Theatre and Gender Performance: WWII Italian POW Camps in East Africa

Elena Bellina is an assistant professor of Italian at the University of Rochester. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Creativity on Stage Behind Barbed Wire: Italian POWs in Africa (1940–1947). In her investigation of how Italian prisoners detained in Africa escaped the trauma of captivity through literature and the performing arts, she focuses on unpublished memoirs and diaries from the National Diary Archive in Pieve di Santo Stefano (Italy).