Leisure pursuits, games and sports over the centuries: a question of gender?
Study seminar and the Gaetano Cozzi Prize 2024
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Throughout history and in all civilizations women and men have played games, engaged in pastimes or practised sports together or separately, and they have attributed value and meaning to their promotion, participation and enjoyment of such games and practices – just as they have refused or been forced to do so.
The question concerns individuals and groups of various ages, origin and social status, ethnic, cultural, political or religious background.
Gender difference, however, has a special status: it splits (or unites) humankind down the middle; yet its naturalness is largely apparent, given that the distinction between their respective social roles is essentially a cultural construction that varies depending on context and place.
Which practices and which contexts, ludic contexts in particular, most effectively and significantly exemplify the substantial symbolic capital that women and men have invested in them, each in their own way, and how have these forms of ludicity helped to define, reinforce or undermine gender identity?
These are some of the issues at the centre of the study seminar organised in the framework of the research sector that the Benetton Foundation devotes to ludicity, on the occasion of the annual award of the Gaetano Cozzi Prize for studies in the history of games, 2024.
The seminar is introduced and coordinated by:
Alessandro Arcangeli, Verona University, and Alessandra Rizzi, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice.
Speakers include:
Francesca Rohr, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice: Matronae tra otium e politica in Roma antica (The role of matronae in otium and politics in Ancient Rome);
Nicolangelo D’Acunto, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan: Gioco e vita religiosa femminile: esempi dal medioevo (Games and the female religious life: examples from the Middle Ages);
Guido Ruggiero, University of Miami: The Queen’s Gambit: Playing the Game of Courting Successfully During the Italian Wars;
Maria Adank, Verona University/University of Chicago: Feste, spazi e ruoli di genere: le donne dietro le quinte del potere nelle repubbliche di età moderna (Gender festivities, spaces and roles: women behind the scenes in the republics of the Modern Age).
The seminar will be followed by the award of the Gaetano Cozzi Prize, 2024. Speakers will include the authors of the winning submissions: Benedetta Colasanti and Marly Terwisscha van Scheltinga, and the authors of the studies in receipt of a special mention: Francesco Borghero and Silvia Orione.
Citations for the various studies will be presented by Gherardo Ortalli, the director of «Ludica» and Chairman of the Prize Commission, Alessandro Arcangeli, Elisabeth Belmas and Alessandra Rizzi, members of the Scientific Committee of «Ludica» and of the Prize Commission. The meeting will be coordinated by Patrizia Boschiero, head of the Foundation’s publications department.
