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4.I Femminielli: A Gender Variant Existence Between Sacred and Profane in the City of Naples

Jules De Bellis Issue: Category: Themed Section

by Jules De Bellis

The femminielli are both gender non-conforming people and traditional entities of the city of Naples. They could be described as effeminate men who live and feel like women and who practise forms of sex labour, but not necessarily. The femminiello identity intersects the concepts of homosexuality, transvestism and transgenderism and contextually transcend their meaning. This paper analyses the coexistence of both sacred (Madonna) and profane (Whore) archetypes in the characterization of the Neapolitan femminielli.

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5.Spiritual Hotbeds:(Counter)Narratives of HIV/AIDS in Sicily

Leonardo Campagna Issue: Category: Themed Section

by Leonardo Campagna

If we conceive of the Southern Question as an interpretative key to analyze contemporary history and politics, we realize that Italian LGBTQ+ historiography has hardly addressed the South. Through archival research and textual analysis, this paper proposes Sicily as a case study in the investigation of narratives on HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, with particular focus on the representation of body, sexuality, space, and serostatus. The first part examines media coverage of the AIDS crisis in Sicily,

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6.The Southern Queer Poetics of June Scialpi: Obliquity, Conflict, Magic

Marzia D'Amico Issue: Category: Themed Section

by Marzia D’Amico

June Scialpi’s poetry embodies a poetics of queerness and Southerness, intertwining marginalized identities, historical inheritances, and the fluidity of selfhood. Her work resists dominant cultural narratives by contesting patriarchal structures and advocating for an identity shaped through relationality, vulnerability, and transformation. This study examines how her engagement with themes of conflict and magic reframes the queer subject through a Southern Italian lens, where ritual and myth provide an alternative to normative frameworks of identity.

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7.A Queer Perspective on the Italian South? Some Methodological Notes; or, How to Read as a Southern Queer

Goffredo Polizzi Issue: Category: Invited Perspectives

by Goffredo Polizzi

This article develops a queer methodology to rethink Southern Italy by examining the intertwined histories of Italian emigration and colonialism, focusing on their gendered and sexualized dimensions. Challenging nationalist narratives, it foregrounds marginalized identities and destabilizes binaries such as Italian/foreigner and insider/outsider. By connecting internal and external colonial memories through a transnational lens, the approach engages with contemporary Italy’s migrant realities and social transformations. It offers a critical framework that fosters solidarity and deepens understandings of Southern Italy’s past,

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8.Within and Beyond the Queer Italian South: A Conversation with Francesca Romana Ammaturo

F.R. Ammaturo, P. Bonifazio, A. Parrinello Issue: Category: Invited Perspectives

by Francesca Romana Ammaturo, Paola Bonifazio and Alice Parrinello

This conversation explores Dr. Francesca Romana Ammaturo’s practice, stemming from her work on queerness in Apulia. It tackles key questions related to a new understanding of queerness in the South, such as the politics of (un)detectability, activism, the tension between being an insider/outsider, and tourism. At the same time, it touches upon academia, its taxonomizing tendencies, its contribution to activism, and its potential acts of critical fabulation.

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9.Southern Speculations on the Mediterranean Beach

Sergio Rigoletto Issue: Category: Invited Perspectives, Videos

Video presentation by Sergio Rigoletto (click on the link to start the video)

This position paper critically engages with the formulation “New Queer South” that gives the title to a recent special issue of gender/sexuality/Italy. It proposes to think about the queer south as a speculative geography in contradistinction to the dominant imaginary of the nation and the necropolitical border regime of Fortress Europe. Focusing on the Mediterranean beach as a spectral archive,

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10.Postcards from Sicily

Martina Martonsky Issue: Category: Invited Perspectives

by Martina Martonsky

Postcards from Sicily is a body of work started in 2021 that reimagines the figures of the monster and the animal—traditionally used to demonize women, queers, and Southerners—as guardians of an ancient, unruly power. Drawing from Mediterranean landscapes, the project explores the South as a space of queer, decolonial resistance, where hybrid and wild bodies exist unapologetically, in fierce intimacy with nature. Over time, the work has evolved into tracing a local cultural genealogy rooted in Greek mythology,

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11.“Orlando, où es tu?” Paul Beatriz Preciado’s Non-Binary Reading of Virginia Woolf

Andrea Raso Issue: Category: Open Contributions

by Andrea Raso

This article examines the positive influence that Paul Beatriz Preciado’s non-binary interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s oeuvre may have on Woolf studies in Italy, particularly when compared to readings developed by scholars aligned with the philosophy of sexual difference. By placing Woolf in dialogue with queer, trans, and non-binary discourses, Preciado expands the modernist writer’s legacy, reframing works such as Orlando (1928) as material-semiotic sites of ontopolitical and ethical inquiry.

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12.“The Actress Who Got Slapped the Most”: Monica Vitti’s Body as a Space of Conflict in Italian-Style Comedy (1969-1975)

Giulia Simi Issue: Category: Open Contributions

By Giulia Simi

Through the analysis of some of the characters played by Monica Vitti in the context of the Commedia all’italiana, the paper aims to explore the connection between the construction of the new women’s gender subjectivity and the male violence in the early years of Italian Neo-feminism. In particular, the analysis will focus on Amore mio aiutami (Alberto Sordi,

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