Women of the Resistance

A project supported by Europe for Citizens programme and realized by six entities from the three partner countries: Slovenia, Italy and Croatia.
The aim of the conference is to discuss about several different forms of involvement of women in the opposition to the regime and in mechanisms for war.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
“WOMEN OF THE RESISTANCE”
March 4, 2016
Teatro Palamostre - Udine
Teatro San Giorgio - Udine

PARTNER
“Women of the Resistance” is financed by EACEA - Europe for citizens, and is developed by  PiNA Association (Koper - SLO), cooperativa Bonawentura (Trieste - IT), La Giordola (Trieste - IT), Associazione Quarantasettezeroquattro (Gorizia - IT), Foundation for partnership and civil society development (Pula - CRO), CSS Teatro stabile di innovazione del Friuli Venezia Giulia (Udine - IT), Istrska regija (CRO).

THE PROJECT
The project starts from the story of Maria Antonietta Moro, a woman who was a nurse at the border between Italy and Yugoslavia during World War II. By coming in contact with the injustices of that time, she decided to act and to take risks. With this project we want to underline the common fight of our women for the values that today we all Europeans share. We want also to underline how big and difficult was the step for the women to re-act and to use these examples to push the young to reflect about the values that moved these women, sacrifices that were needed, the “heritage” that they left us and the changes that those actions had or have on the society.

THE CONFERENCE
The aim of the conference is to discuss about several different forms of involvement of women in the opposition to the regime and in mechanisms for war: a first panel (in the morning) will be dedicated to young people, students and their teachers, and propose a dialogue with a great witness: Lidia Menapace. His story will be inserted into a larger narrative of the theme "Women of the resistance" provided by the young historian Michela Ponzani. These stories will be interspersed by the reading of the actress Natalie Norma Fella and multi-instrumental musician Paolo Paron.

The afternoon panel will propose to scholars, researchers and teachers a wide historical reflection on the many different ways in which women resisted to Nazi-Fascism: telling the life stories of the protagonists; analysing the historical and political-ideological context; investigating the imaginary developed in the different countries regarding the role of women in the driving-strength; highlighting the stereotypes, the imaginaries and representations during the war and in the following decades. The focus will be on: the military, civil and cultural resistances; the struggles of couriers and armed partisan, nurses and workers, housewives and young intellectuals.
The aim is to propose an international reflection, focusing on the differences between the national historiographies.

PROGRAM

MORNING
Teatro Palamostre, Piazzale Diacono 5
10.00 – 12.30
Michela Ponzani (Archivio Storico del Senato - Rome)
Women of the Resistance. The Reasons for a Choice, the Forms of a Struggle.

Lidia Menapace
dialogues with Monica Emmanuelli (Istituto Friulano Storia Movimento di Liberazione - Udine)
I, Partisan. My Resistance.

Natalie Norma Fella (actress), Paolo Paron (musician)
Reading
"I dreamed of a different world." Words, music and pictures to narrate the women of the Resistance.

AFTERNOON
Teatro San Giorgio, via Quintino Sella 5
15.00 – 18.30

INTRODUCTION

Michela Ponzani (Archivio Storico del Senato - Rome)
Choose Disobedience.
The Existential Dimension of the Antifascism in the Memories of Partisan Women.

PANEL 1
Women and Resistance.
Intellectual Paths, Emotions, Struggles.

Daniela Rosa (Associazione Le Donne Resistenti)
A Civil Disobedience: Women from Friuli in Front of September 8, 1943.

Irene Bolzon (Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione - Trieste)
Women and Resistance in the Archive of the Extraordinary Court of Assizes in Trieste: Towards a Geography of Gender?

Fabio Verardo (University of Trento)
Challenging the Enemy, Unarmed. The Role of Women in the Funeral of the Partisan Renato Del Din. Tolmezzo, April 27, 1944.

PANEL 2
The Female Resistance in Slovenia and Croatia. History, Memories, Representations.

Marta Verginella (University of Lubljana)
Slovenian Women in the Resistance. Between Memory and Oblivion.

Barbara Nicole Wiesinger (Indipendent scholar)
Gendering (Armed) Resistance: Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement.

Natka Badurina (University of Udine)
The Image of the Women in the Yugoslav Resistance, since the war.

Igor Jovanovi? e Igor Šaponja (Indipendent scholars)
Istrian Destinies. Memories of Resistant Women in Croatia.