We are thrilled to announce that Michela Valmori, our Visiting Lecturer of Italian, has successfully completed a PhD in Comparative Literature at Birkbeck University, London. Her dissertation, titled “Unsafe Bodies: A Kleinian Reading of Violence and Patriarchy in Italian American Female-Authored Writing,” offers a psychoanalytical exploration of gender, trauma, and patriarchal violence in Italian American literature.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Michela Valmori on this remarkable academic milestone!
Dissertation abstract:
Italian American gender literature has, in recent times, given voice to female migrants silenced by ancient patriarchal constructs that were replicated by Italian American communities. In these societies, men ruled, while women were confined to household roles and often subjected to brutal outbursts of patriarchal violence. Despite the prevalence of this pattern in Italian American gender writing, literary criticism has largely overlooked its significance.
My thesis addresses this deficiency by examining the memoirs of five Italian American female writers: Vertigo by Louise DeSalvo, ‘Go to Hell’ by Nancy Caronia, Unto the Daughters by Karen Tintori, With or Without You by Domenica Ruta, and The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging by Kym Ragusa. These works have breached omertà to shape the outlines of a new literary sub-genre focused on female agency and the trauma of violated bodies.
I approach the memoirs from the psychoanalytical standpoint of Melanie Klein whose framework serves to re-interpret fear, sadism, death drive, and violence against female corporeality. Her empirical observations equip us with a deeper understanding of how a pater familias reacts to perceived betrayal, shedding new light on how threats associated with femininity are translated into specific social reactions within patriarchal regimes. Specifically, my methodology involves detailed textual analysis of the narratives, exploring incest, rape, honour killing, self-starvation, drug abuse, and race. This work investigates how violence against women reflects unconscious aggression, inspired by the frustrations that deceived men perceive as being inflicted by women.
By applying Klein’s feminist psychoanalytic lens, this thesis pioneers a fresh interpretation of “female corporeality” in Italian American literature. It deepens our understanding of female corporeal trauma, exposes patriarchal violence, and investigates the brutal onslaught of women, thereby enriching the knowledge of Italian American gender literature.
