Hurried Steps by Dacia Maraini

Research Summary

Research interests include modern narrative and theatre, Women’s intellectual history in late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century Italy; translation studies. I am the author of Italian women’s writing 1860-1994 (London 1995) and co-editor of the Cambridge History of Women’s Writing in Italy (Cambridge 2000) as well as further books on Elsa Morante and Grazia Deledda. Translations from Italian include texts by Romana Petri, Susanna Tamaro and Primo Levi. My translation of Dacia Maraini’s Hurried Steps (Passi Affrettati) continues to be performed by New Shoes Theatre Company, directed by Nicolette Kay.

Recent Publications

Principal publications: Books

• The challenge of modernity (Market Harborough 2007) 

• Under Arturo’s Star: the cultural legacy of Elsa Morante (edited with Stefania Lucamante, Purdue 2005)  Collaboration in the Arts from the Middle Ages to the present (edited with Silvia Bigliazzi, Ashgate 2005)

•  A history of women’s writing in Italy (edited with Letizia Panizza, Cambridge 2000) 

•  Italian women’s writing 1860-1994 (London 1995) 

• Italian women writing (ed), Manchester 1993 

• Woman as object: language and gender in the work of Alberto Moravia (London 1990)

 Recent articles and chapters include:

• ‘Cristina di Belgioioso: Scholar in exile’ in The Italianist 2012.

• ‘Murder in the harem: Belgioioso and Zobeidah’ in Mitchell and Sanson (eds) Women and gender in post-Unification Italy: Between public and private spheres (Peter Lang, 2013).

• Translation and the performative text: translating Dacia Maraini’s Passi affrettati’ in Differences on Stage (eds Puppa, De Martino, Toninato), Routledge 2013

• ‘Pirandello’s mise-en scène and the vanishing translation’ in Theatre translation in performance  (eds Bigliazzi, Ambrosi and Kefler) Routledge 2013

• ‘Milena Milani: eroticism and modernity’ in Scrittura femminile interstiziale: una 'finestra' sull'io modernista. Da Neera a Elsa Morante ed R. Riccobono, Oxford 2013

• ‘Textual tourism: Cecilia Stazzone meets Voltaire and Lady Margaret’ in The Italian Translator 2012

• ‘I primi romanzi di Dacia Maraini’ in Rileggendo Dacia Maraini (ed Juan Carlos de Miguel, Valencia 2010)

• ‘Fantasy, Narrative and the Natural World in the work of Anna Maria Ortese’ in The Italian Gothic and Fantastic. Encounters and Re-writings of Narrative Traditions (Madison: Fairleigh, 2007, eds Billiani and Sulis).

• Contemporary women’s theatre’ in Cambridge history of Italian theatre’ eds Paolo Puppa and Joseph Farrell. Cambridge 2006.

• ‘Transition and Transformation: 1950s Italy’ in Women and 1950s Italy, edited by Penny Morris. Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2006

• ‘Il teatro siciliano di Cecilia Stazzone’, Atti del Convegno della Società delle letterate, ed Ilaria Crotta and Ricciarda Ricorda, Venice 2003

• ‘Italian feminist narrative in the Twentieth Century’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, ed Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli, Cambridge 2003 

• 'Deconstructing historical narrative in Banti’s La camicia bruciata’, in The narratives of Anna Banti ed Paola Carù and Daria Valentini, North Carolina Press, 2003 

•  ‘Sicily and Sicilitudine in the novels of Silvana Grasso’, Romance Studies, Vol 20 (1), June 2002 pp. 89-99.

•  ‘Anna Franchi: escritura y pasión’ in Rapresentar y rapresentarse: Actas del congreso de Moguer 2001 ed Mercedes Arriaga.

•  ‘L’altra biblioteca: la scrittura delle donne’ in Il canone e la biblioteca, ed. Amadeo Quondam, Rome 2002.

•   ‘Parliamo di donne: Feminism and politics in the theatre of Franca Rame’ in Dario Fo and Franca Rame eds. Joseph Farrell and Antonio Scuderi, Carbondale 2001.

•   ‘Other voices: Contesting the status quo’ (with Joseph Farrell) in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture ed Zygmunt Baranski and Rebecca West, Cambridge 2001.

Published translations from Italian and Spanish (books only):

• For solo voice (Susanna Taramo), Carcanet Press (1995)

• Bitter asylum (Gabriella Maleti), Carcanet Press   (1996)

• Cardiofitness (Alessandra Montrucchio), Toby Press (1999)

• An Umbrian War (Romana Petri), Toby Press (2000)

• The dancing island (Romana Petri), Toby Press (2002)

• The three musketeers (Marcelo Birmajer), Toby Press (2005)

• The black hole of Auschwitz (Primo Levi), Polity Press (2005)

• Hurried steps (play by Dacia Maraini in collaboration with Amnesty International), currently on tour with New Shoes Theatre Company (2010)

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