Transnational Female Identity and Literary Narratives Between Italy and Eastern Europe
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Cartographies of Estrangement: Transnational Female Identity and Literary Narratives between Italy and Eastern Europe A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Italian by Renata Redford 2016 © Copyright by Renata Redford 2016 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Cartographies of Estrangement: Transnational Female Identity and Literary Narratives between Italy and Eastern Europe by Renata Redford Doctor of Philosophy in Italian University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Lucia Re, Chair This dissertation investigates a vital body of women’s writing in Italian about the estranging effects of migration in order to emphasize the articulation of a literary discourse that undermines conventional depictions of the Eastern European female migrant. I provide evidence of the emergence in their work of a distinctly transnational approach to literary writing (narrative in particular), founded on a creative way of addressing questions of estrangement, the body, and memory. I consider the work of three authors, who have yet to be fully acknowledged in the Italian literary landscape: the Italophone writers Jarmila Očkayová (1955-present; Italo- Slovakian) and Ingrid Beatrice Coman (1971-present; Italo-Romanian living in Malta), and Marisa Madieri (1938-1996; Italo-Hungarian from Istria), whose native language was Italian. My analysis focuses on the stylistic, thematic, and structural elements that Očkayová, Coman and Madieri employ to engage with and re-envision European models of female subjectivity and national belonging. The scope of the project is multi-faceted: I attempt to 1) highlight the ii importance of these authors who have yet to be fully recognized by the Italian literary establishment; 2) demonstrate their critical engagement with transnationalism, illustrating how my take on transnationalism and the figure of the transnational are more appropriate to define their literary output than the traditional and racially charged figure of the “migrant” in Italian literature; 3) discuss their resistance to Eurocentric constructions of woman, emphasizing their feminist politics of location, which reflects new directions in European women’s ideas of intersubjectivity; and finally, 4) suggest how critics may conceive of new pathways for reading the literary identity of women as well as migrants. The authors highlighted in this dissertation, through their literary works, envision a transnational female subject and project new ways of “Italian” belonging that exist in a cultural and historical space of transcultural overlap, resisting patriarchal ideologies and drawing from the collective memories of various cultural traditions. Očkayová, Coman and Madieri not only use estrangement (as first defined by Victor Shklovsky) as a narrative strategy to interrupt Eurocentric ideologies, but also create new figurations of femininity that redefine belonging. iii The dissertation of Renata Redford is approved. John A. Agnew Thomas J. Harrison Claudio Fogu Lucia Re, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………....1 CHAPTER 1: THE “OTHER WITHIN” IN JARMILA OĆKAYOVÁ’S L’ESSENZIALE È INVISIBILE AGLI OCCHI…........…28 CHAPTER 2: MULTIDIRECTIONAL VISIONS IN INGRID BEATRICE COMAN’S PER CHI CRESCONO LE ROSE….........77 CHAPTER 3: “BORDER-BEING” IN MARISA MADIERI’S VERDE ACQUA AND LA RADURA……………………….135 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………...……………………… 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………...………………………………………………………………….…203 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many have inspired and aided this dissertation. First and foremost, the completion of this project could not have been possible without the intellectual guidance and support of my adviser, Professor Lucia Re. Her belief in and critical readings of my work have shaped me both as a scholar and as a feminist. I would like to thank Professor Claudio Fogu for his extensive feedback on the historical and theoretical sections of this project. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Professors Thomas Harrison and John Agnew, for their stimulating critical feedback. I would like to acknowledge the writers whose work inspired this project – Ingrid Beatrice Coman, Jarmila Očkayová, and Marisa Madieri – for sharing with me not only their work, but for their generous correspondence. I am particularly indebted to Madieri’s husband, Claudio Magris, for his generosity in sharing with me invaluable papers that belonged to the late Marisa Madieri. This project was written and researched in Los Angeles, Rome, Florence, and Baia-Mare with generous dissertation grants from the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Center for the Study of Women, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. I am also indebted to Miruna Cajvaneau, a journalist at HotNews in Rome, who first helped me to locate invaluable resources regarding the Romanian presence in Italy. My heartfelt and deep thanks go to Mireille Rebeiz-Suver, Daphne Rosenblatt, Rachel Moy, and Amy Karoll for their sisterhood; Matthew Merrifield, Truman Lusson, and Andrew Hiltzik for their support, and my colleagues at UCLA who have all helped me through the critical phases of not only this project, but throughout my graduate career. My thanks also goes to Allison Van Deventer, Kate Epstein and my friend Raymond Fleming, whose belief in young scholars has provided me with an endless source of inspiration. This dissertation is dedicated to my family, Dusty and Charlie. I am particularly grateful to my mother, Leah Balogh George, who risked everything and defected from the Ceaușescu regime with a small child. I did not know then, during those years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, that we would embark on a journey that not only would change the course of both of our lives, but would also inspire the subject of this dissertation. You inspire me, by example, to go boldly in the direction of my convictions. To my little sister Curstin, a special wish: Buon viaggio! This dissertation is also dedicated to my husband, Nathan Taylor, whose endless support and encouragement may be felt in the tenor of these pages. vi CURRICULUM VITAE EDUCATION 2008-10 M.A. in Italian Studies, Florida State University 2004-08 B.A. in British and English Literature, University of Florida, summa cum laude HONORS AND AWARDS 2014-15 Dissertation Year Fellowship 2014 Jean Stone Summer Dissertation Grant, Gender Studies, UCLA 2014 Center for European and Eurasian Studies Travel Grant, UCLA 2012 Foreign Language & Area Studies Summer Grant, U.S. Dept. of Education, Romanian 2011 UCLA Conference Travel Grant 2011 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies Pre-Dissertation Fellowship 2010-11 UCLA Full-Fellowship Year 2010 Graduate Research Assistantship, Florida State University 2009 Outstanding Graduate Student in Italian Award, Florida State University 2009 Winthrop-King Conference Travel Grant, Florida State University 2008-10 Winthrop King Teaching Assistant Supplement, Florida State University 2008 Elected to Beta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, University of Florida TEACHING EXPERIENCE UCLA: 2014 “Dante in English Translation.” 2013-14 Teaching Assistant Coordinator of Italian 2013-14 Teaching Fellow in Italian 2013 Teaching Fellow for Summer Study-Abroad Program in Rimini, Italy; "Advanced Italian Sequence" for UCLA undergraduates. 2013 "Italy through the Ages in English: Modern and Contemporary Italy: Italian Migrations and Interethnic Encounters.” 2011-12 Graduate Instructor of Italian, all levels, I-VI. Florida State University: 2008-10 Graduate Instructor of Record, Italian, Beginning Italian Sequence. PUBLICATIONS “Ghostly Embodiments of Migration: Jarmila Očkayová’s Aesthetics of Estrangement and Transnationalism in L'essenziale è invisibile agli occhi” (under review at MLN). Review of Simone Brioni, The Somali Within. Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian literature. Oxford: Legenda, 2015 (accepted for publication in Forum Italicum, 2016). Review of Deborah Amberson, Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature: Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda. London: Legenda, 2012. Vol. 48, Forum Italicum May 2014, 133-135. vii Review of Stefania Lucamante, A Multitude of Women: the Challenges of the Contemporary Italian Novel. Toronto Italian Studies Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Vol. 87, No. 3, Autumn Italica 2010. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS 2015 “From Violence to Vanguard: Italophone Women’s Transnational Literature in the Post-Cold War Era,” 2015 ACLA Conference. Seattle, WA. 2014 “The Peculiar Case of Italian Migration Literature: Women's ‘Transnational’ Literature from East to West," 2014 Society for Italian Studies Interim Conference: "Interstitial Italy: Reassessing Global Questions through the 'Peculiar' Italian Case." British School in Rome, Italy. 2013 "Figurations of Space and Place in Italophone Writing from the East," 2013 Echi oltremare Conference. Rome, Italy. 2013 “Per chi crescono le rose: Transnational considerations in the Italo-Romanian Writing of Ingrid Beatrice Coman," 2013 CICIS Conference. UC Berkeley, CA. 2012 “Speaking from the Margin: the Romanian Case in Italian Migrant Literature,” NeMLA 2012 Conference. Rochester, NY. 2012 “Under the Red Flag:” Constructions of Otherness in the work of Italo-Romanian Ingrid Beatrice Coman,” UCLA 2012 (Dis)Unity in Italy Conference. Los Angeles, CA. 2011 “Maria Zef: A New