Women of a Certain Age: Contemporary Italian Fictions of Female AgingRita C. Cavigioli
About the Author:
Rita Cavigioli currently teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she is Assistant Professor of Italian for the Department of Romance Literatures, Joint Clinical Assistant Professor for the School of Nursing, and Director of Education at the university’s Center of Excellence on Aging. She received a laurea from the University of Torino, an MA from the University of Washington, and a PhD from UCLA.
Situated at the crossroads of gender studies, narratology, and cultural studies, this book investigates the impact that the demographic and cultural revolutions of the last century have had on Italian women’s life courses. The chronological focus of this study is the 1990s, a decade located at the end of a century deeply marked by women’s search for identity, their growth as historical subjects, and the demographic explosion of older women in Italy’s population. The author’s critical response is directed toward sensitizing readers of Italian women’s fiction to a life-course perspective and guiding their responses to the age-based constructions that pervade the Italian cultural imaginary. Her assumption is that age consciousness affects narrative strategies; the critical questions and concerns that she addresses are incentives and guidelines to age-conscious reading and literary criticism. The study is divided into two parts that represent an ideal progression from contexts to texts. In the first par, the author traces changes in the representations of women’s aging bodies during different phases of Italian history. The age-related cultural discourses she discusses in the first part of the book are in dialogue with the aging scenarios presented in the novels analyzed in the second part.
Read an Interview with the author: ISBN 0-8386-4065-6
About FDU Press New Releases Features Recent Publications by Topic Recent Book Reviews Book Reviews by Topic Submission Guidelines
TO ORDER BOOKS:
2010 Eastpark Boulevard
Cranbury, New Jersey 08512
Phone (609) 655-4770
Fax (609) 655-8366
TO REQUEST A CATALOGUE:
M-GH2-01
285 Madison Avenue
Madison, New Jersey 07940
Phone (973) 443-8564
Fax (973) 443-8364
fdupress@fdu.edu
TO RECEIVE UPDATES ON NEWLY RELEASED TITLES BY EMAIL:
fdupress@fdu.edu
The FDU Press has particular strengths in literary studies, world history and politics, biography, film, ethnic studies, sociology, the Civil War, art, religion, local history, and urban studies.
