Juliet Guzzetta

Dentro (Inside). A True Story, If You Think So
By Giuliana Musso

Juliet Guzzetta receives the 2025 American Society of Theatre Research Translation Prize for her inspired, timely translation of Guiliana Musso’s Dentro (Inside): A True Story, If You Think So. The committee would like to present the 2025 ASTR Translation Award to Dentro (Inside): A True Story, If You Think So written by Giuliana Musso and translated from the Italian by Juliet Guzzetta. In its deliberation, the committee highlighted:

• the playability of the translation and memorability of the story;
• the relevance of the play to ongoing justice movements shedding light on sexual violence against women; and
• the contribution the work makes to worldwide debates about the Real in a troublesome time of “post-truth”.

With permission from the University of Florida Press, the translation of this play is available for free below. For rights for a public performance, please contact the translator or original author. The text includes an introduction to the play, and a conclusion on translating the play. This translation was used for the English supertitles during performances with the Italian cast during their US tour in 2025.

Dentro (Inside). A True Story, If You Think So

The Writers’ Assembly

Annual Conference at Sorrento

Saturday, June 8, 2024

2:45 pm – 5:15 pm

The Women’s Studies Caucus

The Critical Race, Diasporas, and Migrations Caucus and

The Queer Studies Caucus present

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Gabriella Ghermandi, Gabriella Kuruvilla, Espérance Hakuzwimana, Djarah Kan, and Shirin Ramzanali Fazel,

in conversation

Angelica Pesarini, respondent

Emily Antenucci, moderator

The inspiration for this event arrived from a conversation between Espérance Hakuzwimana and Juliet Guzzetta in the spring of 2023 when they met in Turin to talk about their mutual interests and Espérance shared the wish to have more time and space to interact with writers who inspire her. The caucuses attempt here to make that possible. Our session is experimental in nature and grounded in the principles of generosity, curiosity, and admiration. The writers will lead the first half, loosely following a set of questions for each other that the caucuses offered. Our respondent will begin the second session, and our moderator will help guide the conversation fielding questions from the audience.

With gratitude for the generous sponsorship of Michigan State University, Saint Louis University, the Caucuses, and the Association.

Video of the conversation.

Published transcript, edited for legibility, with afterword.

Thanks to generous collaborations, this important oral history has an archival life via the media center at Michigan State University where the full conversation is freely available to all (in Italian with English subtitles); and thanks to the open-access California Italian Studies journal, especially Angelica Pesarini who proposed to me the idea of including text of the assembly, with a commentary (all in English). 

Italian Feminisms: Transnational Praxes for Today and Tomorrow, Essays and Critical Stories

Co-edited by Juliet Guzzetta and Graziella Parati with close to thirty contributions

Italian feminists of postwar Europe were arguably the most influential group of thinkers and actors to transform the society of late twentieth century Italy. Engaging profound issues such as class, labor, and rural and urban disparity, they offered some of the most rigorous, creative, and influential thinking on gendered experience that resonated from the courts to private homes. Now, a quarter into the twenty-first century, amid a new generation of intellectuals and artists, this collection of essays and critical stories explores ongoing developments in Italian feminist thought, its current debates, and future trajectories. In this volume, some of the most celebrated writers in Italy today dialog with an international cohort of scholars to construct a community for new ideas between intellectuals, artists, and activists. The result is a truly inclusive multilingual and multicultural narrative about feminist theory and practice that makes the case for a just—and therefore, feminist—society.

Forthcoming from the State University of New York Press, autumn 2026…