender equality and women's rights. Populism and feminization of politics are recurring topics in the scholars' debate, but the relationships between these two phenomena are still little studied. Seeing as the issue is linked to context, and not only to the political parties' differences, we will focus on three illustrative cases, in different European nations – Spain, Finland, Poland – analysing scientific literature and documents. The hypothesis is that the issues of gender can be an additional contentious line useful for defining identity and differences in the heterogeneous set of populist parties.

L'articolo riflette sui fenomeni di ricezione di linee guida per un uso non sessista della lingua e sulla metacompetenza lingusitica necessaria per analizzarli e mettere in atto politiche linguistiche di inclusione rispetto ai generi

Il divieto di gpa in Italia non è assoluto, non è discriminatorio, non è la causa del turismo procreativo e soprattutto, non ha la sua fonte nella legge sulle PMA, ma nel principio Mater Semper Certa, che garantisce a ogni nato la titolarità di almeno una relazione, quella con la madre, di cui nessuno può disporre, a meno che non siano in gioco interessi basilari come quello alla vita o alla salute della madre o del bambino. Altrimenti ogni nuova piccola vita sarebbe esposta all'arbitrio dei grandi, e di tutti coloro che hanno potere, mentre lei non ne ha. Mater Semper Certa non riguarda solo le donne né solo i bambini: riguarda l'intitolazione di ogni essere umano a essere considerato soggetto a pieno titolo, detentore di una propria identità e di proprie relazioni, indisponibili, sin dal momento del suo venire al mondo. ; The prohibition of GPA in Italy is not absolute, it is not discriminatory, and it is not the cause of procreative tourism. Last but not least, it is not established by the legislation on PMA, but by the Mater Semper Certa principle. This latter says that every new born holds at least one relationship, with her mother, and that this relationship it is not at the disposal of anyone, unless interests of the same degree are at stake, as the life or health of the mother or child. Why? Because otherwise, every new little life would be exposed to the will of the adults, to the will of those who have power, while she has not. Mater Semper Certa is not about women or children only: it is about the entitlement of every human being to be considered a subject, endowed with identity and relationships, from the very moment she comes to the world.

The Author compares how Italians and Argentineans feel to belong to their territorial background. Even though interviewees of both countries have a similar status on many background variables – such as age, gender, education, religiosity, political orientation – Argentineans much less than Italians conceive their country as part of a more general entity, such as a continent or the world. ; La Autora compara la forma en que los italianos y los argentinos sienten que pertenecen a su entorno territorial. Aunque los encuestados de ambos Países tienen un estatus similar en muchas variables subyacentes – como la edad, el género, la educación, la religiosidad, la orientación política – los argentinos, mucho menos que los italianos, conciben su País como parte de una entidad más general, como un continente o el mundo. ; L'Autrice confronta il modo in cui gli italiani e gli argentini sentono il loro background territoriale. Anche se gli intervistati di entrambi i Paesi hanno uno status simile, su molte variabili di fondo come età, genere, istruzione, religiosità, orientamento politico, gli argentini molto meno degli italiani concepiscono il loro Paese come parte di un'entità più generale, come il continente o il mondo.

« Tra Francia e Italia verso l'Europa: mediazioni linguistiche e culturali fra Settecento e Ottocento » (Atti del Convegno, Padova, 23–24 marzo 2017, a cura di Tobia Zanon, Marika Piva, e Francesca Bianco) ; International audience ; Madame de Staël's position on the question of national character is to be placed within the context of a debate involving many European intellectuals from the middle of the 18th century—a debate in which language, literature and politics are strictly linked. In her major works, from De la littérature to De l'Allemagne, Madame de Staël puts forward ideas that despite their global coherence hint at subtle distinctions and tensions. In Corinne, namely, the contrast between national characters becomes an obstacle to dialogue that cannot be overcome by even the most authentic love between the individuals. However, even in this novel dialogue is reasserted by Madame de Staël as a positive, although unaccomplished ideal, against retreat into one's national identity. ; La posizione di Madame de Staël sul problema del carattere nazionale va inserita in un dibattito che vede la partecipazione di numerosi intellettuali europei fin dalla metà del Settecento – un dibattito in cui lingua, letteratura e politica appaiono strettamente connesse. Nelle sue principali opere, da De la littérature a De l'Allemagne, Madame de Staël presenta posizioni che sono nel complesso coerenti e costanti, ma arricchite da sottilidistinguo. In Corinne, in particolare, il contrasto tra i caratteri nazionali diviene un ostacolo che neppure l'amore fra gli individui riesce a superare, ma il dialogo fra le nazioni e i caratteri è ribadito come un valore, preferibile, almeno idealmente, al ripiegamento sulla propria identità nazionale.

« Tra Francia e Italia verso l'Europa: mediazioni linguistiche e culturali fra Settecento e Ottocento » (Atti del Convegno, Padova, 23–24 marzo 2017, a cura di Tobia Zanon, Marika Piva, e Francesca Bianco) ; International audience ; Madame de Staël's position on the question of national character is to be placed within the context of a debate involving many European intellectuals from the middle of the 18th century—a debate in which language, literature and politics are strictly linked. In her major works, from De la littérature to De l'Allemagne, Madame de Staël puts forward ideas that despite their global coherence hint at subtle distinctions and tensions. In Corinne, namely, the contrast between national characters becomes an obstacle to dialogue that cannot be overcome by even the most authentic love between the individuals. However, even in this novel dialogue is reasserted by Madame de Staël as a positive, although unaccomplished ideal, against retreat into one's national identity. ; La posizione di Madame de Staël sul problema del carattere nazionale va inserita in un dibattito che vede la partecipazione di numerosi intellettuali europei fin dalla metà del Settecento – un dibattito in cui lingua, letteratura e politica appaiono strettamente connesse. Nelle sue principali opere, da De la littérature a De l'Allemagne, Madame de Staël presenta posizioni che sono nel complesso coerenti e costanti, ma arricchite da sottilidistinguo. In Corinne, in particolare, il contrasto tra i caratteri nazionali diviene un ostacolo che neppure l'amore fra gli individui riesce a superare, ma il dialogo fra le nazioni e i caratteri è ribadito come un valore, preferibile, almeno idealmente, al ripiegamento sulla propria identità nazionale.

Islands have traditionally been considered by canonical male authors as subordinated to the mainland. They have been alternately depicted as wild spaces to be tamed, civilized and colonized, or as sites of imprisonment. Often they appear as desirable, utopian elsewheres where one can escape from the real world and its turmoil. In my dissertation Verso un nuovo arcipelago mediterraneo: le isole di Grazia Deledda, Fabrizia Ramondino, Anna Maria Ortese ("Toward a New Mediterranean Archipelago: the Islands of Grazia Deledda, Fabrizia Ramondino, and Anna Maria Ortese"), I discuss and connect ― as in a kind of alternative feminist archipelago ― literary texts about Italy's islands by canonical and lesser-known Italian women authors, including Grazia Deledda on Sardinia; Fabrizia Ramondino on Ventotene; and Anna Maria Ortese on the imaginary island of Oca�a. My archipelago expands progressively in the dissertation's three chapters, addressing questions about Italian identity first, then European identity, and, finally, global identity. I combine textual analysis with critical perspectives from gender and feminist theory, Mediterranean thought, postcolonial studies, ecocriticism, and the new field of island studies. My dissertation shows how women authors have highlighted surprisingly positive, nuanced and politically productive dimensions of the island's space and symbolic potential. I demonstrate that the work on islands by Italian women writers subverts the binary oppositions of island/mainland, inside/outside, and closed/open in order to create, instead, a new Mediterranean archipelago that reimagines physical, social, and political boundaries.

The essay investigates the interrelationships between Political Correcteness, stand-up comedy, and minority groups, by concentrating on the performances of an Arab-American disabled comedian, the "Palestinian Muslim virgin with cerebral palsy" Maysoon Zayid. Focusing on PC as a set of linguistic practices whose effect is the sanitarization of public discourse (especially when minorities are concerned), and stand-up comedy as a set of speech acts aiming at both the affirmation and/or the transgression of identity boundaries, the essay investigates the relationship between PC and comedy, and the way they interact within the three "spaces of minority" Zayid embodies: ethnicity (Arab-Americaness in the wake of 9/11), gender (womanhood and its relation to both Arab and American cultures), and disability, under-represented in American culture and the media.