Chronological period: December 28, 1979–December 20, 1994.

The Center for Historical Studies on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Italy (CSSMLDI) was established in Milan through the initiative of Elvira Badaracco and Pierrette Coppa on December 28, 1979, during a phase in the history of Italian feminism that—in the context of a general redefinition of its practices—saw the emergence, in numerous Italian contexts, of spaces for women’s culture: documentation centers, libraries, and bookstores in particular.

In February 1980, it began its activities at the Feltrinelli Foundation on Via Romagnosi 3 in Milan, where it remained until 1991 when it moved to Corso di Porta Nuova 32, in the premises of the Unione Femminile Nazionale.

The CSSMLDI was founded with the aim of collecting, organizing, preserving, and making accessible the heritage of knowledge and practices developed by the women’s political movement, in the conviction that the protection and promotion of the history of feminism and the history of women in general constitutes a value that is not only scientific and cultural, but also and above all political.

From the outset, the Center identified and developed three areas of interest: the collection and organization of an archive of documentary material produced in Italy by the women’s movement, the creation of a specialized library on gender issues, and the promotion of research and initiatives for the census and monitoring of women’s political and cultural action. With these aims, the CSSMLDI brought together numerous Italian and foreign scholars, researchers, and intellectuals who, over the years, contributed to giving substance to this common project. The goal of establishing an archive of materials produced by women in order to initiate—based on this historical foundation—a series of research projects capable of keeping alive the legacy of feminisms has always been one of the most important objectives toward which the efforts of the women who worked at the CSSMLDI converged. The activity of collecting materials therefore accompanied all the Center’s work. The outcome of this long endeavor was the establishment of the Archive of Feminism, recognized as “of notable historical interest” by the Archival Superintendency of Lombardy, with resolution of October 28, 1988, and currently preserved and accessible at the headquarters of the “Fondazione Elvira Badaracco”.

A significant impetus to the implementation of collection work and organization according to a more homogeneous geographical criterion was provided by the funding of the NOW Project (New Opportunities for Women), obtained in 1993 from the European Community. The project envisaged expanding the CSSMLDI Archive through mapping and documentary collection work that particularly involved the exploration from scratch of four Italian regions (Friuli, Puglia, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Umbria) and the integration and updating of materials from Lombardy, Sicily, and Veneto “with the aim”—as stated in the project presentation—”of opening new spaces for greater visibility and dissemination of women’s heritage”.

All the material collection activity was also accompanied by theoretical elaboration of the methodological issues related to information processing; this work prompted the Center to open up and engage with other Italian contexts—leading it, for example, to seek concrete connections with other Italian groups through the creation of a Coordination of Libraries, Documentation Centers, and Bookstores—and with European contexts and international meetings on gender issues in the field of archiving.

The complexity related to creating a new “documentary language” capable of valorizing this new segment of historical documentation prompted CSSMLDI scholars to undertake extensive research, which resulted in the formation of the first gender thesaurus on the keywords of feminism: “Linguaggiodonna”.

Bibliography

Centri di ricerca e documentazione delle donne: esperienze di organizzazione e metodi di archiviazione. Atti del Seminario internazionale, Milan, Centro di studi storici sul movimento di liberazione della donna in Italia, 1981;
Dal movimento femminista al femminismo diffuso. Ricerca e documentazione nell’area lombarda, edited by Anna Rita Calabrò and Laura Grasso (with research by A.M. Battisti, M.A. Confalonieri, R. Gay, M. Ghezzi, A. Perrotta Rabissi, M.B. Perucci, B. Pezzini, E. Scaramuzza, P. Selva), Milan, Franco Angeli, 1985;
Luoghi e forme di aggregazione delle donne oggi in Lombardia, survey published by Regione Lombardia-Consulta Femminile Regionale, Milan, 1985;
Figure di donna. Testi letterari del XVI secolo: fonti, scritture, percorsi critici, Proceedings of the seminar edited by Marina Zancan, monographic issue of “Nuova Dwf”, no. 25/26, 1985;
Svelamento. Sibilla Aleramo: una biografia intellettuale, edited by Annarita Buttafuoco and Marina Zancan, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1988;
Perleparole. Le iniziative a favore dell’informazione e della documentazione delle donne europee, edited by Adriana Perrotta Rabissi and Maria Beatrice Perucci, Rome, Utopia, 1989;
Linguaggiodonna, by Adriana Perrotta Rabissi and Maria Beatrice Perucci (no. 6 of the Center’s “Bollettino”), Milan, 1990.