Diaspora, curriculum, community: A transnational approach to community-based learning

Abstract

Introduction The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder were characterized by countless marches through America’s cities and towns, as well as renewed calls for the removal of controversial memorial statues—sometimes resulting in their immediate defacement or even toppling by protesters. These acts of resistance played out differently in different parts of the USA, targeting most directly memorials to Confederate soldiers and leaders in the American South. But the summer also featured renewed calls for a reconsideration of the polarizing figure of Christopher Columbus, revered by some Italian American ethnics who see the Genoese explorer as inscribed into their own hybrid identity, and simultaneously reviled by other Americans who view him, instead, as a symbol of colonialism and genocide. In Pittsburgh, PA, where a memorial statue of Columbus has stood on prime city property since its October 1958 dedication, new but familiar graffiti soon appeared on the memorial’s granite base, and a petition calling for its removal from city property garnered over 15,000 signatures in just a few weeks’ time before the summer was out. In his formal response to the petition and to the City Art Commission hearings that ensued, then-Mayor Bill Peduto wrote that he was of two minds. The letter announcing his decision to remove the statue and “return it to the Italian American community” called out Columbus’ divisiveness in today’s America, underscoring the “reckoning” that our society has begun to make with his legacy of cruelty to and oppression of indigenous groups. On the other hand, Peduto wrote, a shared Italian American heritage had shaped his ancestors’ vision of Columbus as a navigator, a discoverer, a figure that legitimized Italian immigrants’ “right to be here”; further, the former mayor seemed to be moved by the narrative of “generations of Italian-Americans raising nickels and dimes,