In memory of Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998)
This transnational symposium will address, with a comparative approach, the relationship between women writers and the Mediterranean, considered as a diverse region of interconnected histories and identities. A particular focus will be dedicated to the Italian novelist Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998). With its unprecedented tensions and oscillations between vivid realism and visionary transcendence, reportage and utopia, exactness and hallucination, outrage and enchantment, modernist allegory and postmodern fluidity, Ortese’s work is highly innovative, yet suggests many possible parallels with the experience of other important modern and contemporary Mediterranean/European women writers, from Fatema Mernissi, Hélène Cixous and Assia Djebar to lesser known figures such as Elisa Chimenti, Danielle Barcelo-Guez, Leda Rafanelli, Etel Adnan and Ibtihal Salem.More at http://www.italian.ucla.edu/events.html