Italian Diaspora Studies

Contested Beginnings. Social and Existential Conditions of the Early Italian Immigrants to the US, 1880s-1914

When the Italian immigrants started arriving in the United States in ever growing numbers between the 1880s and World War One, they entered a country itself as complex and contradictory as their home land, but with a different twist. America was a place where you could survive, even against incredible odds. Yet the encounters between world-views and cultural memories were not always peaceful or noble, though they were multiple and replete with added and often mysterious meanings. This paper presents a sketch of the founding generation of Italian Americans from the point of view of the mainstream press (blatant racism), scholars of immigration (was it economic forces only that drove the exodus?), government documents (2011 Dillingham Commission on Immigration) on institutional racial profiling (The series of immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1924.). But it dwells as well into the existential second separation immigrants had to make from their own children born the US if they wanted to assure them a certain success in life.

Peter Carravetta is the Alfonse M. D’Amato Professor of Italian Studies at SUNY/Stony Brook. Cultural historian and poet, he has published on critical theory, postmodernism, migration, rhetoric, and phenomenological hermeneutics; on authors such as Plato, Vico, Nietzsche, Pasolini, Lyotard, Eco; and various topics in Italian, American, and Italian- American culture. He has authored several books, including: Prefaces to the Diaphora. Rhetorics, Allegory and the Interpretation of Postmodernity (Purdue 1991); The Elusive Hermes. Method, Discourse, Interpreting (Davies Group 2013); and La funzione Proteo. Ragioni della poesia e poetiche della fine (Aracne 2014). His book, After Identity. Migration, Critique, Italian American Culture is forthcoming from Bordighera Press in 2016.

Italian American Identity: Generations’ Passages

Italian American identity across the generations has gone through conflicts, breaks, ambivalence and losses; across the generations obstacles also prevented the development of the sense of tradition (loss of the primary language, lack of shared environments).

The standard narrative is that Italian Americans have “faded to whiteness” as a result of their dispersal from geographically-bound neighborhoods, and their economic success, political power, and social integration. Yet expressions of Italian American identity persist, not only as a nostalgic cultural memory but also as emerging and dynamic forms.

My lecture will focus on changes that have occurred in the ways people identify with their Italian background and heritages and how the meaning of being Italian American changes over time. It will cover the main historical passages that have caractherized the manner in which the Italian heritage has been interpretated and represented starting from the first generation of immigrants, during the time of the great migration, until today by the present generations of young Italian Americans.

As for them, I will refer to the results of a survey I have conducted during the 2013 on a sample of young Italian Americans living in the greater New York City area. Specifically, I will present some identities’ models and some profiles of the young Italian Americans, in relation with their Italian background. My research deepens the understanding of individual and social factors that influence Italian American identity and examines the ways in which Italian American identity affects individuals’ daily lives. Analysing subjects’ self- representations and self-perceptions of representations suggested by others of the Italian American community helps us to determine the meaning that Italian heritage has in the daily lives of the younger generations.

The study gives a picture to help clarify, define and better understand how to maintain and develop the feeling of belonging to the Italian American culture.

Rosemary Serra is a University Researcher in General Sociology and Professor at the University of Trieste in Italy. In 2012 and 2013, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College – CUNY). Her recent publications include: “The American Reaction to the Great War: The Academic and Cultural Contribution of George Herbert Mead,” in Cipolla C., Ardissone A. (eds.), in Major Sociologists on The Great War, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2015; (ed.), “Fiori di Campus”. Writings in Sociology and Social Work, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2013; “Dark Desire: Addictive Sexuality between the Pathological and the Normal,” in B. Cattarinussi (ed.), I can't help myself. Social Aspects of Addictions, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2013; “The Poisoned Apple. Eating addictions and Disorders,” in B. Cattarinussi (ed.), I can't help myself. Social Aspects of Addictions, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2013; “Italy: An Overview of Criminology,” in Cindy J. Smith, Sheldon X. Zhang, Rosemary Barberet (eds.), Routledge Handbook of International Criminology, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York, 2011.

From Lampedusa to Ellis Island: Diaspora Stories

In the past years, the small island of Lampedusa has become a symbol for immigration to Italy, similarly to what Ellis Island was for the Italians who emigrated to the New World. However, although both islands have assumed a significant symbolic role in the Italian imagery, the history of Italian emigration and that of recent immigration to Italy are usually considered disconnected in the dominant national discourse. By providing a panorama of the social, political, cultural implications of mass-migration to Italy through an array of texts, this lecture will elicit connections with the Italian American experience, suggesting that Italy's national identity remains marked by its multi-directional migratory history.

Alessandra Di Maio is Associate Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Palermo, Italy. She divides her time between Italy and the U.S., where she taught Italian, Comparative Literature, and Women's Studies at several universities after earning her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research includes postcolonial, black, diasporic, migratory, gender studies and transnational cultural identities. She is currently working on a project on African Italian literature and the Black Mediterranean. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, a UCLA Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, and a MacArthur Research and Writing Grant. Among her publications are Tutuola at the University. The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (2000); An African Renaissance (2006); Wor(l)ds in Progress. A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings (2008); and Dedica a Wole Soyinka (2012). She has translated into Italian Nuruddin Farah, Chris Abani, Caryl Phillips, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.