Spatializing Women’s Bodies in Italian Comics: A Gender-Sociological Perspective

I discuss the “spatialization” of women’s bodies in Italian graphic narratives with female protagonists published from 1962 to 2017. Spatialization in this context refers to the way that women’s bodies are rendered in space as well as the implications of this representation in a culture at a specific time. The underlying idea is that the ways women’s bodies have been spatialized in Italian comics may offer a deeper understanding of the social and cultural meanings these graphic narratives (and the bodies represented in them) have embodied over time, as well as an understanding of various forms of what sociologist Pierre might consider symbolic violence towards women