This introduction proposes a framework for a transfeminist queer approach to translation grounded in affect theory and activist practice. Challenging the idea that the “affective turn” is new, the authors situate affect within longstanding feminist critiques of Western rationalism and argue that emotions and relationality have always been central to feminist knowledge production. By combining theoretical reflection with insights from translation practice, including collaborative translations of queer and feminist authors, this introduction examines how translation functions as an affective, social, and political activity. The methodology is primarily conceptual and reflective, informed by translation practice, analysis of transfeminist networks in Italy, and engagement with existing scholarship in feminist, queer, and translation studies. The introduction argues that affect operates as a generative force that shapes translators’ motivations, linguistic choices, collective formations, and the creation of queer archives. At the same time, it highlights the material conditions of translation, emphasizing precarious labor and the exploitation of activist commitment within neoliberal publishing markets. The authors conclude that transfeminist queer translation is an ethical and relational practice of care and resistance.

In this autobiographical reflection piece, Fred Kudjo Kuwornu—a multidisciplinary Afro-Italian and U.S.-based filmmaker, scholar, and artist—traces the arc of his multifaceted career, shaped by a deep engagement with identity, race, history, and representation. From an academic foundation in Political Science to his work in television, documentary filmmaking, and most recently, his participation in the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, Kuwornu reflects on how personal experience and intellectual inquiry intersect to challenge dominant cultural narratives. At the heart of this reflection is his documentary We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, an exploration that exemplifies what he terms a “remix of history”—a method grounded in visual sociology and interdisciplinary research. Kuwornu discusses the film’s relevance across Italian Studies, art history, history, and Black Studies, while also emphasizing its broader resonance for conversations around social inclusion, cultural diversity, and historical memory. He further reflects on his strategies for outreach and digital engagement, aimed at democratizing access to knowledge and sparking critical dialogue around the African presence in Europe, both past and present.

This study explores how Italy’s reluctance to confront its colonial and fascist past, along with deeply ingrained essentialist notions of national identity, citizenship, and belonging, continues to influence discursive interventions, including counter-hegemonic efforts. By focusing on the less explored arena of the progressive cultural politics of citizenship, the study explores how processes of omission and forgetting infiltrate discourses advocating for inclusion and citizenship rights. Drawing on a framework influenced by postcolonial and cultural studies and guided by thematic and framing analysis, this study examines the discursive constructions of “newness,” “inclusion,” and “moderation” sustained by deliberate or unconscious omissions within a variety of texts sourced from political-institutional, scholarly, and advocacy arenas. The study argues that discursive omissions, on the one hand, sustain a careful and moderate politics of negotiation with the dominant regime of representation to secure the advancement of the citizenship reform project, while, on the other hand, they perpetuate essentialist models of national identity rather than reclaiming inherently and historically transcultural national belonging and citizenship.

Italian media depictions of Black and brown bodies tend to be split into two opposing types. On the one hand, in images and stories about immigration, which are ubiquitous in the news and within national consciousness, these bodies have become hypervisible. On the other hand, these stories often neglect the quotidian realities that many children of immigrants face, particularly in terms of their lack of citizenship, which leaves the plight of second-generation Italians invisible. A similar pattern of invisibility is evident in Italian film and television, where Black protagonists have long been absent. At the time of their releases, the Netflix series Summertime and Zero offered intriguing possibilities for the representation of race, approaching the issues of hypervisibility and invisibility and exploring the tensions between these extremes through the protagonists and narratives at their heart. Through a comparative analysis of these two series informed by postcolonial, critical race, and film theories, I ask what it means that Summertime, a show that conforms to norms regarding race, genre, and politics, was renewed for three seasons, whereas Zero was canceled after only one season—despite its offering a more nuanced representation of being Black in Italy. I argue that the latter show was canceled precisely because it failed to calm social fears about race.

Within the growing field of transnational comics culture, marked by the great success of works such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Italian comics have not received sufficient attention. This paper reads Takoua Ben Mohamed’s latest graphic novel, La rivoluzione dei gelsomini (2018), from a Mediterranean and transnational perspective. My analysis focuses in particular on the dynamics of memory and space as they emerge in the visual narrative of the book. Through a series of maps that either lack definite points of departure and arrival or fail to show a clear way of getting from one point to another, the novel visualizes the non-linear movement of Takoua’s personal and collective memory across the Mediterranean, a memory that cannot be attached to a singular space, but rather constantly travels, and that can only be archived “on the move.” On a broader, collective level, Ben Mohamed’s graphic novel foregrounds the non-linear, rhizomatic, and constantly shifting movement across spaces and boundaries that necessarily characterizes contemporary transnational memories and experiences, while also pointing toward—and visually mapping—alternative ways of inhabiting and belonging within and across boundaries and borders.