Selenia Anastasi, University of Genoa and University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Abstract
During the two lectures I aim to explore the role of gendered discourses in contemporary socio-political crises, with a specific focus on the binary framing of gender roles within political and media narratives. Recent public debates often reduce gender dynamics to a simplistic ‘war between the sexes,’ where hegemonic masculinity and forms of hyperfemininity are pitted against each other in a polarized cultural landscape. This agonistic framing also intersects with other tensions, such as those between feminist and queer movements and pro-family, traditionalist groups, or between progressive and conservative politics.
Drawing on Connell’s (1995) theorization of hegemonic masculinity and on her work on emphasized femininity (1987), the seminar reflects on how both masculinity and femininity are not neutral identity categories, but discursively constructed positions that serve particular ideological functions in moments of perceived ‘identity crisis.’ Drawing also on Butler’s (2004) reflections on the performativity of gender, the seminar will critically analyze how current populist and reactionary narratives mobilize gendered identities both in opposition and as complementary to each other, within a heterosexual matrix of power that sustains patriarchy through discourses of negation and reinforcement.
Finally, the seminar introduces a mixed-methods approach, combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADS), content analysis, and netnography to examine how these discourses circulate, consolidate, and are contested in social media spaces. The seminar will be structured into two modules: a theoretical module introducing key debates on gender performativity, hegemony, and identity in crisis; and a methodological module providing practical tools for analyzing gendered discourses in social media, including the identification of sources and data collection strategies.
Short bio
Selenia Anastasi is a PhD candidate in Digital Humanities at the University of Genoa and a Research Fellow in Sociology of Cultural Processes at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Her interdisciplinary research combines elements of computational methodologies, Corpus-assisted discourse analysis and gender studies, with a particular emphasis on digitally mediated communication and hate speech. Her doctoral thesis focuses on a corpus-assisted cross-linguistic study of the circulation of misogynistic discourses within English and Italian Incel communities. As a young researcher, she has cultivated an international profile through extensive research stays in a number of European and non-European countries. Among other things, she is also a very proud Sicilian.