Event Details
Tue, February 21, 2017
18:00 – 19:00
VILLA LA PIETRA
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italy
A Dialogue with Mary-Ann Trasciatti, Hofstra University
Working women in the U.S. have played a key role in global struggles for social justice. As we prepare to celebrate March 8, International Women’s Day (l’8 marzo, Festa della donna), come discover who these women were and how their activist lives can instruct and inspire us in a renewed movement to build a better world.
As part of the Picturing Women series.
Featured Biographies
Mary-Ann Trasciatti
Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Women’s Studies, and Labor Studies
Mary Anne Trasciatti is Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Women’s Studies, and Labor Studies at Hofstra University and President of Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, Inc.—dedicated to rousing public awareness about the economic inequities underlying the 1911 blaze and its continuing relevance for workplace justice. She earned a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Maryland in 1999. Her areas of expertise and interest include the organizational and communication strategies of early twentieth-century labor activists, public history, and commemoration. She was a “talking head” in the PBS documentary series The Italian Americans (2015) and in a well-received documentary (2006) dealing with Sacco and Vanzetti. She co-edited (2005) with Jerome H. Delamater, an overview of the literary and artistic response to the case (Representing Sacco and Vanzetti). She has contributed articles to it, to compendiums such as Who Belongs to America? Presidents, Rhetoric, and Immigration (2006), to various academic journals, and to publications such as Jacobin. Currently, she is writing a book about the free speech activism of labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She is also spearheading the campaign for a site-specific, permanent memorial to remember the 146 mostly young immigrant women who died in the Triangle Fire and the movement for workers’ rights and safety that emerged from its ashes. In December 2015, Governor Andrew Cuomo awarded the Triangle Coalition a $1.5 million grant to fund the capital budget for the memorial. Professor Trasciatti and the Coalition are now raising the additional $1 million needed to fund long-term maintenance and upkeep. She first learned about the Triangle Fire from her mother, who was a garment worker in a Pennsylvania dress factory and a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).