THE POWER OF STORIES An Interdisciplinary Approach in Addressing Gender Bias

The result of a research project at the University of Palermo, this book attempts a multidisciplinary response to the psychological, educational and cultural demands and needs of the student population regarding gender representations and stereotypes. It is structured in three parts: the first is devoted to the “Psychodynamic Perspective”, i.e., the detection and screening of representations of the self; the second is devoted to the “Pedagogical Perspective”, i.e., the detection and analysis of the educational needs of the students of the University of Palermo thanks to an analysis of male and female representation and the related educational needs of a group of University of Palermo students; and the third to “The narrative workshop”, aimed at analyzing the texts produced by the students and the proposed literary texts – by bell hooks, and Elena Ferrante – focused on the representation of the relations between the male and female universes. Finally, an appendix collects the texts produced by the students