This study analyzes female friendship in four novels written by black diasporic women and examines the impact of race, class and gender on women’s relationships. The novels emphasize how women face the challenges of patriarchal institutions and other attempts to subjugate then through polygamy, neo-colonialism, constraints of tradition, caste prejudice, political instability and the Biafra war. This dissertation uses characterization and plot analysis to explore the different stories and messages the novels portray. As findings this study foregrounds the healing powers of female bonding, which allows women to overcome prejudice and survive, to enjoy female empowerment, and to extend female friendship into female solidarity that participates in nation building. However, another conclusion focuses on the power of patriarchy which constitutes a threat to female bonding and usually causes women’s estrangement.

WOMEN’S RELATIONSHIPS: FEMALE FRIENDSHIP IN TONI MORRISON’S SULA AND LOVE, MARIAMA BA’S SO LONG A LETTER AND SEFI ATTA’S EVERYTHING GOOD WILL COME by KADIDIA SY Under the Direction of Renée Schatteman, Chris Kocela and Margaret Harper ABSTRACT This study analyzes female friendship in four novels written by black diasporic women and examines the impact of race, class and gender on women’s relationships. The novels emphasize how women face the challenges of patriarchal institutions and other attempts to subjugate then through polygamy, neo-colonialism, constraints of tradition, caste prejudice, political instability and the Biafra war. This dissertation uses characterization and plot analysis to explore the different stories and messages the novels portray. As findings this study foregrounds the healing powers of female bonding, which allows women to overcome prejudice and survive, to enjoy female empowerment, and to extend female friendship into female solidarity that participates in nation building. However, another conclusion focuses on the power of patriarchy which constitutes a threat to female bonding and usually causes women’s estrangement. INDEX WORDS: Women’s relationships, Female friendship, Female bonding, Sisterhood, Female solidarity, Female Empowerment

The purpose of this paper is to show the similarities between two authors, who both have been very successful in Italy and abroad. They are the 14th century writer Giovanni Boccaccio and the contemporary author Andrea Camilleri. I compare five short stories by Camilleri published in his books Gran circo Taddei and La regina di Pomerania and five short stories from Decameron. My aim is to show that they, although more than 600 years apart, have a common angle of approach when it comes to describing how women, seemingly subordinate and compliant, not rarely manage to achieve their aim even if it is trivial, low and not at all focused on changing the world. I also want to elucidate the fact that both writers not rarely let their female characters act as accomplices, that there is a female solidarity between them and that they seem to hav an energy and vigour that men seem to lack. The man on the other hand is often described as weak, as a false authority, who changes into a tool, a diversion in the hands of the woman. Besides this I make an analysis of the "false" short story by Boccaccio, Antonello da Palermo, written by Camilleri to see if it can fall into the genre of rewriting of classical works, which is typical of postmodernism, simply if it fulfills the criteria of such a rewriting.

Questa tesi di dottorato ha l’obiettivo di analizzare i processi attraverso cui individui ed organizzazioni costruiscono la loro posizione e la loro valutazione nel contesto di field istituzionali culturali e creativi. La tesi contiene tre capitoli che rappresentano tre distinti lavori di ricerca. Le analisi empiriche svolte sono incentrate sui settori del cinema (primo capitolo), della quality television (televisione ‘di qualità’, serie televisive) e della musica indipendente negli Stati Uniti. In tutti i lavori di ricerca sono stati utilizzati database longitudinali e metodi quantitativi e qualitativi. Nel primo capitolo, si analizza come gli scandali personali (di natura sessuale e non sessuale) influenzino la costruzione della peer recognition. Si prendono anche in considerazione gli effetti degli stereotipi legati al genere e dei comportamenti orientati alla valorizzazione delle diversità (solidarietà femminile), per comprendere come questi influiscano sulla peer recognition, insieme agli scandali, nell’ambito della valutazione degli attori di Hollywood (candidatura all’Oscar), nel lasso temporale 2003-2018. Nel secondo capitolo, viene teorizzato il processo di nascita e di consolidamento di un field interstiziale (interstitial issue field), attraverso l’analisi del caso del field nato tra la musica indipendente e la quality television negli Stati Uniti, dal 2003 al 2018. Si delineano le caratteristiche della infrastruttura istituzionale del field emerso, si definisce il ruolo lavoro degli attori istituzionali (institutional work) e degli spazi interstiziali (interstitial spaces). Nel terzo capitolo, i field istituzionali della musica indipendente e della quality television sono ulteriormente esaminati, tra il 2013 e il 2018, attraverso una indagine della collaborazione tra i due field, nell’ utilizzo di un album indipendente nella soundtrack di episodi di una serie televisiva. La ricerca mira a comprendere gli effetti della collaborazione sulla valutazione di un prodotto del field della musica indipendente (album indipendenti) che collabora con un field più ‘commerciale’ (quality television). / This doctoral thesis aims at shedding light on the processes by which individuals and organizations negotiate their structure, position, and evaluation, within the context of creative and cultural fields. It contains three chapters that represent three research studies. The empirical analyses undertaken throughout the research pieces are focused on the fields of cinema (first chapter), quality television, and independent music (second and third chapter) in the United States. For all of them, longitudinal databases are employed, and both quantitative and qualitative methodologies are utilized. In the first chapter, the role of personal (sexual and non-sexual) scandals for peer recognition is investigated. The research focuses on how scandals, gender stereotypes, and engagement in diversity-valuing behaviors (female solidarity) affect peer recognition for Hollywood actors (nomination of actors for an Oscar), in the time frame 2003-2018. In the second chapter, the process of emergence and consolidation of an interstitial issue field is theorized, by exploring the case of the field that emerged between indie music and the quality television in the United States from 2003 to 2018. In the analysis, the features of the institutional infrastructure of the emerged field, with the role of institutional actors and of interstitial spaces, are taken into consideration. In the third chapter, the fields of independent music and quality television in the US are further examined, between 2013 and 2018, by focusing on the patterns of evaluation of one field’s products (independent music, independent albums) when this field interacts with the other (quality television) – that is, when independent albums are featured in quality television episodes.