Donne nella storia dei media. Autrici, artiste, influencer, tra ribalta e retroscena stems from the historical and sociological work conducted by GeMMa (Gender and Media Matters), the first and only research unit on gender and media to be integrated into academia in Italy. Since its establishment in 2010, it has been housed in the Department of Communication and Social Research (CoRiS) at Sapienza University of Rome. The volume realises Milly Buonanno’s vision of broadening the field of investigation, drawing inspiration from the biographical and historiographical interest in the past 20 years in feminist gender and media studies. The book departs from the premise of not offering a history parallel to the official historiography; instead, as Buonanno explains in her chapter, it seeks ‘to rewrite the history of television’ (p. 39).

The authors successfully achieve their numerous and ambitious goals: to rescue women protagonists in Italian media from the historical erasure and cultural oblivion caused by their culturally perceived lower status as women, despite the fact that they did not play lesser roles or hold minor responsibilities. More specifically, the authors bring to light the neglected presence of women artists in cinema, television and radio; recover their effaced biographies; lament their exclusion and subsequent invisibility in the official history of national media; deplore the marginalisation of their roles as critical contributors; document their unrecorded productions; and appraise their distinguished careers, recognising their overlooked talents, impact and influence as innovators of popular culture and promoters of social change.

The co-editors, Anna Lucia Natale and Paola Panarese, set out to historicise, legitimise and recognise these women’s agency in the Italian media industry. In fact, with their gendered approach to media, the book traces the impressive biographies and outstanding professional accomplishments of a selected number of women artists, who are divided into three main groups: in Part 1, those working behind the television screen and behind the scenes in radio; in Part 2, those performing on screen; and in Part 3, those emerging as virtual influencers in digital media. The volume spans roughly 70 years of media productions, starting in the 1950s and ending in the 2020s. The co-editors’ theoretical, historical and media studies efforts to foreground these critically relevant protagonists is at the core of feminist television and radio studies.

Organised into three distinct parts, as outlined above, and structured as an epochal progression of artistic content, performative styles and professional roles, from traditional media such as radio, television and cinema to contemporary social and digital media, the book highlights the history of television and feminist media studies. More specifically, it draws on the historical reconstruction of television studies, with the authors making theoretical and historiographical references to the relevant contribution of feminism in the development of television studies, as fully explained in the introduction to Buonanno’s chapter in Part 1, ‘Protagoniste nel retroscena’. Buonanno elaborately presents Laura Toscano, described as the ‘lady of fiction, mistress of history’ (p. 26), a remarkable screenplay writer of detective and horror genres in film and television; and Anna Lucia Natale richly illustrates the biography of Lidia Motta, portrayed as ‘a lady behind the scenes’ (p. 40), a major figure in radio broadcasting and an author of ‘quality, popular and experimental radio’ (p. 61).

In Part 2, ‘Donne sullo schermo’, Giovanni Ciofalo thoroughly documents the professional and personal profile of Raffaella Carrà, an entrepreneurial and multidimensional performer recognised for her ‘versatility and plasticity in the process of transformation into an icon’ (p. 68), emblematic of a unique form of artistic empowerment. Silvia Leonzi and Michele Balducci, embracing a ‘transmedial approach’ (p. 84), examine the artistic production of Serena Dandini, ‘one of the most eclectic and innovative figures in Italian media’ (p. 84), who has worked across radio and television, literature and theatre, as author, presenter and comedian. Mihaela Gavrila’s chapter meticulously reviews Donatella Raffai’s journalistic and authorial career in true crime television, characterised by a distinct empathetic communication style and uniquely compassionate professionalism. In the last contribution to this section, Lucia D’Ambrosi and Franca Faccioli discuss how satire, irony and humour pervade Lella Costa’s and Luciana Littizzetto’s original comedic television performances, bringing to the television screen issues of gender disparity. Their work adds a sophisticated layer of social analysis to primetime entertainment, spearheading cultural change through their respective ‘heterogeneous forms of expression and variegated performative strategies’ (p. 138).

Transitioning from traditional media and the generations of women who worked within them in the twentieth century to women in digital media in the twenty-first century, Part 3, ‘Influencer alla ribalta’, falls within the genre of networked feminism. Francesca Comunello and Arianna Bussoletti explore the specific role of social media influencers as feminist activists and performers in digital realms. Their chapter examines the communication formats, the performative practices of (self-)representation and the production of cultural content by women on social media, ‘adopting a perspective of mutual shaping of gender and technology (digital)’ (p. 159, emphasis in the original). It also reflects on the negotiation of forms of communication between users and ‘affordance’ (p. 159) on Instagram. A thorough analysis of 11 Italian activist-influencers committed to promoting gender issues reveals a number of contradictions in feminist activism on social media platforms. These discrepancies are evident in the tensions between activism and self-branding, and between the promotion of women’s rights and the pursuit of personal empowerment and popularity. The volume ends with Paola Panarese’s chapter, which explores four Italian computer-generated virtual influencers through an analysis of their images on Instagram. The study reveals that digital media foster the circulation of traditional gender norms and ambivalent, performative representations of femininity, reinforcing conventional gender roles.

Donne nella storia dei media memorialises and historicises each figure selected for the volume with extraordinarily dense bibliographic research. The volume suggests new investigative approaches to feminist television and media studies. It also charts the trajectories for more comprehensive and in-depth explorations, as well as qualitative and quantitative analyses that could delve into women’s extensive and diverse contributions across media, in authorial roles, leadership and performance styles, thus filling a huge void in the vacuous history of Italian media. Within this new paradigm, these artists would regain their authoritative artistic voices and would be studied in the broader cultural and social context of national history, across generations, genres and media.