Mamma Mia! Motherhood, Maternity, & the Female Reproductive Body in the Italian Cultural Context

3 units

This course explores representations of motherhood, maternity, and the reproductive female body in medical texts and anatomical models, art, literature, government policies, religious doctrine, the criminal courts, and film and media in Italy from the Middle Ages to the present day. As the epicenter of the Catholic Church, an ancient hub of medical science and innovation, the birthplace of Fascism, a European center of feminist separatism, and a modern democratic republic currently led by a rightwing woman prime minister, the first woman to hold the office, Italy has generated among the most influential and contested archetypes of maternity and the maternal body in Western culture. This course takes a micro historical and plurimedial approach. Each week of the semester we will closely examine specific textual and/or visual artifacts-from trial documents to wax anatomical models, paintings to canonization procedures, propaganda films to literary texts-to explore the question of maternity in and across Italian time and space.