Elites, women and activism in Italy (1890-1920). Monograph by Elena Laurenzi and Manuela Mosca

Elena Laurenzi (Seminari Filosofia i Gènere-ADHUC, Università del Salento) and Manuela Mosca (Università del Salento / Università di Bologna) are the editors of Female Activist Elites in Italy (1890-1920). Its International Network and Legacy (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021). The book collects essays by international academics and scholars, who address –at a historical, historiographical and methodological level– the study of women activists in Italian feminism between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, with particular reference to works of political philanthropy.

The first section includes the contributions of Manuela Mosca, Luciana Buseghin and Idanna Pucci on three American women established in Italy, understudied or completely absent in historical literature until now: Harriet Luthrop Dunham; Alice Hallgarten Franchetti; Cora Slocomb de Brazza. These figures act as "spies" of a political culture shared by the female activist elites of the time: emancipationism; the Arts and Craft movement; modernism and religious reformism; innovative theories of care and education (Steiner, Montessori); anticolonialism; pacifism. The second section brings together three chapters by Elena Laurenzi, who investigates the transmission of this political and cultural heritage through three generations of women from southern Italy belonging to the De Viti de Marco-Starace family. The third section includes three critical contributions made by Marisa Forcina, Lucia Denitto, Fina Birulés and À. Lorena Fuster, who face historiographical and methodological questions raised by the research and suggest their possible developments.

This book is a result of the Archivio Archivio vivo. La memoria delle donne De Viti de Marco-Starace come risorsa per il territorio (REFIN - 1V3B578).