Queering Italian Media

Queering Italian Media analyzes and offers queer readings of LGBTQIA+ representation in Italian media. The contributors apply various understandings of "queer" and "media" as they discuss the relationship between the political and social lives of queer populations in Italy and investigate their representations in film, news media, television, social media, and viewer-generated media sites. Queering Italian Media examines queer positionality, challenges notions of Italianness as it relates to and is reflected in media, and queers understandings of viewer engagement and participation in media consumption and production.

Queering Italian Media is a ground-breaking collection which brings queer theory to bear on a range of Italian media content, including newspapers, auteur cinema, mainstream film comedy, game shows, and fan remediations of TV productions. It asks provocative questions about the relationship of queer identities and positions to mainstream media culture and the possibility of productive queer spaces being opened up by fandoms. It shows the importance of queering identities, media texts, and viewing positions, and offers an illuminating and diverse set of readings that engage both theory and the queer experience in Italy. The volume allows for a new understanding of how media texts and ecosystems situate themselves, and are experienced, within a heteronormative national context like the Italian one.

Sole Anatrone is assistant professor of Italian studies at Vassar College and co-founder of Asterisk, an LGBTQIA+ inclusivity taskforce.Julia Heim is instructor of Italian language at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Asterisk, an LGBTQIA+ inclusivity taskforce.