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A Fabulous Archive: Encounters with Porpora Marcasciano
18 January - 19 January
Organized 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)
Thursday 18 January
Book launch of Porpora Marcasciano’s AntoloGaia: Queering the Seventies, A Radical Trans Memoir (Rutgers University Press, 2023)
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.
Friday 19 January
NOG Masterclass ‘Queer and Trans Archives and Activisms’
In this masterclass, participants will have a chance to encounter Porpora Marcasciano’s archive, to explore the political and epistemological challenges involved in building and working with queer and trans archives, and to discuss their own feminist, queer, and trans research projects with Marcasciano herself.
Friday 19 January
Film screening Porpora (Directed by Roberto Cannavò, 60min, Italy, 2021)
The battles of ’77, the crazy Roman nights, political commitment. On a road trip, the leader of the Italian trans movement, Porpora Marcasciano, relives her political and human education with Vittorio, a witness from a new generation. The journey towards her Southern hometown is a discovery of the effects of the past on the present, between intimate stories and encounters with historical figures of the trans movement and the femminielli community of Naples.