Organizers: Professor Catherine Ramsey-Portolano, Professor Lucia Tralli, Professor Jenny Petrucci, and Professor Francesca Conti
The Gender Dialogues in Italy conference will focus on examining the multifaceted and interdisciplinary dimensions of Gender Studies, while fostering a rich academic discourse and creative exchanges regarding gender within the Italian context, particularly addressing its intersections with culture and society.
In contemporary society, the lens of Gender Studies can be effectively utilized to investigate some of the most pressing issues within our current social landscape. In order to provide the enriching experience of collegial and multigenerational academic exchange, the conference organizers invite any members of academia or the general public who have an interest in Gender Studies to attend this open event. A full schedule of the day’s events will be published here on March 15.
Keynote Speaker:
MARGHERITA FERRI
Director of Il ragazzo dai pantaloni rosa (The Boy with the Pink Pants), which tells the true story of Andrea Spezzacatena, the 15-year-old Italian victim of bullying who took his own life on Nov. 20, 2012
As a screenwriter, Ferri won special mentions at the Solinas Storie per il Cinema Award and the Tonino Guerra Award with the screenplay The Hold.
In 2014, as part of a team of three directors/authors, she won the “Are you series?” competition of the Milano Film Festival and Banca Prossima, and made the webseries STATUS shot between Italy and Albania.
In 2015 she directed the docuseries “Chiedi a Papà” (Ask Dad) for Rai3, produced by Indigo Film and Ivan Cotroneo.
In 2016 she co-created a branded content documentary series about women fighting for social change in Arab countries produced by Filmmaster MEA for the Arab network MBC1.
Her first fiction feature, Zen sul ghiaccio sottile (Zen on Thin Ice), was a winner of the Biennale College Cinema program.
As a screenwriter, she then wrote the horror film The Nest, which screened at the Locarno Film Festival in 2019. In the same year, she was nominated as best emerging director at the Nastri d'Argento (Italian Press and Film Critics' Award) and won a special mention in the short film competition in 2022.
In 2024, she directed the documentary Cerchi, made for the Emiliano Romagnola Foundation for Victims of Crime and previewed at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna.
Ferri also works as a director for Netflix and Amazon Italy. She directed episodes of the Netflix original series ZERO (2021) and the Amazon Prime Video series Bang Bang Baby (2022), a women's drama set in the 1980s.
Ferri's cinema is celebrated for telling stories of education, diversity, identity research and social inclusion through a queer feminist lens.
Presentations on the day will be made by AUR faculty & students on issues related to any aspect of the conference topic. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
- Historical perspectives on gender in Italy.
- Historical and contemporary narratives of gender in Italian art, music, or performance.
- Gender in Italian literature, comparative analyses, feminist narratives, queer readings.
- The role of language and translation in shaping gendered identities.
- Gender and migration in Italy.
- Representations of gender in Italian media, digital cultures, and the role of social platforms.
- Gender identities, activism, and the sociopolitical landscape in Italy.
A buffet lunch will be provided for conference participants and attendees
For further details and to register your attendance, please complete the form below.
INFORMATION FOR AUR FACULTY & STUDENTS - CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The conference organizing committee invite proposals from all faculty and from the AUR student body (all programs) on issues related to any aspect of the conference topic (see above). Please submit abstracts (no longer than 300 words) of your proposed 20-minute presentation, together with a short biographical note, by 20 February 2025 to: genderdialogues@aur.edu. Accepted proposals will be notified by March 1 2025.
Register your attendance at forthcoming AUR events