The Crisis-Woman

Using a rich assortment of scientific, medical, and popular literature, Natasha V. Chang’s The Crisis-Woman examines the donna-crisi’s position within the gendered body politics of fascist Italy.

Natasha V. Chang is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Dean of Brainerd Commons at Middlebury College.

‘This book should appeal to anyone interested in the fascist period, and not only to literary critics. Historians of Italy and of fashion, as well as feminist scholars, to name a few, will find much to learn in Chang’s engaging and well-written monograph.’

Eugenia Paulicelli, Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature, and Women’s Studies, Queens College, City University of New York:
“The Crisis-Woman is a welcome and multi-layered picture of a subtle dynamic between power and resistance on the role of women under the fascist regime. It comes as an important contribution to the growing scholarship on Italian fascism.”

Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History, Columbia University:
“Chang has picked up on one of those fascinating phrases, ‘crisis-woman,’ which has circulated in the absence of any definition, much less research, captured its usage in the periodicals of the time, and pinned down practically all of its meanings to the fascist regime.”