Imaginary Meetings in Auto-Coscienz
A reading group
With GIUSI RUSSO
THURSDAYS: weekly, beginning May 14, 2026.
6-7 PM Eastern US Time. See time zone converter if you’re in a different location to make sure you get the time right.
A Zoom link will be provided on registration.
Readings will be provided on registration.
$20 per month. Registration below.
GROUP DESCRIPTION
In this group we will read portions of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and discuss how his ideas apply to our everyday life. The term “auto-coscienza” comes from a 1970s Italian feminist tradition. Especially put forward by art critic Carla Lonzi, “auto-coscienza” aims at deconstructing hegemonic concepts.
The group is meant as a safe and confidential space where together we produce counter-hegemonic narratives. While the moderator is a simple historian, her goal is to see how Gramsci and Lonzi can maybe help us to have some fun conversations and build community.
Facilitator: Giusi Russo is an associate professor of History at Montgomery County Community College in the greater Philadelphia area. Her research focuses on the relationship between the Italian left and internal colonialism, as well as the entanglements between bodies and European empires. She is the author of Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946–1975 (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) and has published extensively on the colonial history of the United Nations and on the construction of colonial and post-colonial narratives. She is currently working on a book project under contract with Routledge, titled, The Aesthetics of Third-Worldism in Italy: Bodies, Spaces, and Oppression.
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