About

Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani (she/they) is a Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School and a Research Associate at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. She is a feminist anthropologist and a practitioner of earth-based spirituality. She researches, teaches, and writes on magic, alternative spiritualities, contemporary Paganisms, religion and healing, sensory ethnographic methods, and creative ethnographic writing. She is a dedicated mentor, committed to horizontal and individualized teaching and advising practices.

THE SPIDER DANCE

Based on ethnographic research among contemporary Pagan communities in Southern Italy (Salento, Apulia), The Spider Dance challenges (uni)linear ideas and experiences of time and temporality by showing the interconnectedness of alternative historicities, healing, and place-making among persons engaged in reviving, continuing, or re-creating traditional Pagan practices. The Spider Dance looks at local Pagans and at their ritual practice and interpretation of the traditional dance and music called pizzica. Pizzica is associated with tarantismo, a phenomenon present in that area for hundreds of years and attested until the second half of the XX century. Affecting mostly (but not only) women, tarantismo has been described in the form of malaise and physical suffering thought to be provoked by the bite of tarantula spiders and cured with pizzica music and dance. At the turn of the century tarantismo disappeared and new forms, called neotarantismi, emerged. The Spider Dance describes a novel “spiritual” form of neotarantismo and highlights its connections with contemporary forms of magic and healing. The relevance of The Spider Dance is not limited to a description of particular Pagan groups and practices. It also makes some key practical and theoretical contributions to the anthropological study of magic, of contemporary religions, of “historicities,” and to scholarly debates around complementary medicine and “well-being,” in Italy and abroad.

FEMINISM, VIOLENCE, AND REPRESENTATION IN MODERN ITALY

Can the way a word is used give legitimacy to a political movement? Feminism, Violence, and Representation in Modern Italy traces the use of the word "femminicidio" (or "femicide") as a tool to mobilize Italian feminists, particularly the Union of Women in Italy (UDI). Based on nearly two years of fieldwork among feminist activists, Giovanna Parmigiani takes a broad look at the many ways in which violence inflects the lives of women in Italy. From unchallenged gendered grammar rules to the representation of women as victims, Parmigiani examines the devaluing of women's contribution to their communities through the words and experiences of the women she interviews. She describes the first uses of the word "femminicidio" as a political term used by and within feminist circles and traces its spread to ultimate legitimization and national relevance. The word redefined women as a political subject by building an imagined community of potentially violated women. In doing so, it challenged Italians to consider the status of women in Italian society, and to make this status a matter of public debate. It also problematized the connection between women and tropes of women as objects of suffering and victimhood. Parmigiani considers this exchange within the context of Italian Catholic heritage, a precarious economy, and long-held notions of honor and shame. Parmigiani provides a careful and searing consideration of the ways in which representations of violence and the politics of this representation are shaping the future of women in Italy and beyond..

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@DR.PARMIGIANI

Other Selected Publications

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Other Selected Publications 〰️

  • 2021 “Magic and Politics: Conspirituality and Covid-19,” JAAR-Journal of the American Academy of Religion

  • 2022 “If You Dance Alone, You Cannot Be Healed”: Relational Ontologies and "Epistemes of Contagion" in Salento (Italy). California Italian Studies, 11(1).

  • 2023 “Separation, but not Division”: A Southern Italian Perspective on “Lived Conspirituality”. Anthropologica, 65(1).

  • 2019 “Spiritual Pizzica. A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism.” The Pomegranate, the International Journal of Pagan Studies 21(1): 53-75

  • 2024 “‘We Are the Olive Trees’-Conspiracism and Environmentalism in Southern Italy: The Case of Xylella Fastidiosa.” Populism and Conspiracy Theory, 1st ed., Routledge, 2025, pp. 113–34

  • 2023. Ulía: Relational Ontologies and Political Activism in Salento (Southern Italy). Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 17(3), 359–375.

  • 2020 “The Witness is Passing By: A Story in the Affective Politics of Objects in the Struggle Against Femicide in Italy.”  Italian Culture.

  • 2024 Are Pagans feminist / believe in equality? Is Paganism empowering for women, LGBT+ and minorities? Pagan Religions in Five Minutes, edited by Suzanne Owen and Angela Puca. Sheffield: Equinox

  • 2018 “Femminicidio and the Emergence of a ‘Community of Sense’ in Contemporary Italy,” Modern Italy 23(1): 19–34.