Paola Ojetti and Maria Basaglia: Two Women Workers in Fascist Italy’s Cultural Sector

Putting into dialogue scholarly studies on Italian Fascism with a wide range of newly identified film and media history resources, the authors reconstruct and compare the career paths of Paola Ojetti (1911-1978) and Maria Basaglia (1908-2000) in the 1930s and early-1940s, with a specific focus on their cinema-related activities such as dubbing, film criticism, screenwriting and on-set assistance. By shedding light on the microhistory level of professional routines and social interactions, the article seeks to contribute to a history of women workers in Fascist Italy’s cultural sector grounded in the concrete life experiences of women intellectuals. The career paths of Ojetti and Basaglia show that the mastery of foreign languages was a key requisite for women wishing to enter the field of cultural production: translation work was considered especially fitting to women because it was generally poorly paid, mostly carried out at home, held in lower esteem than authorial work, and thus perceived as less threatening to male privilege. The cases of Ojetti and Basaglia also show that no matter their talent and diligence, women intellectuals in Fascist Italy often had to put themselves under the mentorship or in the employ of male colleagues, who enjoyed greater civil liberties and career advancement opportunities than their female counterparts. The women who met these conditions accessed the cultural sector, working through the ranks of a specific branch, reaching out to one another to create useful networks of mutual support and collaboration, and eventually building an eclectic and at times non-normative career for themselves. While confirming the existence of a repressive system that exploited women’s intellectual work, the article proposes that there were ways for women to partially break through the narrow boundaries of subordinate work established by the discriminatory policies of the Fascist regime

A record of fossil shallow-water whale falls from Italy

Twenty-five Neogene-Quaternary whales hosted in Italian museum collections and their associated fauna were analysed for evidence of whale-fall community development in shallow-water settings. The degree of bone articulation, completeness of the skeleton and lithology of the embedding sediments were used to gather information on relative water depth, water energy, sedimentation rate and overall environmental predictability around the bones. Shark teeth and hard-shelled invertebrates with a necrophagous diet in close association with the bones were used as evidence of scavenging. Fossil bone bioerosion, microbially mediated cementation and other mollusc shells in the proximity of the remains informed on past biological activity around the bones. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that shallow-water whale falls differ from their deep-water counterparts. Taphonomic pathways are more variable on the shelf and whale carcasses may not go through all steps of the ecological succession as recognised in the deep sea. Whilst the mobile scavenger and the enrichment opportunistic stages are well represented, chemosynthetic taxa typical of the sulphophilic stage were recovered only in one instance. The presence of a generalist fauna among the suspension feeding bivalves and carnivorous gastropods, and the extreme rarity of chemosynthetic taxa, suggest that predatory pressure rules out whale-fall specialists from shallow shelf settings as in analogous cold seep and vent shallow-water communities. © 2014 The Lethaia Foundation

A Tale of Two Women in Two Countries: Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti’s Professional Careers in the Film Press (1930s-mid 1940s)

This essay compares the professional experiences of Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti in 1930s France and in 1930s and early-1940s Italy, respectively. Beyond their very different political, national, and cultural contexts, these women both occupied central positions within some of the most influential film periodicals of the era: Suzanne Chantal for Cinémonde  and Paola Ojetti for Film. This study is mainly based on sources which enable us to take a closer look at their activities, their working conditions, and their feelings regarding the treatment they received while working for these periodicals. Sources include Suzanne Chantal’s memoirs and her personal diaries from the late 1930s, kept by her family, and Paola Ojetti’s extensive working correspondence, preserved in the Fondo Mino Doletti of the Biblioteca Renzo Renzi at the Cineteca di Bologna, as well as other correspondence documents preserved in Italian archives. This paper explores the working trajectories and social positioning made by these two largely forgotten but powerfully significant figures in order to establish themselves in a predominantly male professional and cultural environment, while at the same time questioning the limits of their integration. By shedding light on microhistory and questioning gender issues, this article turns its attention primarily to working practices, women’s paths, and social networks of film press and film criticism history

A Tale of Two Women in Two Countries: Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti’s Professional Careers in the Film Press (1930s-mid 1940s)

This essay compares the professional experiences of Suzanne Chantal and Paola Ojetti in 1930s France andin 1930s and early-1940s Italy, respectively. Beyond their very different political, national, and cultural con-texts, these women both occupied central positions within some of the most influential film periodicals ofthe era: Suzanne Chantal forCinémondeand Paola Ojetti forFilm. This study is mainly based on sourceswhich enable us to take a closer look at their activities, their working conditions, and their feelings regard-ing the treatment they received while working for these periodicals. Sources include Suzanne Chantal’smemoirs and her personal diaries from the late 1930s, kept by her family, and Paola Ojetti’s extensive work-ing correspondence, preserved in the Fondo Mino Doletti of the Biblioteca Renzo Renzi at the Cineteca diBologna, as well as other correspondence documents preserved in Italian archives. This paper explores theworking trajectories and social positioning made by these two largely forgotten but powerfully significantfigures in order to establish themselves in a predominantly male professional and cultural environment,while at the same time questioning the limits of their integration. By shedding light on microhistory andquestioning gender issues, this article turns its attention primarily to working practices, women’s paths, andsocial networks of film press and film criticism history