italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Dear list members,
With apologies for cross-posting, I attach details of a forthcoming conversation between Benedetta Bini and Donald Sassoon on:
“Prisoners of war”: women’s writing in Rome, World War 2, 1943
BENEDETTA BINI IN CONVERSATION WITH DONALD SASSON
Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square: Wednesday 19 March starting at 6.30 p.m.
Never have autobiographies, letters and diaries been so revealing and unusual as those written by a group of women during the Nazi occupation of Rome, “città aperta”, in 1943. They were “prisoners of war”, condemned to hide in the struggle to keep alive and protect themselves and their families.
The talk will focus on the experience of war as it was recorded – or later remembered – by these silent witnesses: women who shared a middle-class background of affluence, leisure, and who were taken almost by surprise by the outbreak of war and especially by the sudden armistice hurriedly signed by Badoglio. Rome, the city which more than any other was the victim of the German invasion, uncannily comes to life in their writing as a tragic and unusual scenario of modern ruins.
Benedetta Bini is full professor of English Literature at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo). She has written extensively on nineteenth and twentieth-century English and American literature and on women’s writings. From 1996 to 2000 she was Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London.
Donald Sasson, Emeritus Professor of Comparative European History, was born in Cairo and educated in Paris, Milan, London and the USA. He has obtained degrees from UCL and Penn State, and a PhD from Birkbeck under Eric Hobsbawm’s supervision. He has taught at Queen Mary/ Westfield College all his life but also lectured at universities throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, and spoken at conferences in over forty countries.
Free Event Booking Online at: http://www.icilondon.esteri.it
(sent by Michael Caesar: [log in to unmask])
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