The internationally acclaimed and prize-winning author Dacia Maraini is joining the University of Pennsylvania for her first time to discuss her latest works in conversation with Alessandro Vettori, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. The event is the result of the fruitful cooperation of three institutions in the Philadelphia area: the Center for Italian Studies at UPenn, Bryn Mawr College and the Consulate General of Italy in Philadelphia.
Dacia Maraini will present her two most recent books: the English translation of her novel on Clare of Assisi (In Praise of Disobedience, transl. Jane Tylus, Rutgers University Press, 2023), and the collection of the historical essays and articles on women’s rights that she has written throughout her long career (In nome di Ipazia, Solferino, 2023). In her presentation, Maraini will tell how, as an engaged civic writer and a non-denominational activist, she got inspired by the religious figure of Clare of Assisi, a 13th-century Italian woman who followed the example of Saint Francis and was then proclaimed saint by the Catholic Church. She will explain why Clare’s choice for disobedience was revolutionary for her times, and she will compare her destiny to other influential female figures that pioneered the claim for women’s rights. Dacia Maraini will then shed a fascinating new light on the lives of many early modern women who in the silence of convents liberated themselves from the chains of materialism and patriarchy and became inspirational figures for our times.