Francesca Zambolin ( University of Calgary)

How do women write experiences of war when dominant narratives have marginalized their participation in the Resistance? Long overlooked, women’s narratives of the Italian Resistance (1943– 1945) function as acts of counter-memory, challenging dominant, male-centered historiography, and the literary canon. Drawing on the writings of four authors (Ada Gobetti, Renata Viganò, Tina Merlin, and Carla Capponi), the study traces women’s experiences across four interconnected dimensions: clandestine mobility and the figure of the staffetta; motherhood and care; violence; and the postwar silences that shaped how women’s contributions were remembered or forgotten. Bringing close textual analysis into dialogue with oral history, film, and memory studies, I argue that these women’s writings resist official erasure and insist on the political significance of partisan women. In doing so, they transform writing itself into a form of continued resistance.

September 25, 2026 | 1:00 pm (Mountain Time)

Zoom (ID: 950 1955 4703 / Passcode 281514)