Italian American Studies Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Ethnic Studies, Journalism History, Italian American Studies, Italian migration
- by Biff Rocha
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- Italian American Studies
- by Fraser Ottanelli
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- Italian American Studies

This is the brochure for the April 2018 conference “Corporeal Restrictions, Embodied Freedoms: Italian Interventions on the Body” organized by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, City University of New York.... more

- by Joseph Sciorra
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- Gender Studies, Art History, Italian Studies, Diasporas

This article investigates the reception of two of the most popular TV programs depicting Italian American mafiosi: The Untouchables (1959-63) and The Sopranos (1999-2007). Italian American organizations protested against both these ethnic representations, winning concessions from producers in the 1960s but coming up empty by the turn of the last century. The paper argues that the relative success or failure of these antidefamation efforts is not a mere barometer of white ethnics' cultural status nor aesthetic achievement. Rather, the cultural status of television itself affected the ways the protesters made their claims and whether or not their demands were met.

CALL FOR PAPERS: "Italian Sonorities and Acoustic Communities: Listening to the Soundscapes of Italianità" conference, April 27-29, 2017 at Queens College's John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, Manhattan.... more

- by Joseph Sciorra
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- Radio And Sound Studies, Oral history, Soundscape Studies, Sound studies

In memory of a doyen in Italian-American studies, Gabriele Scardellato (York University).

Does Italian-American “ethnic politics” exist at all? In other words, How do Italian-American politicians get themselves elected? To what extent do they try to influence the Italian-American electorate to vote on the basis of their ethnic identity? In order to answer these questions I approach Ethnic Politics within the context of alternative competing models: Local Politics, where the vote is acquired through patronage and clientelism; Issue Politics, where the vote is traded in the global market of opinions and policy preferences; and Party Politics, which encourages voters to align on the basis of partisan cleavages. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with New York State legislators of Italian descent, the study concludes that, although they may have subjective sensibilities that make them more or less receptive to the ethnic factor, Italian-American politicians tend to consider their options pragmatically — their primary goal being not that of fostering ethnic identity per se, but rather the more mundane one of gaining and consolidating power.

- by Ottorino Cappelli
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- American Politics, Italian American Studies

ASpecial Issue on Organized Crime

Special issue on environmental history of migration co-edited by Roberta Biasillo, Claudio De Majo and myself

- by Daniele Valisena and +2
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- Mobility/Mobilities, Environmental History, Argentina History, Migration History

This well written essay’s basic premise is that all Italian and Italian American foods and traditions are not the same. When it comes to food and foodways Italians and Italian Americans are governed more by regionalism (both in Italy and in the US) and Catholicism than they are by a single tradition. Using the Christmas Eve (and Day in Part II) feast of antipasti, primi, secondi, and dessert foods of Italian Americans from various parts of Italy and the United States as examples, the author illustrates that Italian American foods and traditions do not stem from a single foodway (Not all Italians or Italian Americans eat seven dishes on Christmas Eve). Rather, each dish offers clues to the family’s distinct heritage. That heritage is governed more by who conquered them, where they lived, and what the area grew than it does by the tradition itself which was often established by the Catholic Church. The tradition is the unifier. The regionalism is the divider and identifier. The essay also makes a strong distinction between Italians and Italian Americans. The desire of Italian Americans to keep their traditions intact froze traditions in America. Italy marched in one direction, unifying the country. Italian Americans marched in the opposite direction, maintaining the regionalism that made them unique. If a person does not understand these basic concepts about Italian Americans he or she will never understand what constitutes Italian American foods and traditions in the United States. It is not pasta. It is not pizza. It can never be that simple.
A version of this article and some of the recipes appeared in Western Pennsylvania History, the official magazine of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in December 1999. Part II: Christmas Day was in the December 2000 edition.

- by Cristina Lombardi-Diop
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- Italian American Studies
- by George Guida
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- Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Italian American Studies
- by Sabrina Vellucci
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- Religion, Ethnic Studies, Women's Studies, Autobiographical Self-Representation

Program for the conference "Bambini, Ragazzi, Giovani: Children and Youth in Italy and the Italian Diaspora" held April 24-25, 2015 at the midtown Manhattan offices of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens, City... more

When Marcella Bencivenni invited me to edit this tribute to Louise DeSalvo for Italian American Review, we agreed that, given the scope of the journal, we wanted to hear from authors who were not part of an exclusively literary circle. We wanted to include authors who came from or engaged with different disciplinary approaches. We trusted their perspectives would shed light on the wide-ranging, transdisciplinary influence of Louise DeSalvo. Through personal, intimate, often vulnerable responses, Nancy Carnevale, George De Stefano, Donna R. Gabaccia, John Gennari, Stanislao Pugliese, and Laura Ruberto testify to the power of the legacy Louise has left her fellow citizens of the diverse world of the written word. Her writing was self-empowering, but it was also profoundly empowering and transformative for readers, writers, scholars. This tribute recognizes Louise DeSalvo’s enormously important literary and cultural legacy but also asserts our responsibility to give this author due rec...

- by Joseph Sciorra and +2
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- Music, Soundscape Studies, Sound studies, Italian American Studies

Il testo corregge per la prima volta due banalità che rincorrono la storia di Sacco e Vanzetti sin dai tempi della loro incarcerazione, nel 1920. La partenza dall'Italia. Per Vanzetti il 13 giugno 1908 (e non il 15 giugno). Per Sacco addirittura un anno dopo. Non il 1908 ma il 1909. Il saggio documenta poi come Rosa Zambelli, moglie di Nicola Sacco, non sia pugliese, come molti hanno sempre ritenuto e scritto (compreso il film di Giuliano Montaldo), ma sia invece bresciana, originaria di Lonato sul Garda. Narra della sua origine, dell'infanzia e della fanciullezza sino al matrimonio, a ilford, con l'anarchico pugliese.

- by Luigi Botta
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- Immigration, Anarchism, Anarchist Studies, Italian American Studies

This essay examines newspaper articles, government documents, personal family collections, and secondary sources to refute and corroborate interviews about Ralph Lembo and restore the good name of the Mississippi talent scout and manager whose passionate, multifaceted engagement with the entertainment world brought many artists to major recording companies, including Columbia, Paramount, OKeh, and Victor. Lembo drove Rocket 88 airconditioned automobiles, wore alligator boots and Panama-brimmed hats, and he stepped up and offered his large plantation when several other potential sites had refused to support the establishment of Mississippi Valley State University. Lembo relished playing the drums in his band the Pot Lickers and operating several music stores in the mid-Delta, which brought him into contact with an immense well of talent, including such figures as Kansas City Jim Jackson, Bo Carter, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Rubin Lacy. This article also explodes the negative and ongoing bias against Lembo and argues that he discovered the “King of the Delta Blues,” Charley Patton.

The construction and development of cultural identities is a complex process and many factors determine failure or success in the preservation of the system of values of the culture of origin in a different context1. An imaginative re-creation of a new set of values that cease to be carriers of the original environment steadily show signs of a new culture, modified by the effects of connection with the new contact culture. This paper examines the effects of such modifications in the Italian/American context from a socio-linguistic perspective. A sample of Italian-American informants have been selected using a popular social network, Facebook, involving ethnically conscious young volunteers (i.e. subscribers of Italian/American groups in the network) whose first language is American English. Informants were asked questions with regard to their use of language, their self-perceptions of their linguistic identities and non-Italian assessment of Italian-American culture. As far as the latter issue is concerned, popular culture has also been taken into account, considering linguistic representations of Italian-American people in the media (i.e. TV shows, movies, advertisement) and their response to it. The method of selection of informants, their attitude and self-perceived language use will be discussed.

- by Maria Grazia Sindoni
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- Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, Sociolinguistics

Following World War I, as the 19th amendment helped redefine the role of American women in the public arena, a new model of womanhood, inspired by the "flappers", challenged the traditional approach to femininity. This article aims at analyzing how Il Progresso Italo- Americano and other Italian-American newspapers reacted to such changes in American society. Defending the old patriarchal values, which still prevailed among Southern European immigrants, most Italian-American journalists expressed their disapproval of the suffrage movement, attacked the "flappers", and ridiculed the feminists. In the name of their cultural heritage, they fiercely opposed the American model, and presented the Italian woman as an exemplary alternative. Even when Mussolini introduced in Italy an electoral reform which allowed a certain category of women to vote at the local level, the Italian-American press supported the project on the very ground that the Italian woman was above all a mother and a wife who was not given to erroneous idea of her place in society and who would therefore be reliable as a voter. By omitting to mention the struggle led by the existing feminist organizations in Italy, the Italian-American press thus purposely associated emancipation with Americanism, and transformed the debate over feminism into an ethnic debate.

- by Bénédicte Deschamps
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Women's History, Fascism
- by Ottorino Cappelli
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- American Politics, Italian American Studies

This essay discusses the important contribution given by Italian-born artists to the Art Déco movement in America. Their works, which are stylistically quite distinctive (many draw their inspiration from the Renaissance tradition), decorate important buildings such as the Rockefeller Center in New York, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Liberty Memorial of Kansas City (Missouri) and the United States Court House and Post Office Building in Philadelphia.

- by Vittoria Repetto
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- Poetry, Modern Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Italian-American Literature

Published on Aug 24, 2016
Interview with Joan L. Saverino - San Giovanni in Fiore (CS), July 2016.
Music: tarantella, pastorale, sonata.
Images: West Virginia State Archives, Charleston WV and Joan Saverino
Editing by Alessandro Tarsia.
«New Nostoi Series» by Alessandro Tarsia, non-profit video.
Special Thanks: Antonia Prosperati, Comune di San Giovanni in Fiore, Museo Demologico dell'Economia del Lavoro e della Storia Sociale Silana, Abbazia Florense.

- by Joan L Saverino
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- Folklore, Italian Studies, Textiles, Material Culture Studies

Response to John Fante's "Ask The Dust" novel through a Lacanian lens.

- by Pavel Frolov
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- Psychoanalysis, Film Studies, Literature, Jacques Lacan

This essay will address the dissemination of contemporary Italian cinema in North-American the- atres. In the first part, it provides an overview of theatrical circulation strategies over the past few decades, offering a historical perspective on the economic and cultural distribution processes of Italian cinema in the United States. In the second, the article focuses on quantitative data in order to examine how many and what kinds of Italian films were distributed in American theatres over the past ten years, as well as their admissions and box office takings. Specifically, this contribution focuses on the two Italian auteurs who obtained the most visibility in the US thanks to the distribu- tion of 4 of their films between 2008 and 2017: Paolo Sorrentino and Luca Guadagnino. In order to define two different distribution models, we will identify the promotion strategies of the most widely circulated films directed by these auteurs: La grande bellezza/The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015) by Sorrentino, and Io sono l’amore/I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash by Guadagnino. In the final section, we relate these cases to the historical circulation patterns of Italian cinema.

- by Damiano Garofalo and +1
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- Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Italian Cultural Studies, Italian Cinema

Italians immigrated to Western Pennsylvania in great numbers mostly to work in the mines and steel mills. Most came from southern areas of Italy. In Monessen, a steel town south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, the first Italians came from the north, mostly Tuscany. As immigration continued more southern Italians arrived. How they got along is the subject of this essay.

Il testo documenta alcuni aspetti mai chiariti della vicenda di Nicola Sacco e Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Le ultime parole dei due anarchici italiani pronunciate nella camera della morte, già prossimi all'esecuzione. La storia del filmato del funerale. La registrazione delle due salme presso il camposanto di Forest Hills a Boston, indicate come decedute a causa di «judicial homicide». I diversi passaggi del viaggio delle ceneri, separate, dagli Stati UNiti all'Italia.

- by Luigi Botta
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- American Studies, Immigration, Anarchism, Anarchist Studies

This essay follows the publication of the book Immigrant's Kitchen: Italian, currently revised and republished as A Tuscan American Kitchen. It traces the road to publication as well as the road to discovery about Italian American cooking. It first appeared in Italian Americana and then updated in Carol Albright Bonomo, and Christine Palamidessi Moore. American Women Italian Style: Italian Americana’s Best Writing on Women. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

- by cassandra vivian
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- Publishing, Italian Studies, Regionalism, Italian American Studies
- by James Pasto
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- Race and Ethnicity, Italian American Studies, Consumption Culture

This article analyzes the role of Italian American filmmakers, characters, and viewers in U.S. cinema.

- by Frank P Tomasulo, Ph.D.
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- Film Studies, Italian Studies, Italian Cinema, Ethnicity and Race in Film