In the period 1940-1965 the female prostitute featured in at least 10 per cent of Italian-made films. This book explains why she was so prevalent in Italian cinema of this period and offers a new account of her on-screen presence. The author shows that prostitutes in Italian cinema are much more than simply 'tarts with hearts' or martyr figures.

“Our lives are Swiss,” Emily Dickinson wrote in 1859, “So still—so cool.” But over the Alps, “Italy stands the other side.” For Dickinson, as for many other writers and artists, Italy has been the land of light, a seductive source of invention, enchantment, and freedom. So it was for Helen Barolini, who, as a student in Rome after World War II, wrote her first poetry and gave birth to her own creative life, reinvigorating her mother tongue. In this book, Barolini celebrates the lives of other women whose imaginations succumbed to the lure of Italy. Here Barolini profiles six gifted women transformed by Italy’s mythic appeal. Unlike Barolini herself, they were not daughters of the great Italian diaspora. Rather, they were drawn to an idea of “Italy” and its gifts—in whose welcome a new self could be created. Or discovered. Emily Dickinson traveled to Italy only in the imaginative genius of her verse. Margaret Fuller struggled alongside her Italian lover in the political revolutions that gave birth to the Italian Republic, while the novelist and short-story writer Constance Fennimore Woolson found her home in Venice and Florence. Here, too, is the flamboyant artist Mabel Dodge Luhan, entertaining at her villa near Florence; and Marguerite Chapin of Connecticut, who married an Italian prince and in Rome founded the premier literary review of the mid-century, Botteghe Oscure. Finally, here is Iris Cutting Origo, the Anglo-American heiress who, with her Italian nobleman husband, built a Tuscan estate, where she wrote acclaimed biographies—and created a refuge from Mussolini’s fascism. Linking these lives, Barolini shows, is the transforming catalyst of change in a new land. Their Other Side is a wise, warm, and deeply felt literary journey that brilliantly captures the enduring effects of Italy as a place, a culture, and an experience.

This book is the first part of Gianna Patriarca's trilogy on Italian women. Winner of the Milton Acorn award, the collection remains popular today almost 20 years after it was first published.

Co-published by: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.

Karyn Crisis has been able to sense the "unseen world of passed-on relatives, angels, and ghosts since childhood. Training as a Spiritualist Medium as an adult, she became a popular platform Medium and healer in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2009, she took a fateful trip to Italy's Tuscany Region, which would have a lasting impact far beyond what she could have ever imagined: Goddesses from Italy's history suddenly began appearing to Karyn as clearly as other spirit people had, and they began transmitting to her the information of a most interesting cultural melting pot in Italy that gave rise to its unique and complex spiritual landscape. Among the information shared was the knowledge of Italy's own indigenous Lineage healing, a female shamanism hiding in-plain-sight that can be traced back to pre-pagan times. One thing was clear: Mediumship was and is the cornerstone of all these traditions by advancing the quality of life through previously hidden knowledge from the spirit world handed down to earth. Following the guidance of the Goddesses, Karyn returned to Italy where she embarked on a long and intensive research study. Taking cures from "streghe," meeting herbalists on mountain tops, experiencing a 6 hour ancestral fire ritual with secret shaman called Benandanti, interviewing local authors and museum curators and folk lore experts, and walking on the remains of the Goddess Diana's 2,000 year old temple, Karyn found the historical evidence to support what the Goddesses had shown her in visions. Volume 1 also provides a comprehensive spiritual history of the "Italian Witch" and reveals an important matrilineal living practice supplanted by the patriarchal invasions of pre-pagan times, whose acts of repression still affect the world today, revealing a groundbreaking history of women. Also find practical tips to reconnect with this female Lineage.

"For the common reader as well as the professional one, Victoria de Grazia opens doors and sheds new light on a fascinating subject."—Mary Gordon, author of The Other Side

English translations of the author's most important articles.

The book examines the experiences of Black women in Italy from the 1970s to the 1990s. Although Italy is still perceived as a recent immigration country, the book demonstrates how Black women were among the first groups of new migrants to the country. Black women migrating to Italy were employed almost exclusively as live-in domestic workers and detailed attention is paid to the history and political organization of this sector. Unlike much published work in Italian, this book adopts an integrated form of analysis where gender, ethnicity and class are seen to be interconnected constructs. The book also situates Black women within the framework of the national constituency of gender. This approach challenges the ideology surrounding the Italian family and demonstrates that while live-in domestic work created specific forms of social marginality for Black women, it paradoxically allowed Italian women to express their new social identities within and outside the family. The book concludes that Italian women have largely failed in their attempts to transform the division of labour within the home and that the decision to employ other (migrant) women to fulfill household tasks is a trend which sits uneasily within the framework of an inclusive feminist project for women.

In the Mother of Invention in their analyses of literature, painting, sculptures, film, and fashion, the contributors explore the politics of invention articulated by these women as they negotiated prevailing ideologies.

In Renaissance Italy women from all walks of life played a central role in health care and the early development of medical science. Observing that the frontlines of care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Sharon Strocchia encourages us to rethink women's place in the history of medicine.