Mammamia Figure Italiane Del Materno / Italian Figures of Motherhood

The “mamma,” with her strong and inborn maternal instinct, is so deeply rooted in our collective imagination that it ended up being a cliché we cannot separate from the Italian cultural context. This course will explore the historical and theoretical complexities of such a commonplace by focusing on various figures of motherhood in literature, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and cinema. From the Virgin Mary to the surrogate mother in recent feminist debates, the course will inquire into the rhetorical strategies on which the myth of motherliness has been built.