Chiara Malpezzi
Research on Inclusion, Well-being and Sustainability in Education
Brief personal and professional presentation and research interests:
Chiara Malpezzi is a PhD candidate and member of the Research Group in Children's Literature (LETIN) at the University of Padua (FISPPA Department).
Her doctoral research focuses on biographies about women for children and young adults. Her main research interests include: theory and history of juvenile biography; gender studies and female imaginary; ecocriticism and ecofeminism; history of Italian children's literature.
Abstract PhD project:
Women’s Biographies in Italian Children’s Literature (1960-2022).
Historical and Ecofeminist Perspectives
The research project is concerned with an almost unexplored genre of Italian children's literature (Boero, 2017), namely biography and biographies about female figures.
The theoretical framework intertwines two perspectives: on one hand, biography studies (Eaton, 2006; Beauvais, 2020; Douglas, 2022) and accounts on the pedagogical value of narrating lives for children (Sutliff Sanders, 2018); on the other hand, the traditionally anthropocentric genre of biography is tackled according to a new critical perspective: ecocriticism (Goga et al., 2018) and ecofeminism (Gaard, 2008) lead to consider female biographical subjects in the intersection with other humans, animals and the environment. The research fills a gap in the literature providing historical insights to an almost unexplored literary genre in Italian children’ literature and tackling the traditionally anthropocentric genre of biography from an ecocritical and ecofeminist perspective.
Considering children’s literature as a heritage for identity construction and social relations (Campagnaro, 2013), the research aims to analyse how women's life narratives contribute to the transformation of the female imaginary - a set of ideas, representations, myths and archetypes about the feminine in a specific culture and historical time (Wunenburger, 2003).
The study develops a content analysis (Crisp, 2015) on 90 illustrated biographies about women that have been published in Italy between 1960 and 2022. Female identities are investigated according to three intertwined axes: role models, icons, and symbols, representing different shapes of the selves narrated by biographies. These sixty years show an evolution, from both a literary and a thematic point of view, shifting towards a wider and more inclusive representation of female characters, underling two aspects: on one hand, the historical reconstruction developed in the project enlightens the consistency of women's biographies in Italian children’s literature as well as the path followed by the biographical genre; on the other hand, issues related to ideological influences and female underrepresentation are critically addressed. Therefore, biographies about women are conceived as a medium that shapes female imaginary for young readers, enhancing a pedagogical reflection on identity in its multifaceted dimensions.
3 key words identifying the PhD project:juvenile biographies about women; female imaginary; ecofeminism
Supervisor: Prof. Marnie Campagnaro
Co-supervisor: /
Participation as a speaker or co-speaker at national and international conferences/seminars extra training offered:
- La relation femmes-animaux dans les biographies féminines pour la jeunesse | Lecture(s) éthique(s) en littérature de jeunesse: représentations animales et écologie, 16-17 November 2023, University of Strasbourg
- Portraits of female musicians in Italian contemporary biographies for children. A study of intermedial relations in the book covers | The Magic of Sound: Children’s Literature and Music, The Child and the Book, 15-17 May 2023, University of Montenegro
- Portraits of the artist as a young girl. The representation of agency in biographies about female artists |Conference Role of the Child as Citizen: Constructing Childhood through Agency and Activism, The Child and the Book, 26-28 maggio 2022, University of Malta
- Storie di sapere libero: biografie di donne e uomini nella collana Storie libere dell’Università di Padova | Conference Children's Biographies in the 800-Year History of the University of Padua, 7-9 April 2022, University of Padova
- Don Milani and his legacy in the Italian history of education: Biographical picturebooks as primary sources? | Conference Picturebooks in Time (The European Network of Picturebooks), 3-4 ottobre 2021, Tel-Aviv University
- What food do we feed women as artists upon? Food, artistic and gender equality | Food and/in Children’s Culture (6-9 aprile 2021, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia).
Publications:
Malpezzi C. (in press). From queens to rebel girls? Biographies about women within Italian children’s literature. Bookbird. A Journal of International Children’s Literature.
Malpezzi C. (2023). Biografie e divulgazione scientifica. Quali ricadute pedagogiche?. MeTiS, 13(2), 165-181. DOI:10.30557/MT00280
Malpezzi C. (2023). Biografie di donne ed ecofemminismo nella letteratura per l’infanzia e l’adolescenza. In A. Cagnolati (Ed.), Ricordando Angela Articoni. Tab.
Malpezzi C. (2020). What food do we feed girls as artists upon? Food, artistic and gender equality in children's literature. Ars educandi, 17, 89-104.
Malpezzi, C. (2020). La statuina. In L. Todaro (Ed.), Gianni Rodari. Incontri e riflessioni a cento anni dalla nascita (pp. 401-404). Roma: Anicia. ISBN: 978-88-6709-531-5.