The Foundation
The Elvira Badaracco Foundation. Women’s Studies and Documentation was established in 1994 from the transformation of the Center for Historical Studies on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Italy. In 1979 Elvira Badaracco (1911-1994, studies at the Catholic University, passionate commitment to Milanese socialism) founded, with Pierrette Coppa, the Center for Historical Studies on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Italy. The founder stipulated in her will (April 1993) that the Center be transformed into a Foundation, developing its objectives. Furthermore, the testamentary provisions appointed Annarita Buttafuoco as the first lifetime guarantor of the economic, scientific, and political heritage left by the founder. Upon the death of Annarita Buttafuoco (1999), Marina Zancan, President of the Foundation from its establishment until 2024, inherited from Annarita Buttafuoco the function of guarantor of the same, which she still holds.
Within History: The Center
Annarita Buttafuoco, Pierrette Coppa, Elvira Badaracco. 1988
The Center for Historical Studies on the Women’s Liberation Movement has benefited from the outset from the collaboration of scholars of diverse backgrounds and expertise, many of whom have continued to engage with the Foundation. Even before 1979, an initial group of young feminist scholars and researchers from Milan (Laura Grasso, Beatrice Perucci, Adriana Rabissi, Ettina Confalonieri, Pucci Selva, Marina Piazza) met with Elvira Badaracco and Pierrette Coppa, who strongly and tenaciously pursued the objective of collecting and bringing to Milan the Milanese, Lombard, and as far as possible Italian documentation of the Feminist Movement and the contemporary Women’s Movements, to preserve the memory of what was happening, consolidating from the statu nascenti a history that we anticipated would be long-lasting. Often this consisted of gray literature, flyers, invitations to demonstrations, reports from seminars and assemblies, mimeographed texts in few copies, pamphlets, books and booklets that passed from hand to hand.
In the early 1980s, the encounter with Annarita Buttafuoco occurred, president of the feminist journal DWF, who was completing in Milan the research for the 1985 volume, Le Mariuccine. Meanwhile, Marina Zancan, Franca Bimbi, and Paola Nava had also joined the Center.
Honors
In 1989 the Center received the Diploma and Gold Medal of recognition from the Province of Milan.
Elvira Badaracco received several honors from Lombard and Milanese institutions, including the Ambrogino d’oro in 1991.
The Ambrogino d’oro was also awarded to other scholars and intellectuals involved in various ways with the Foundation: in 2004 to Francesca Zajczyk, in 2005 to Marina Piazza, in 2012 to Lea Melandri.
Over Time
The Archive of the Badaracco Foundation has been recognized as “of notable historical interest” by the Archival Superintendency of Lombardy. The methodological thesaurus of the Center/Foundation for archival cataloging was adopted in the early years as a basis for cataloging by the Italian Documentation Centers of the Lilith Network.
History
Annarita Calabrò and Laura Grasso edited the volume From the Feminist Movement to Diffuse Feminism. Research and Documentation in the Lombard Area (Preface by Franca Bimbi), one of the first Italian studies and the first on Lombardy.
In the image on the left: the cover of the first edition of the volume.
Annarita Buttafuoco and Marina Zancan published for the Center the first feminist reading of the intellectual biography of Sibilla Aleramo.
The Center developed Linguaggiodonna, proposing the First Gender Thesaurus in Italian for the creation of a feminist archive.
The traveling exhibition of posters, “Riguardarsi,” for which Annarita Buttafuoco and Emma Baeri also edited the catalog, brought throughout the country the testimony of the historical path of Italian feminism. The first exhibition was in Milan in 1996.
On November 12, 2009, the Foundation inaugurated its new headquarters at Via Menabrea 13 – Milan.
The Conference and Exhibition “On Her Side – Alba de Céspedes: Writer and Intellectual of the Twentieth Century: Rome, Paris, Cuba” took place at the Braidense Library, in collaboration with the Badaracco Foundation, as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification. On the centenary of Alba de Céspedes’s birth, the Mondadori Meridiano edited by Marina Zancan and the documents from the writer’s Archive provided opportunities to explore the fascination of her writing and its prescient relevance. Milan, March 8.
The Conference “Mothers Without Time? Dialogue Between Generations” coordinated by Marina Piazza, Franca Pizzini, and Barbara Mapelli, sparked a very intense and lively debate among voices from different generations. Milan, November 19.
Barbara Mapelli’s volume Unthought Heterosexuality represented an important opportunity for the Foundation to deepen the debate on sexual binarism and with LGBT+ Movements.
Lea Melandri, from a Project supported by the Foundation, published the volume The Entanglements of Time. Between Pandemics, Wars, Sexism and Environmental Devastation, Edizioni Smasher.
Research
Among the many research projects, we mention the project “At the Origins of the Republic. Italian Women Writers and Intellectuals as Protagonists in the Construction of a New Culture.” It is part of the program of celebrations for the 70th Anniversary of the birth of the Constitution of the Italian Republic, funded by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Structure for Anniversaries of National Interest. The research involved a group of researchers coordinated by Marina Zancan. The work examines in depth – for the years 1943-1956 – the profiles of thirteen authors, identified as key figures in the historiographical framework of reference: Sibilla Aleramo, Anna Banti, Maria Bellonci, Fausta Cialente, Alba de Céspedes, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianna Manzini, Paola Masino, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, Lalla Romano, Renata Viganò, Giovanna Zangrandi.
Note edited by Marina Zancan, Franca Bimbi, and Marina Piazza.
December 2022.