Guerra, P., Leite, I., & Avilez, C. (Eds.). (2025). Women: Guardians of Places. Porto: University of Porto – Faculty of Arts and Humanities. https://doi.org/10.21747/9789899193475/mul
Digital Library: https://ebooks.letras.up.pt/index.php/eflup/catalog/book/5
Throughout history, women have played various central roles, although often rendered invisible, as guardians of spaces, whether physical, symbolic, or even emotional. There is an intrinsic relationship between body, place, and artistic creation, explored in the 21 chapters of this book, a relationship permeated by multiple dynamics of power, but also by resistance and transformation. Thus, we, the Guardians of Places, wish to alert the reader to the fact that they are about to engage with a book that seeks to explore, both theoretically and visually, the ways in which women possess the capacity and skill to alter the meaning of guardianship and feelings of belonging through artistic practices, activism, and the very materiality of their bodies, thereby acting as agents of change and of social (re)imagination. These Guardians are shaped by transdisciplinary perspectives from history, sociology, geography, the arts, philosophy, architecture, urbanism, anthropology, political science, and sports sciences.
Chapter 1: Unveiling the Women Guardians: Creators of Places That (Sur)Live
Paula Guerra, Isabel Pereira Leite, Ana Carolina Avilez
Chapter 2: Annunciata of Palermo and Women Librarians
Isabel Pereira Leite
Chapter 3: Elegy of the Wild Fig Trees. Arts, Environmental A(r)tivisms and Battles in the Forests
Paula Guerra
Chapter 4: No Diet Day: Brenda Oelbaum and the Challenge to Diet Culture
Júlia Almeida de Mello
Chapter 5: Maria Lídia Magliani on Display!
Renata Zago
Chapter 6: Opening Pathways. Memory and Archive as Artistic Practices
Sofia Sousa
Chapter 7: Rebel Girl: An Alternative to the “Flâneuse” – Actions in Public Spaces Through Female Walking
Alícia Medeiros
Chapter 8: Closing the Eyes to See Better
Bete Esteves
Chapter 9: Alternative Territories in Days of Destruction: Beatriz Nascimento, Intellectual and Quilombola
Simone Amorim
Chapter 10: The New Corsets of Contemporary Times: Social Constructions of the Body
Paula Guerra, Aline Maia de Freitas, Edilara Lima Pacheco
Chapter 11: Sowing Notes
Mercedes Lachmann
Chapter 12: Behind Every Great Man There Has Always Been a Great Woman. Or Has There?
Amanda Mazzoni Marcato
Chapter 13: The Queer Voice: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Journalism and Queer Artivism
Margarida Leite Gonçalves
Chapter 14: Barbie (2023): Gyno-Myths of Creation
Ana Cunha
Chapter 15: Activist Reveries in the Shape of a Woman – Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy in Portugal and Odete Santos
Maria dos Santos Cardante
Chapter 16: There Is a Bit of Fiction in Everything I Do – MAKE FEMININE
Letícia Maia
Chapter 17: The Cry of Natália
Maria João Lima
Chapter 18: CIRCLUSEAR: A Strategy-Friction-Fiction to Operate in Everyday Life
Bia Petrus
Chapter 19: Fernanda Vieira and the Nanda Produções Collective – The Insurgence of the Margins as an Act of Cultural Survival
Jaqueline Torquatro
Chapter 20: The Podium of Black Women in Artistic Gymnastics: The Burial of Elitism
Aline Maia de Freitas
