What Does Food Have to Do with Women Writers? – mercoledì 11 novembre conferenza della prof.ssa Patrizia Sambuco

Why is it important to study the relationship between women, food, and writing? While investigating women’s role in shaping and codifying gastronomy is valuable in its own right, a broader, interdisciplinary approach reveals much more.
By examining the food imagery crafted by women writers across different historical periods, and relating it to philosophical reflections on taste, we uncover a deeper, more nuanced understanding of women’s history and creative expression. In this talk, Patrizia Sambuco will
explore the significance of this interdisciplinary perspective, as developed in her recent monograph Food and Emotions in Italian
Women’s Writing: A Reassessment (UTP, 2024). Drawing on examples from the past century of Italian history, from the Fascist period to the present, she will show how women writers have employed food imagery across a range of genres, from narrative to diaries, to articulate perspectives that challenge dominant, discourse and conventions and reflect their own lived experiences.
Ultimately, this analysis demonstrates that food imagery is not only a powerful expressive tool, but also a compelling means of reinterpreting and rewriting women’s literary history.

The conference will be held on November 11 2025 at 5 p.m in the Aula Magna

Patrizia Sambuco is an expert of Italian women’s writing and history. She is the author of Food and Emotions in Italian Women’s Writing. A Reassessment (UTP, 2024), winner of the International Flaiano Prize for Italian Studies Luca Attanasio 2025; and Corporeal Bonds. The Daughter- Mother Relationship in Italian Contemporary Women’s Writing (UTP, 2012) translated in Italian as Corpi e linguaggi (Il Poligrafo, 2014).
She is also the editor of Italian Women Writers 1800-2000 (FDUP, 2015) and Transmissions of Memory (FDUP 2018). At present she is a Study Skill Lecturer for Oxford Brookes University (Leeds).