With Lorella Zanardo
Thursday, Oct 12
5:00PM in HUMN 250
Watched by millions on people, the scathing documentary "Women's Bodies" denounces the pervasive, manipulative exploitation of the woman's body in Italian TV and on the Web. In Zanardo's words, "it all started with the observation that women- real women- are an endangered species on television, one that is being replaced by a widespread, grotesque, vulgar, and humiliating representation".
Reflecting on Italian women's collective image in the media, Zanardo challenges a dominant model of femininity that damages Italian women's identity. Her current project, the Media Education Program "New Eyes for the Media", aims at raising awareness among students and teachers of gender stereotypes and sexist language in the media.
Co-sponsored by the CWCTP, the Italian Cultural Institute at Chicago, and by the French and Italian Department at the University of Colorado. Reception immediately following. Please see colorado.edu/frenchitalian for more information.
Results: (From Cosetta Seno, grant recipient): "Meeting in person with Lorella Zanardo has deepened my grasp of the media side on how the objectification of the woman’s body has informed the Italian culture and literature in the past 20 years. Lorella Zanardo and I are planning to continue to cooperate by integrating my academic perspective on Italian feminism with her “media activist” perspective. I have recently written an article on how 1990’s Italian feminism has informed the writing of some major 20th Century Italian women authors. I am now in the process of writing a new article where I analyze how 21st Century Italian Women authors have been influenced in their writing, by the media objectification of their body. This translates into a totally different type of self-representation and in a newly defined form of autobiography. As president of the Women’s Studies Caucus for the American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS), I am also planning to organize a panel on contemporary Italian Feminism and its ramifications on Italian culture. I look forward to sharing my research with a wide variety of American and European colleagues at the next AAIS conference in Sorrento, Italy."
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