On Thursday May 8, 2025, Dr. Veronica Frigeni will give the masterclass “Comics and Reproductive (in)Justice”.

Drawing the Line. Graphic Narratives of Reproductive Justice in Contemporary Italy

Italy’s reproductive crisis is unfolding within a deeply contested landscape, making it a crucial case study for examining the intersections of reproductive justice, state control, and gendered citizenship. The politicisation of reproduction – particularly the right-wing government’s push to enforce a restrictive vision of motherhood through the newly established Ministry for the Family, Birth Rate, and Equal Opportunities – reflects a global trend in which reproductive rights become ideological battlegrounds. Despite the legalisation of abortion under Law 194 (1978), Italy remains a hostile environment for reproductive autonomy, where structural barriers – including widespread conscientious objection, stark regional disparities in access, and a lack of institutional recognition of obstetric violence – severely limit reproductive freedom. This evolving crisis not only underscores the precariousness of reproductive rights, but also reveals how state policies actively shape and constrain reproductive agency. By prioritising natalist imperatives over bodily autonomy, the current political climate exposes a fundamental struggle: who is granted reproductive rights, under what conditions, and to what ends?

In light of this fraught landscape, this seminar examines how graphic narratives serve as powerful sites of feminist critique and resistance in contemporary Italy. Focusing on two key works: Anna Cercignano’s autobiographical graphic novel Vita. L’aborto di un paese civile (Vita. Abortion of a Civilized Country, 2018) and the graphic inquiry Da che mondo è mondo (From Time Immemorial, 2022), written by Irene Caselli and illustrated by Rita Petruccioli, we will explore how these texts confront and subvert the narratives that seek to regulate reproductive autonomy. Through a narratological and visual analysis, we will explore how these works reconstruct experiences of reproductive oppression, weaving together lived personal testimony and broader socio-political discourse. Drawing on theories from comics studies, narratology, and feminist scholarship, we will analyse key storytelling strategies, including the interplay of text and image, panel composition, visual metaphor, the politics of location, and embodied narration. By deploying these techniques, the graphic narratives challenge dominant representations of abortion and reproductive rights, exposing systemic injustices while inviting readers into a space of critical engagement.

Beyond theoretical exploration, the seminar features a hands-on workshop designed to equip students with a methodological toolkit for analysing graphic narratives. Through applied exercises, participants will develop critical and analytical skills to interpret comics as both cultural interventions and instruments of feminist activism. This seminar ultimately seeks to highlight how visual storytelling operates as a mode of resistance, reclaiming reproductive narratives from silence and stigma in the contemporary Italian context – and, potentially, beyond.

Biography Veronica Frigeni

Veronica Frigeni received her PhD in Italian from the University of Kent (2018). She has been affiliated researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and served as a visiting scholar at Central European University in Vienna and the University of Cambridge. Currently, she is a visiting scholar at the Centre for Feminist Research at York University, Canada. Veronica has authored a monograph on Antonio Tabucchi and has contributed chapters on transcultural feminist writers, Giorgio Agamben, postcolonial ecofeminism, matricentric feminism, queer parenting, reproductive justice, artivism, graphic life narratives and trauma. She is a coeditor of the forthcoming volumes Telling Lives: Mothers and Life Writing (Demeter Press 2026) and Womb Wor(l)ds: Transcultural Echoes on Reproductive Justice (Demeter Press 2026). She is the Italian translator of Maternità femministe by Andrea O’Reilly (Prospero 2025) and the English translator of Orsola Severini’s novel Il consolo (Demeter Press 2025). Veronica serves on the editorial board of the Critical Gender Studies Journal and of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative.

The masterclass is open to all postgraduate students (MA, RMA, PhD) studying at a university in the Netherlands. Participating RMA & PhD students can earn a total of one credit (1 ECTS) by preparing the readings and writing a short paper (ca. 1,500 words), in response to the texts and topics discussed.

To register for this masterclass, please contact Vasiliki Belia (v.belia@uu.nl) and Rik Spanjers (r.spanjers@uva.nl) via email, indicating your university/institutional affiliation and degree programme, and whether you intend to write the paper for credit or not.

List of recommended readings:

  1. Mikkonen, Kai. 2017. “Introduction” to The Narratology of Comic Art, pp. 1-30.
  2. Chute, Hillary. 2015. “The Space of Graphic Narrative: Mapping Bodies, Feminism, and Form.” In Narrative Theory Unbound,ed. Robyn Warhol and Susan S. Lanser, 194–209.
  3. Mandolini, Nicoletta. 2022. “Wonder feminisms: comics-based artivism against gender violence in Italy, intersectionality and transnationalism.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 14(4), 535–555. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2022.2135551

Date & Time: Thursday May 8, 2025, 13:15-15:00h
Location: Drift 25, Room 301, Utrecht University
Registration: please contact Vasiliki Belia (v.belia@uu.nl) and Rik Spanjers (r.spanjers@uva.nl) via email, indicating your university/institutional affiliation and degree programme, and whether you intend to write the paper for credit or not. Please register by sending an email with ‘Registration Masterclass Veronica Frigeni’ as a subject line.
Contact Person: Vasso Belia (v.belia@uu.nl)