{"title":"Death Comes for the Poets","authors":"George Guida","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.124","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124031858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forging Transnational Identities in Italian American Chick Lit: The Novels of Adriana Trigiani and the Ethnic Bildungsroman","authors":"Clorinda Donato","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.059","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The highly successful writing career of Italian American author Adriana Trigiani is examined from the perspective of diaspora theory and transnational studies to reveal how the abiding value of her work lies in its ability to offer a provocative new model of the ethnic Bildungsroman, or novel of education. This essay probes the seemingly facile label of “Chick Lit” often applied to Trigiani's work to redefine the genre as a dynamic site of ethnic women's empowerment, one that invites women to rediscover their salient role in the Italian American landscape. By highlighting the agency that has been heretofore invisible in the life stories of our first-generation immigrant great-grandmothers and grandmothers working as seamstresses and shoemakers, Trigiani inspires new generations of Italian American women, now pharmacists and writers, to take up the mantle of their forebears to become engaged, proactive members of society, always infused with the best traditions of Italian diaspora sisterhood.","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"168 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133030980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Editor","authors":"Ryan Calabretta-Sajder","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129705856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021","authors":"A. Gravano, Alexandra de Luise","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.103","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114195552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Remembering Columbus, Forgetting Ethnicity: Memory, White Supremacy, and Italian American Identity in the American South","authors":"Nicole Maurantonio","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.043","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Following news of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, protesters around the world organized to highlight police brutality against Black and Brown people. Alongside a list of demands including the defunding of police departments, protesters also called for the removal of public symbols of white supremacy. Although protesters took aim primarily at statues memorializing Confederate leaders, sites commemorating Christopher Columbus drew similar criticism. In Richmond, Virginia, demonstrators not only toppled the statue to Columbus; they lit it on fire and dumped it in nearby Fountain Lake. While the decision to submerge the Columbus statue in water might be interpreted as a convenient performative ploy, this article suggests that the action is one suffused with meaning. Forging a narrative linkage between Columbus and Confederate leaders, protesters cast the monuments commemorating these historic actors as analogue artifacts of racial intimidation. This article argues, however, that this narrative washed away—in both literal and figurative terms—a complex history of Italian immigration to the city, assimilation, and the process of “becoming white.”","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114571632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Dangers of Italian Americans Reading (Besides Going Blind)","authors":"R. Orsi","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 What happens when a working-class boy in an Italian American family in the Bronx begins to love reading and gets absorbed in the world of books? This essay explores the fears and the hopes raised in one family in the mid-1960s and the ambivalence of success American-style. When books are scarce, they arrive with an aura around them of promise and danger, like visitors from another place and time. The article takes up the possibility that reading may represent betrayal, albeit perhaps a necessary one, and suggests that to become a scholar from a working-class background comes with pain, and that this pain may become a source of conceptual insight.","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"149 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134217074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Joseph Tusiani: A Man for All Seasons","authors":"Ryan Calabretta-Sajder","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.131","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133347856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Garden to Table: Cultivating Southern Hospitality through Italian American Gardening Traditions","authors":"Rosetta Giuliani-Caponetto","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.084","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While petitions around the country circulate demanding that American academic institutions rename buildings that pay tribute to historic figures tarnished by their ties to practices of racial subjugation, this article imagines a future in which namesake buildings can heighten inclusivity, equity, and universities’ commitment to the economic well-being of their surrounding communities. Specifically, the article draws upon the meaning of the term “transformative” to examine the philanthropic endeavor of an Italian American family whose donations made possible the creation of a culinary science center at Auburn University in Alabama. Drawing upon the center's “garden to table” slogan, the article examines the intersection between Italian American gardening traditions for self-sufficiency and Black Alabamians’ historical involvement in farming as a practice for self-sustenance. Named the Tony and Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, this facility can commemorate the history of its Italian American donors, uphold the rich history of Black farming in Alabama, be a driving force in advancing diversity on campus, and fulfill the mission of its land-grant institution by becoming the proponent of transformative food and transformative placemaking.","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"348 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125626373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In and Out of the Cocoon: Reflections of a Literary Scholar on a Bootless Italy","authors":"M. Marazzi","doi":"10.5406/27697738.1.1.016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/27697738.1.1.016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The current transnational and diasporic trend in “outward” Italian studies challenges the conventional wisdom of an Italo-centric curriculum and opens up new perspectives in a variety of ways while positing a more complex cultural scenario in light of contemporary massive migrations affecting Italy and Europe. This essay, taking its cue from several literary and historiographical sources, advocates for a wider approach to the cultural study of things Italian and for a more nuanced and unprejudiced adoption of academic labels and categories.","PeriodicalId":165143,"journal":{"name":"Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132512387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}