Italian American Studies guide

35th Conference of the American Italian Historical Association . "'Italian Americans and World War II, ' explores many facets of the dynamic period of the 1940s and the consequences of war and peace. Scholars within AIHA and outside the academy have been slow to recognize the significance of World War II, now recognized as a seminal event in Italian-American life and culture. . . . "This volume is dedicated to all Italian Americans who lived and died, fought and prayed during World War II." - Gary R. Mormino, Frank E. Duckwall Professor of Florida Studies, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg

Mary Cappello, Louise DeSalvo, Sandra M. Gilbert, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Carole Maso, Agnes Rossi. These are some of the best-known Italian American writers today. They are part of a literary tradition with mid-twentieth century roots that began to develop, in earnest, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During those decades, a number of Italian American women, such as Helen Barolini, began to publish books that depicted their perspectives on life through the critical lenses of gender, class, and ethnicity. At the end of the twentieth century, this literature finally blossomed into a fully fledged cultural movement that also took into account issues of sexuality, age, illness, and familial and societal abuse. Writing with an Accent takes a look at this vibrant literary movement by discussing those first writers of the 1970s and 1980s as well as later authors. At the center of Edvige Giunta’s Writing with an Accent is the literal notion of accent, the marker of linguistic and cultural difference that separates and identifies recent immigrants to the United States. In this study, an accent symbolically embodies the differences and creative strategies through which contemporary Italian American women writers engage Italian American culture in works of fiction, poetry, and memoir. Giunta also looks at the links between the literature and art, music, film, and video produced by contemporary Italian American women. The literature of the Italian American women in Writing with an Accent is shaped by the complicated connections these authors maintain with their cultural origins, but also, and perhaps more importantly, by their feminist consciousness and politicized sense of ethnic identity. Writing with an Accent celebrates and explores a group of authors who characteristically mix the joy and pain of Italian American life to paint a multifaceted picture of Italian American women and their complex place in U.S. culture.

Often portrayed as criminals or amoral opportunists, Italian American men have been among the most misrepresented and misunderstood ethnic groups of the past century. This book provides a deeper understanding of Italian American manhood through careful readings of Italian, Italian American, and other narrative texts. Beginning with an analysis of Giovanni Verga's late-nineteenth-century Sicilian peasant tales, it follows the journey of Italian American men as depicted in Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches stories, immigrant autobiographies, John Fante's realistic novels of first-generation male angst, and Anthony Valerio's narratives of the struggle for personal and cultural identity in contemporary America.

Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Dennis Barone and Peter Covino, this volume collects and expands on many of the ideas explored during the widely influential Italian American Discussion Group of the Modern Language Association, in existence ten-plus years. Scholarly writing about Italian American literature and culture has arguably entered its second fully and critically engaged decade of sustained conversation and inquiry. This collection of essays endeavors to highlight the vitality of these inquiries and offer suggestions for continuing research and enjoyment. Contributors: Michael AntonucciNancy Caronia, Jim Cocola, Joseph Conte, John Domini, Tracy Floreani, Kathleen McCormick, Gina Miele, and Roseanne Giannini Quinn.

Literary Nonfiction. THE ART OF READING ITALIAN AMERICANA is a celebration of the "Art of Reading," in which the reader and writer engage in dialogue. This book covers the ten-year period since Fred Gardaphé's DAGOES READ, from 1995-2005, and includes most of the reviews he published in Fra Noi during that period, along with a few longer reviews and review essays published elsewhere, to provide an in-depth view of the production of Italian American writers. This book, then, offers an answer to the question raised so many years ago in the New York Times: "Where are the Italian American Writers?"

In the first major critical reading of Italian American narrative literature in two decades, Fred L. Gardaphé presents an interpretive overview of Italian American literary history. Examining works from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, he develops a new perspective--variously historical, philosophical, and cultural--by which American writers of Italian descent can be read, increasing the discursive power of an ethnic literature that has received too little serious critical attention. Gardaphé draws on Vico's concept of history, as well as the work of Gramsci, to establish a culture-specific approach to reading Italian American literature. He begins his historical reading with narratives informed by oral traditions, primarily autobiography and autobiographical fiction written by immigrants. From these earliest social-realist narratives, Gardaphé traces the evolution of this literature through tales of "the godfather" and the mafia; the "reinvention of ethnicity" in works by Helen Barolini, Tina DeRosa, and Carole Maso; the move beyond ethnicity in fiction by Don DeLillo and Gilbert Sorrentino; to the short fiction of Mary Caponegro, which points to a new direction in Italian American writing. The result is both an ethnography of Italian American narrative and a model for reading the signs that mark the "self-fashioning" inherent in literary and cultural production. Italian Signs, American Streets promises to become a landmark in the understanding of literature and culture produced by Italian Americans. It will be of interest not only to students, critics, and scholars of this ethnic experience, but also to those concerned with American literature in general and the place of immigrant and ethnic literatures within that wide framework.

Italian American studies has long been in conversation with American culture at large and is increasingly present in American universities and colleges. Yet once-celebrated works, such as Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete, have slipped from the public consciousness, and many scholars fear that representations of Italian Americans in popular culture, as in The Godfather films and the television series The Sopranos, have obscured genuine historical inquiry and understanding. This volume aims to foster a deeper and more complex appreciation for the importance of Italian American texts in the study of American culture. The editors open the volume by outlining the history of Italians in the United States and exploring the potential of literature and the arts to enable the recovery of a forgotten, even repressed, historical past. Over thirty scholars and teachers then present innovative ways of teaching Italian American texts and integrating them with other texts in courses ranging from American literature and history to multiethnic and women's studies. Contributors discuss Italian American fiction, poetry, memoir, oral history, and theater and performance. A section on film and television provides an overview of popular as well as lesser-known works and interrogates the stereotyped portrayals of Italian Americans. Other contributors offer historical and interdisciplinary approaches to Italian American texts that revolve around themes of race and gender politics, work and social class, and historical intersections. The volume concludes with a review of anthologies that can be used in teaching Italian American studies.

This timely and ground-breaking study of the political behavior of three generations of Italian-Americans deals with a fundamental issue in American society: Does the political system tend to exclude certain groups from sharing political power?

    This is the life story of Rosa Cavalleri, an Italian woman who came to the United States in 1884, one of the peak years in the nineteenth-century wave of immigration. A vivid, richly detailed account, the narrative traces Rosa's life in an Italian peasant village and later in Chicago. Marie Hall Ets, a social worker and friend of Rosa's at the Chicago Commons settlement house during the years following World War I, meticulously wrote down her lively stories to create this book.     Rosa was born in a silk-making village in Lombardy, a major source of north Italian emigration; she first set foot in the United States at the Castle Garden immigrant depot on the tip of Manhattan. Her life in this country was hard and Ets chronicles it in eloquent detail--Rosa endures a marriage at sixteen to an abusive older man, an unwilling migration to a Missouri mining town, and the unassisted birth of a child, and manages to escape from a husband who tried to force her into prostitution. Rosa's exuberant personality, remarkable spirit, and ability as a storyteller distinguish this book, a unique contribution to the annals of U.S. immigration.

Literary Nonfiction. Italian & Italian American Studies. First published in Italy in 1982 and available to only a handful of scholars in the US, Boelhower's classic study IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHY in the United States led the way in identifying a new text-type that helped to reconfigure the rich but culturally narrow tradition of life-writing in the United States. A pioneer text in advocating the recognition and inclusion of multiethnic literatures in the WASP heavy literary canon, IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHY helped to enlarge the pantheon of representative American lives. This revised and enlarged edition also includes a new introduction tracing an Italian-American women's autobiographical tradition that compares favorably to that of other ethnic groups.

There has been an odd reluctance on the part of historians of the Italian American experience to confront the discrimination faced by Italians and Americans of Italian ancestry. This volume is a bold attempt by an esteemed group of scholars and writers to discuss the question openly by charting the historical and cultural boundaries of stereotypes, prejudice, and assimilation. Contributors offer a continuous series of cultural encounters and experiences in television, literature, and film that deserve the attention of anyone interested in the larger themes of American history.

This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.

This study reviews forty years of Italian-American government employment in New York City and New York State. The study analyzes the percentage of Italian Americans in 411 New York State and 391 New York City occupations, including management and professional, service, and skilled and unskilled government employment. Italian Americans in government are further studied by employment tenure among entry, career, and senior level employees.

Maligned by modern media and often stereotyped, Italian Americans possess a vibrant, if largely forgotten, radical past. In Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, Marcella Bencivenni delves into the history of the sovversivi, a transnational generation of social rebels, and offers a fascinating portrait of their political struggle as well as their milieu, beliefs, and artistic creativity in the United States. As early as 1882, the sovversivi founded a socialist club in Brooklyn. Radical organizations then multiplied and spread across the country, from large urban cities to smaller industrial mining areas. By 1900, thirty official Italian sections of the Socialist Party along the East Coast and countless independent anarchist and revolutionary circles sprang up throughout the nation. Forming their own alternative press, institutions, and working class organizations, these groups created a vigorous movement and counterculture that constituted a significant part of the American Left until World War II. Italian Immigrant Radical Culture compellingly documents the wide spectrum of this oppositional culture and examines the many cultural and artistic forms it took, from newspapers to literature and poetry to theater and visual art. As the first cultural history of Italian American activism, it provides a richer understanding of the Italian immigrant experience while also deepening historical perceptions of radical politics and culture. See the official website of the book at: http://www.marcellabencivenni.com

2006 American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation Southern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago--;descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the "melting pot." Surely the social historians are right: Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity. So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos, and other portraits of Italian-ness? Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian. Contending that the media has become the primary vehicle of Italian sensibilities, Ferraro explores a series of books, movies, paintings, and records in ten dramatic vignettes. Featured cultural artifacts run the gamut, from the paintings of Joseph Stella and the music of Frank Sinatra to The Godfather's enduring popularity and Madonna's Italian background. In a prose style as vivid as his subjects, Ferraro fashions a sardonic love song to the art and iconography of Italian America.

Nonfiction. Italian American Studies. The large majority of the twenty million Italian Americans are law-abiding, hard-working, and accomplished. Yet the image of Italian Americans is often distorted by stereotypes portrayed in popular media. PROFILES OF ITALIAN AMERICANS: ACHIEVING THE DREAM AND GIVING BACK counters those stereotypes with brief sketches of Italian Americans who have achieved success and enriched the lives of others. Included are the well known, such as Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, and the less known, such as Betty DellaCorte, founder of the first shelter for victims of domestic violence. The collection features A.P. Giannini, who sifted through the rubble following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and established the bank known today as Bank of America, as well as Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded orphanages, schools, and hospitals for the poor throughout the United States. These thirty-two profiles illustrate a range of Italian American contributions in the arts, business, education, law enforcement, media, medicine, the military, philanthropy, public service, research, science, and sports. This book celebrates with unabashed pride the impressive legacy of Italian American culture.

The Italian Americans: A Multicultural View exemplifies a meaningful attempt to inform readers about the Italian Americans' various experiences in the United States. Unlike many works on the Italian American experience, this unique text explains why popular negative notions of Italian American life are inaccurate. Moreover, this book provides useful information to help the reader become more cognizant of not only the Italian American experience, but the ethnic American experience in general. The eleven chapters of this book are an important beginning for the reader to become informed of the Italian American sociohistorical experiences, including the oppression, exploitation, and discrimination in the United States, past and present.

Italian American writers celebrate their hidden history in a literary tribute to fighting social injustice. With the current anti-immigrant sentiments filling up newspaper front pages, these writers respond with thought-provoking works that focus on breaking from mainstream tradition. On Columbus Day, instead of celebrating conquest, these poets and writers acknowledge those who stood up for justice and have fought for the rights of all immigrants, regardless of heritage. With new work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Kim Addonizio, James Tracy, Michael Cirelli, Michael Parenti, Thomas Centolella, and many others.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the general situation of Italian/American literature and its reception both in the United States and in Italy. It also discusses other social and cultural issues that pertain to Italian Americana. Section two consists of six chapters, each discussing a specific author; three dedicated to prose (Pietro di Donato, Mario Puzo, Luigi Barzini), three dedicated to poetry (Joseph Tusiani, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Rina Ferrarelli). Section three examines the current state of criticism dedicated to Italian/American literature, the second part focusing in on a number of specific works.

Taking the mass Italian immigration of the late 19th century as his starting point and drawing on dozens of oral histories and a diverse array of primary sources in English and Italian, Guglielmo focuses on how perceptions of Italians' race and color were shaped in one of America's great centers of immigration and labor, Chicago. His account skillfully weaves together the major events of Chicago immigrant history--the "Chicago Color Riot" of 1919, the rise of Italian organized crime, and the rise of industrial unionism--with national and international events--such as the rise of fascism and the Italian-Ethiopian War of 1935-36--to present the story of how Italians approached, learned, and lived race. By tracking their evolving position in the city's racial hierarchy, Guglielmo reveals the impact of racial classification--both formal and informal--on immigrants' abilities to acquire homes and jobs, start families, and gain opportunities in America.White on Arrival was the winner of the 2004 Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians

There has been an odd reluctance on the part of historians of the Italian American experience to confront the discrimination faced by Italians and Americans of Italian ancestry. This volume is a bold attempt by an esteemed group of scholars and writers to discuss the question openly by charting the historical and cultural boundaries of stereotypes, prejudice, and assimilation. Contributors offer a continuous series of cultural encounters and experiences in television, literature, and film that deserve the attention of anyone interested in the larger themes of American history.

This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.

Maligned by modern media and often stereotyped, Italian Americans possess a vibrant, if largely forgotten, radical past. In Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, Marcella Bencivenni delves into the history of the sovversivi, a transnational generation of social rebels, and offers a fascinating portrait of their political struggle as well as their milieu, beliefs, and artistic creativity in the United States. As early as 1882, the sovversivi founded a socialist club in Brooklyn. Radical organizations then multiplied and spread across the country, from large urban cities to smaller industrial mining areas. By 1900, thirty official Italian sections of the Socialist Party along the East Coast and countless independent anarchist and revolutionary circles sprang up throughout the nation. Forming their own alternative press, institutions, and working class organizations, these groups created a vigorous movement and counterculture that constituted a significant part of the American Left until World War II. Italian Immigrant Radical Culture compellingly documents the wide spectrum of this oppositional culture and examines the many cultural and artistic forms it took, from newspapers to literature and poetry to theater and visual art. As the first cultural history of Italian American activism, it provides a richer understanding of the Italian immigrant experience while also deepening historical perceptions of radical politics and culture. See the official website of the book at: http://www.marcellabencivenni.com

This lucid and finely crafted book explores how migration has made ‘home’ a constantly evolving concept and how practices of home-making can extend through memory and imagination to include spaces as diverse as the call centre and the train station. Providing detailed new readings of a range of postcolonial texts in Italian, this book will be essential reading for all scholars and students who engage with cultural representations of migration. - Emma Bond, Reader, University of St Andrews, Scotland

This is an inspirational book that provides a compelling analysis of how migration literature negotiates and reconceives notions of home. Giuliani brilliantly explores how domestic and public spaces are reconfigured in postcolonial literature, allowing us to grasp the complexity of the lived experiences of migrants. Giuliani›s engaging work offers an innovative perspective on migration culture; an essential reading for anyone interested in Postcolonial, Memory and Space Studies. - Simone Brioni, Associate Professor, Stony Brook University, USA

Dr Chiara Giuliani is Lecturer in Italian Studies at University College Cork (Ireland). She researches different aspects of postcolonial literature, questions of home and identity, as well as the cultural representation of the Chinese community in Italy. She has published widely on these topics in academic journals and books.

This book explores how women's relationship with food has been represented in Italian literature, cinema, scientific writings and other forms of cultural expression from the 19th century to the present. Italian women have often been portrayed cooking and serving meals to others, while denying themselves the pleasure of the table. The collection presents a comprehensive understanding of the symbolic meanings associated with food and of the way these intersect with Italian women's socio-cultural history and the feminist movement. From case studies on Sophia Loren and Elena Ferrante, to analyses of cookbooks by Italian chefs, each chapter examines the unique contribution Italian culture has made to perceiving and portraying women in a specific relation to food, addressing issues of gender, identity and politics of the body.

'Utopia and Dystopia is a skilful synthesis of the work of Calvino, Sanguineti, Volponi and Pasolini, cutting-edge intellectuals of the latter twentieth century. Fioretti's book fills a gap in our knowledge of the literature of commitment in Italy by connecting it to the tradition of utopian literature in Europe, a framework the author explores theoretically and practically, and applies to the texts of these very diverse authors. By virtue of his method and the elegant and streamlined nature of his prose, Fioretti succeeds in presenting this complex material in a way that is highly legible and inviting, whether to the novice reader or the expert.' - Thomas E. Peterson, Professor of Italian, University of Georgia, USA < This book is about the presence of utopian and dystopian elements in the Italian literary landscape. It focuses on four authors that are representatives of the various positions in the Italian cultural debate: Pasolini, Calvino, Sanguineti, and Volponi. What did concepts like utopia and dystopia mean for these authors? Is it possible to separate utopia from dystopia? What is the role of science fiction in this debate? This book answers these questions, proposing an original interpretation of utopia and of the social role of literature. The book also takes into consideration four of the most influential literary journals in Italy: Officina, il menabò, il verri, and Nuovi Argomenti, that played a central role in the cultural and political debate on utopia in Italy.

From 1815 to 1823 the Italian influence on English literature was at its zenith. While English tourists flocked to Italy, a pervasive Italianism coloured many facets of London life, including poetry, periodicals, translation, and even the Queen's trial of 1820. In this engaging study Will Bowers considers this radical interaction by pursuing two interrelated analyses. The first examines the Italian literary and political ideas absorbed by Romantic poets, particularly Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The second uncovers the ambassadorial role played in London by Italians, such as Serafino Buonaiuti and Ugo Foscolo, who promoted a revolutionary idea of their homeland and its literature, particularly Dante's Commedia. This dual-perspective study reveals the cosmopolitan challenge to Regency mores embodied in both the work of Italian literary exiles in London and the English poetic engagement with Italy.

What will happen to the subjunctive? Why is the misuse of rather that it has so quickly imposed itself everywhere? Is it true that in the future we will only have verbs in -are? In this book-interview, the president of the Accademia della Crusca Claudio Marazzini answers these and other questions about the transformations that affect Italian, from the «side effects» of social media to the resistance of dialects. A journey where prophecies that do not come true, ministerial slips and clashes in court also meet, to discover that our language is alive and lively, but also that we must take care of it. Foreword by Michele Serra.

Latin - that of the great authors, of literature but also that of everyday life that we often use unconsciously - is a treasure trove of meanings that continue to speak to us and make us what we are. Not only because through this language we can get clearer ideas about the origin of images, metaphors, idioms, but above all because it continually challenges us to get in touch and in constant dialogue with our past, and therefore to know ourselves better. In this very personal ideal vocabulary, ranging between history and philosophy, between great classics and modern writers, Nicola Gardini chooses ten words that, according to him, have shaped and continue to shape our time and our civilization, and through which it is possible reading against the light a fragment of the history of all of us.

Dwell on Marazzini’s book: Italian is truly a wonderful language. - Corrado Augias, The Republic

Italian has always been the most loved, most cultured language, admired throughout Europe for its charge of refined musicality. Not to mention the variety of languages, which correspond to the richness of our local traditions. Yet sometimes we seem to have forgotten about it. Claudio Marazzini, president of the Accademia della Crusca, works every day to enhance our language and to better equip it for the challenges of the future. Italian, he reminds us, flourished well before Italy was born: after having developed in the Middle Ages as a popular language son of Latin, it has been splendidly enriched with our great literature. Why are we no longer exploiting its immense heritage of sensitivity and culture today? Marazzini guides us in this book in a rigorous and complete analysis of the state of health of contemporary Italian and shows us how to recover, and use, the thousand shades of our wonderful language.

“Today we are witnessing the paradox of a literature that multiplies and simultaneously retreats, besieged by the media empire, by the emptiness of communication, by the degradation of language and civil life.”

Subtract rather than accumulate, rediscover the passion and beauty of the essential. Write less, write better. «Together with a radical ecology of the physical environment, we increasingly need an ecology of communication, which acts as an ecology of the mind, which frees our minds from the infinite waste that keep them under siege at all times, with a variegated chain of manipulations that few can resist. And an ecology of books and literature is increasingly necessary, capable of making distinctions in the immense accumulation of the book material produced.