This volume brings together specialists from a variety of disciplines to develop a deeper understanding of the social, political, and cultural history of women in Italy in the years 1946-1960. Despite being a time when women and the family were at the center of national debates, and when society changed considerably, the fifteen years following the Second World War have tended to be overlooked or subsumed into discussions of other periods. By focusing on the experience of women and by broadening the frame of reference to include subjects and sources often ignored, or only alluded to, by traditional analyses, the essays in this volume break new ground and provide a corrective to previous interpretive models.

Autorentext
PENELOPE MORRISis Lecturer in Italian, University of Glasgow, UK.

Inhalt
Introduction; P. Morris 'What' as Ideal and 'Who' as Real: Portrait of Wives and Mothers in Italian Postwar Domestic Manuals, Fiction, and Film; R. West Marriage, Motherhood, and the Italian Film Stars of the 1950s; R. Buckley From Bust to Boom: Women and Representations of Prosperity in Italian Cinema of the Late 1940s and 1950s; M. P. Wood Signorina Buonasera - Images of Women in Early Italian Television; S. Gundle City of Women: Sex and Sports at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games; N. Zonis Scene femminili: Educational Theater for Women; D. Cavallaro The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca's Le italiane si confessano; P. Morris Prostitutes and Politicians: The Women's Right Movement in the Legge Merlin Debates; M. Tambor Women's Writing in the Postwar Period; S. Wood 'Feminist' Fictions? Representations of Self and (M) Other in the Works of Anna Banti; U. Fanning Re/Constructing Domestic Space: INA-Casa and Public Housing in Postwar Rome or Women's Space in a Man-Made World; E. Nerenberg 'I don't want to die': Prostitution and Narrative Disruption in Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli; D. Hipkins Strong Women and Nontraditional Mothers: The Female Figures in Napoli Milionaria! and Filumena Marturano by Eduardo de Filippo; D. Fischer What Do Mothers Want? Takes on Motherhood in Bellissima, Il Grido, and Mamma Roma; L. Caldwell Index