Dead Silent: Life Stories of Girls and Women Killed by the Italian Mafias, 1878-2018
Robin Pickering-Iazzi
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Tuesday, March 2nd | 12:45 - 2:00
Prof. Pickering-Iazzi’s talk will focus first on mafia violence, which forms an economic, social, cultural and political resource, whose particular modes are expertly devised to fulfill specific aims, and also bear symbolic meanings for survivors, the community, and sometimes the State. Shifting focus to selected life stories of victims of mafia murder, the talk will examine what the bodies of evidence can tell us about the relations between the Italian mafias and economic, social and political power arrangements in their local, national, and global dimensions. The talk is also concerned with a range of ways to oppose the glocal Italian mafias, whether by becoming informed consumers or through inventive acts of “remediation” that create online testimonial communities.
Robin Pickering-Iazzi is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature in the Department of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies, and editor of the acclaimed volumes The Italian Antimafia,New Media, and the Culture of Legality and Mafia and Outlaw Stories in Italian Life and Literature. She is currently working on a book that examines representations of feminicide in Italian literature, film, and media.
Please contact Professor Cosetta Seno for Zoom link (cosetta.seno@colorado.edu)