The author considers the mechanisms limiting women’s access to power and the validity of their advance to positions of authority. She uses research into two extremely different social institutions–the Italian Mafia and the Polish Sejm (parliament)–in an attempt to illustrate that the contemporary process of redefining traditional cultural concepts of gender is not only an indicator of the spread of pro-equality attitudes but could equally well be considered an element of activity intended to preserve the patriarchal order. From this viewpoint, the ad hoc reconstructing of cultural concepts of gender is chiefly aimed at maintaining the constituting principle of the patriarchy–maintaining men’s domination at the price of breaking men’s monopoly on power. This process could therefore be perceived also as a symptom of the durability of the patriarchal model of social ties.
The article presents the project and realization of Ivigna (in Merano, Italy) aerial cable car project designed by architect Roland Baldi. The boxed form has been boldly and confidently introduced into the surrounding mountains, despite distancing itself from standard references to genius loci of the natural landscape. This project presents an avant-garde, innovative and reliable approach to the composition of architecture in the context of a mountain landscape. Despite the severity of forms, a kind of architectural rhythm and lightness of shaping the object introduced in the context of an open space can be sense here. It is essential to seek new forms and technologies for communing with nature and culture, in order to shape interesting modernist architecture, entering the twenty-first century.
Mario Puccini between Italy and Argentina – The Italian writer Mario Puccini travelled to Argentina in 1936 to attend the Pen Club Congress. In the essay, the results of Puccini’s stay in Argentina are studied for the first time in Italy: books, stories, articles, translations, correspondences, unrealized projects. Puccini is confirmed as an important cultural mediator in relations between Italy and the Spanish-speaking nations.
“A school of virtues, kindness, love”: Salani series of romances as modelling text for “New Italy” women – The woman, seen as a children /citizens educator, in United Italy’s nation-building becomes target of an educational action entrusted to publishing industry. The Salani Collection, which is here pragmatically and linguistically analyzed, represents an emblematic example of serial narrative: the author hides himself in the texts as well that the publishing house is the addresser; the novel becomes a model with a unique moral and behavioral message, spread by an accessible language shaped on Tuscan.
The article attempts to reconstruct the literary "traces" of the "great lady" of German literature – Ricarda Huch – in the area of the ideas of Mediterranean thoughts as in the example of Italy. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Huch became interested, as a historian and novelist, in the history of the struggles for national liberation in Italy and erected a specific literary monument to the heroes of the Italian risorgimento. Also her personal experiences connected with Italy were found in the social novel Aus der Triumphgasse [From the Avenue of Freedom].