In my forthcoming monograph, Food and Emotions in Italian Women’s Writing. A Reassessment (University of Toronto Press) I highlight the political meaning of food imagery in fictional, poetic, and historical writing, as well as in the many initiatives taken by women around food. I argue that food imaginaries are forms of expression of personal emotions used either to counteract dominant views and norms or else to project alternative visions and analyses. In different ways throughout the decades, the marginality of women’s bodies and positions has found in the conceptual domain of food the possibility to express forms of selfhood that push the boundaries of dominant concepts of womanhood and interact with the cultural and political panoramas at the national and international levels. Over a period that goes from the 1920s to the present time, The Taste of Emotions reconstructs an alternative history of Italian women and their creativity. It shows how the interplay of the senses and emotions is a profitable way to illuminate overlooked aspects of women’s subjectivity. It reassesses women’s writing giving value to the marginality of women’s bodies and positions through the conceptual domain of food. This research has been supported by a fellowship at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London, and a Fellowship at Seton Hall University, New Jersey.
My research on food and emotions has generated two conferences, public engagement initiatives, and several outputs. I was awarded a public engagement grant to take my food and war research to the War Museum of Scotland and the Italian Cultural Institute in Edinburgh during the Being Human Festival 2019.
A recent publication is my analysis of the dynamics and experiences of the black market in WWII Italy Modern Italy 29, no. 1 (2024): 38–50, doi:10.1017/mit.2023.56 OA.
My interest in emotion studies started with my work on memory and nostalgia. I edited the volume Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Trauma and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture (FDUP, 2018). More here.
My previous research publications include my monograph Corporeal Bonds: the Daughter-Mother Relationship in Twentieth-Century Italian Women’s Writing (UTP, 2012) where I uncovered a bond between mother and daughter structured on extra-lingual communication, indeed a corporeal bond. The book has been translated into Italian with the title Corpi e linguaggi (Il Poligrafo, 2014). My research interest in bodies, gender and sexualities has also led me to investigate the interrelations between subjects and spatialities. My edited volume Italian Women Writers 1800-2000: Boundaries, Borders and Transgression (FDUP, 2014) brings together scholars of three continents and deals with concepts of spatial and cultural boundaries, hybridity and border identities as interpreted by Italian women writers and poets. My article in this volume analyses Matilde Serao’s accounts of her journeys to Egypt and Jerusalem, as well as to various places in Italy. With this study, I engage with women’s travel writing and visions of the Orient, topics that I investigate again, as part of my research about visions of Europe and colonial Libya in 1930s travel writing.
I have always been keen on the impact of my discipline on the wider community. In Melbourne, I founded and organised in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture the series of research seminars ‘Research in Italian Studies in Melbourne’ (RISM).