Exhibition curated by Elissa Weaver (Professor and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures), Alice Schreyer (Director of Special Collections Research Center), Suzy Taraba (Public Services Librarian), and Valarie Brocato (Exhibitions Supervisor).
The exhibition focuses on the writing and cultural context of Arcangela Tarabotti, a Benedictine nun who published defenses of women that protested against social injustice, especially that of forced religious vocations. In the Antisatira, she defends the right of women to lavish dress, tall shoes, and elaborate hairstyles. Topics covered in the exhibition include the publishing history of the Antisatira (1644) and of the Semplicit ingannata (1654), men's and women's fashions in seventeenth-century Venice, the Venetian Academy of the Incogniti, and the tradition of defenses of women from Boccaccio to Tarabotti.