Book Launch: Porpora Marcasciano’s AntoloGaia

On 18 January, Italian activist Porpora Marcasciano will launch her book AntoloGaia: Queering the Seventies, A Radical Trans Memoir. She will be in dialogue with Gianmaria Colpani (Gender Studies, Utrecht University), Monica Jansen (Italian Language and Culture, Utrecht University), Marijke Huisman (Cultural History, Utrecht University), and Vreer Sirenu (TGEU and Principle 17, Amsterdam).

AntoloGaia

AntoloGaia offers an insider’s look at the beginnings of the gay liberation movement in Italy and reveals how it was intimately intertwined with other forms of left-wing activism. At the same time, it powerfully conveys the queer joy of a young person from a small village first encountering the vibrant sexual minority communities of Naples, Bologna, and Rome.

As Marcasciano starts to embrace her trans identity, she meets the famous anthropologist Pino Simonelli, who introduces her to Naples’s unique femminielli subculture and gives her the name Porporino, which she later shortens to Porpora. In keeping with this story of gender, sexual, and political discovery, AntoloGaia is the first piece of Italian life-writing to use gender-neutral and mixed-gender language.

The working languages of the book launch will be Italian and English (with simultaneous translation).

A Fabulous Archive series

The book launch is part of the A Fabulous Archive: Encounters with Porpora Marcasciano series, organised and sponsored by The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG), Masterlanguage, the Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP), the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication (TLC) – Italian, and the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON). You’re also welcome to join us for our other events. For more information, click here.