Leopoldina Fortunati was born July 18th 1949 in Venice, Italy. She grew up in Dolo, a small town between Venice and Padua, the only sister to three brothers. She attended the classical high school (liceo classico) "Tito Livio", where she began engaging with political ideas and stances. She then enrolled at the University of Padua in the department of humanities. Once starting college, she broke off from her family and worked several jobs, wanting to gain her own economic and personal independence and not wanting her family to pay for her studies. The student's movement was just beginning and she decided to join and be a part of it. She also started engaging with the protests of commuters and workers in department stores demanding higher salaries and fighting for the recognition of more working rights, including better working conditions, commuting times and shorter working hours.
Reflecting on the social situations around her, aided also by a course she was enrolled in at the University of Padua on Marx's Capital, she joined Lotta Femminista at the age of 22, wanting to support and further the feminist movement and the political relevance of feminist struggles to give women more power and support. In 1972, this brought Fortunati together with other feminists including Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Silvia Federici, to start the Wages for Housework campaign, demanding wages for women, arguing that house work, childcare, and general domestic labour had to be recognized as fundamental for the whole society and undeniably valuable. Later on, this led to the development of her book "The Arcane of Reproduction" on the practical aspects of the feminist struggles, published in 1981.
Fortunati never stopped participating and advocating for feminist topics and wages rights, but she also started focusing her work on new media at the beginning of the new millennium. She started reflecting on the advent of cellphones and robots, particularly now that they are involved in so many aspects of our private, public, working and social lives, in education, caretaking and more. She had a long career at University of Udine, in the department of Education and as the coordinator of the PhD program in multimedia communications. She remains active in these spaces and discussions, participating in conferences and talks, engaging with young women who are interested in covering similar research studies. She continues to strive for women everywhere to feel empowered by her work, reminding future generations that women's rights still need to be defended, that movements have power and that we should carry on with the awareness that the women's movement is larger than it used to be.
This collection is composed of professional and some personal papers of Leopoldina Fortunati, an Italian scholar, feminist activist and professor of sociology of communication and sociology of cultural processes at the University of Udine. She was a member of the Marxist feminist group Lotta Femminista, and helped develop the International Wages for Housework campaign that demanded housework done by women to be paid. Her research focuses on gender, communication, new media, technology, sociology, feminist theory, capitalism and forms of repression and how it shapes modern culture. This collection shows part of Fortunati's work on feminist theory and capitalism, her research method and the discussions she has engaged with overtime. It includes articles she used for her research, draft writings that were not published, conferences she attended as a presenter, interviews given for newspapers, poems she has written in the earlier stages of her life and her feminist activism, and documents that show some exchanges she had with other women regarding their work in factories or the debates they would have during their meetings. Materials date from 1964 to 2024, but the bulk of materials are from 1980 - 1990. This collection is arranged into one series, alphabetically by record type.
Materials include articles written by Fortunati on various topics including responses to criticism to the feminist movement, papers presented at conferences, and technology. Some were published and some were not. It also contains newspaper clippings regarding strikes in the 1970's, but also of more recent ones that happened in 2023.
It also contains a poetry project Fortunati developed in 1989 in one of her courses, while she was a middle school teacher. Related to poetry, there is also a series of poems that Fortunati wrote between 1964 and 1989. Fortunati in her younger years aspired to be a poet, but subsequently politics and more pressing social issues demonstrated their urgency and fundamental relevance, therefore she abandoned that idea, and dedicated all of her time to the feminist movement and engaging with political material. Fortunati never looked back on her choice, since there is always so much to work on for the feminist cause and helping women.
Notes on love, sex and family written by Fortuanti can also be found in the collection, along with a bibliography of research that allowed the expansion of the notes.
A large part of the collection is composed of the draft of a manuscript titled "L'immaginario della trasgressione" and also a long article that was written to respond to criticism to the feminist movement written between 1971 and 1981. "L'immaginario della trasgressione" was never published, but it investigates various aspects of monstrosity in media and tv, along with the influence and importance of the concept of transgression as a cultural concept and the sociological component of it. This work started by observing her child playing with and being fascinated by monsters and similar figures the same way adults are often fascinated by crime stories. The book was started circa 1985-1989.
There is also a more recent volume she participated in, regarding the impact of technology in modern society, titled
Fortunati's work and the brief correspondence with other feminists is also present in the collection. She particularly wants to underscore that women are strong, that their intellectual and practical work matters and that it deserves respect and consideration. The work of Lotta Femminista, International Wages for Housework, and her books and research, is dedicated to giving women strength, drive, and tools to advocate for themselves and other women so they never feel alone in the struggle, but rather united and strong in the fight to gain autonomy and independence.
Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Leopoldina Fortunati papers, MS-2025-002, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
This collection is arranged into 1 series alphabetically by record type
There are no restrictions on access for analog materials, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested. Advance notice is required to view born-digital records. Born-digital materials in this collection may not have been reformatted yet. Researchers may request access to copies by contacting the John Hay Library with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed to hay@brown.edu.
Gift of Leopoldina Fortunati
See also the Silvia Federici papers (MS-2017-023) at Brown University