Tag: sexuality

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5.Exploring Italian Forbidden Imaginaries: Research on Porn Tubes Pornhub and XNXX

by Gaia Peruzzi and Angelica Spampinato

The advent of digital platforms has caused an unprecedented revolution in the world of pornography. Today pornographic platforms, or porn tubes, are the main containers of adult entertainment, making a huge variety of pornographies immediately accessible to largest audience. Porn tubes have changed both the production and the use of pornography, so much so that the entire hard industry has been forced to rethink its business by channeling it into the new medium. 

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2. The Oratorio Femminile: Young Women’s Socialization and Growth in Post-War Italy

by Daniela Cavallaro

The few academic studies which look at the development and goals of the Catholic youth centres known as oratori tend to privilege the oratorio maschile over its all-girl counterpart. This article aims to bring to light the experience of the oratorio femminile as an important moment of socialization and growth for girls, teenagers and young women in the post-World War II years. It first provides a brief introduction regarding the origins and development of the oratory in Italy.

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3. Scrivere dalla parte delle bambine: infanzia e adolescenza femminile nella narrativa di Alice Ceresa

by Viola Ardeni

L’articolo propone un’analisi dell’espressione e rappresentazione dell’infanzia femminile nei due romanzi della scrittrice italo-svizzera Alice Ceresa (1923-2003), La figlia prodiga del 1967 e Bambine del 1990, alle quali Ceresa dà un’originale impronta sperimentale oltre che femminista. Si mostra che l’attenzione all’infanzia femminile sia indicativa non solo di una costante contenutistica delle opere ceresiane, ma costituisca anche una scelta ideologica: una bambina in crescita è, per Ceresa,

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4. Rita Pavone’s Musicarelli: Rethinking Genre and (Young) Women’s Representation

by Stephanie Hotz

This essay examines Rita Pavone’s star image and musical films of the 1960s, including a close analysis of two of her most famous musicarelli, Rita la zanzara (Rita the Mosquito, 1966) and its sequel Non stuzzicate la zanzara (Don’t Sting the Mosquito, 1967). While studies on the postwar “woman’s film” have focused primarily on melodramas,

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5. Non è la Rai, or: On the Becoming-Girl of Late Capitalism

by Elisa Cuter

This paper focuses on Non è la Rai, a TV show aired on Silvio Berlusconi’s broadcasting channels between 1991 and 1994. Through the analysis of the program a connection emerges between three macro-phenomena: postmodern aesthetics; Berlusconism (as a specific and national embodiment of larger concepts like capitalism and neoliberalism) and the fundamental role of “girlhood” in the first two. In particular, it proves that the neoliberal strategy could not have been effective without an unprecedented increase in the importance of the symbolic category of girlhood in Italian society,

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10. The Importance of Being Ernesto: Queerness and Multidirectional Desire in Umberto Saba’s Unfinished Novel

by Paolo Frascà

This article explores Umberto Saba’s (1983-1957) only and unfinished novel, Ernesto (1975), from the perspective of sexuality and Queer studies, while also paying attention to the novel’s language and its autobiographical underpinnings. By examining aspects of the work that render it an important testimony of queer desire, this essay aims to shine a light on Ernesto as an important Italian literary text and on the text’s ability to reveal significant and timeless aspects of the human condition,

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9. AAIS 2016 Roundtable on Gender and Language: Language Inclusivity and the Subversion of Hegemonic Notions of Gender and Sexuality

by Michela Baldo, Serena Bassi, Juliet Guzzetta, Cinzia Russi

This roundtable was organized by Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Editor of gender/sexuality/italy, and Michela Baldo at the American Association for Italian Studies annual convention in Baton Rouge (AAIS) in April 2016. The presenters covered such topics as language inclusivity, misogynistic and asymmetrical uses of language, heteronormativity and homophobia in language, gender asymmetry in historical linguistics, grammatical norms, and trasnlingual practices. A lively discussion among the roundtable presenters and audience followed.

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1. Desire and Resistance in Two Poems by Aldo Palazzeschi

Desire and Resistance in Two Poems by Aldo Palazzeschi

by Kristin Szostek Chertoff

Although sexuality has become a common theme in studies of Aldo Palazzeschi’s work, criticism has not yet fully explored how some of his earliest poems interact with the prevailing cultural assumptions and attitudes circulating when they were written and first published. This study approaches two poems—“Habel Nassab” (1909) and “I fiori” (1913)—that portray a poet protagonist’s emotionally disturbing encounter with a man who dominates through femininity,

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2. Contro il dominio del canone eterosessista. Una rilettura queer del personaggio di Turandot

Contro il dominio del canone eterosessista. Una rilettura queer del personaggio di Turandot

by Marta Riccobono

This article proposes a re-reading of the literary character of Turandot through the perspective of gender studies and queer theory, with particular reference to the works of Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick. The tragicomedy Turandot, brought to the stage by Carlo Gozzi in 1762, and the homonymous Puccinian melodrama, represented for the first time at the Scala in 1926,

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4. The Performance of (Dis)orientation; a queer reading of Pietro Marcello’s La bocca del lupo (2009)

The Performance of (Dis)orientation; a queer reading of Pietro Marcello’s La bocca del lupo (2009)

by Oliver Brett

In this article, Oliver Brett focuses on the role of the “object” in Pietro Marcello’s docufiction film La bocca del lupo (2009). In a context where “difference” can be perceived as problematic particularly if shaped through a politics of “identity”— his analysis draws on a phenomenological framework in seeking to elucidate the “queer” features of this award winning film.

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