Futurist Women ─ Florence, Feminism and the New Sciences

Futurist Women broadens current debates on Futurism and literary studies by demonstrating the expanding global impact of women Futurist artists and writers in the period succeeding the First World War. This study initially focuses on the local: the making of the self in the work by the women who were affiliated with the journal L'Italia futurista during World War I in Florence. But then it broadens its field of inquiry to the global. It compares the achievements of these women with those of key precursors and followers. It also conceives these women's work as an ongoing dialogue with contemporary political and scientific trends in Europe and North America, especially first wave feminism, eugenics, naturism and esotericism. Finally, it examines the vital importance and repercussions of these women's ideas in current debates on gender and the posthuman condition. This ground-breaking study will prove invaluable for all scholars and upper-level students of modern European literature, Futurism, and gender studies.

Paola Sica is Associate Professor and Chair of Italian Studies at Connecticut College, USA. Her publications, both in English and Italian, include a book on comparative modernism, Modernist Forms of Rejuvenation: Eugenio Montale and T.S. Eliot (2003), and various articles on twentieth-century literature and culture - especially modernism and the avant-garde - in such journals as Italica, Annali d'Italianistica, Modern Language Note, Yale Italian Poetry, Quaderni d'italianistica and Italian Quarterly. She has presented her work in numerous academic and cultural settings internationally, including the MLA convention and Columbia University in the United States; the ISSEI conference in Helsinki, Finland; Queen Mary, University of London, UK; and Istituto Dante Alighieri in Italy, Canada and the United States.