Italian Diaspora Studies

Food, Family and Frenzy in Italian American Cinema

Various scholars have noted the recurring symbolism of food within Italian American literature and cinema. Numerous scholars from cultural studies to film and food studies, for example, have written on the film Big Night. This presentation will analyze the use of food as it functions as collateral, as character, and as aphrodisiac in a handful of Italian American films. Through these three lens, I argue that foodways demonstrates a politics of representation most often attached to the family dynamic.

Ryan Calabretta-Sajder (DML, Middlebury College) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and is currently a Fulbright Teaching/Research fellow in residence at the University of Calabria (Spring 2017). He is the author of Divergenze in celluloide: Colore, migrazione e identità sessuale nei film gay di Ferzan Özpetek (Mimesis editore, 2017) and editor of Pasolini's Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2017). His research interests include Queer and Feminist Theory in contemporary Italian and Italian American literature and cinema.

Carmine Abate is among the most recognized contemporary Italian writers. Born in Carfizzi, an Italo-Albanian village in Calabria, early on he assumed an identity in two worlds. Not only was he part of an ethnic Albanian community living in Italy, but later, following his father who went to Germany for work, also assumed a German identity. He has written numerous award-winning novels, short stories and essays, mainly focusing on issues of migration and the encounters between disparate cultures.

Where’s the Italian in Italian-Canadian Poetry?

Roman Candles, the first anthology of Italian-Canadian poetry, edited by Pier-Giorgio Di Cicco was published almost 40 years ago (1978). Di Cicco includes seventeen poets that express, “a bi-cultural sensibility: Italian and Anglo-Canadian.” While Di Cicco grants this dual awareness and a hyphenated identity, he also claims that these poets are not emigrants because they were brought to Canada by their parents as children (three were born in Canada). This presentation considers Di Cicco’s envisioning of this “bi-cultural sensibility and how it is expressed in the anthology’s poems. It examines the contradictions in Di Cicco’s brief explanation of the not emigrants designation. I consider the themes emerging out of the anthology’s voices: especially those pertaining to immigration such as departure and arrival, acculturation and integration, language, identity and gender. Also at play is the tension between generations, between the individual and the immigrant community and between the Italian-Canadian and the Anglo-Canadian community. Since some poets reject the hyphen- ated label what problems and limitations does it present for writers?

By reading a number of the anthologized poets over time, I examine how their subjects and themes have evolved. Do they still demonstrate this “bicultural-sensitivity?” Which poets choose to leave the Italian-Canadian behind? Who has arrived as a poet? How is arrival determined: is it partially constructed by what Francesco Loriggio calls “the in-Canada social migration” through art of second generation writers? Is arrival being included in anthologies of representative Canadian poets? Through an appraisal of third generation poets writing today, I ask if their poems identify, in any way, with their Italian heritage. Do they engage with their predecessors or do they (like some of their predecessors) move beyond or resist writing out of an Italian-Canadian heritage?

Giovanna Riccio was born in Calabria, Italy and immigrated to Canada as a child. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto where she received an Honours BA in Philosophy. Her poems and essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. Her work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, French and Romanian. She is the author of Vittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press, 2010) and Strong Bread (Quattro Books, 2011). Giovanna co-organized the Toronto reading series, Not So Nice Italian Girls for three years and is now part of the team that organizes Shab-e She’r, Toronto’s most diverse monthly reading series.

Italian Diaspora Ethnography and Social Action

This lecture presents scholarship which straddles the academic/public divide and addresses is- sues such as advocacy for vernacular cultures, cross-cultural and interfaith dialog, food justice, art in community. It is illustrated by research and public programs on traditional song, St. Joseph’s Tables, the mythic land of plenty (Paese di Cuccagna), the Watts Towers, and more.

Luisa Del Giudice, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, former university academic (University of California Los Angeles, visiting prof. Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia), public sector educator (Founder- Director of the Italian Oral History Institute), and community activist. She has published and lectured widely on Italian and Italian American and Canadian folklife, ethnology, and oral history, and has produced many innovative public programs on Italian, Mediterranean, regional, and folk culture, and local history in Los Angeles. In 2008 she was named an honorary fellow of the American Folklore Society and knighted by the Italian Republic. She is the coordinator of the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative and editor of Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development, New York: Fordham UP, 2014. Edited volume: On Second Thought: Learned Women Reflect on Profession, Community, Purpose, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, April 2017.

Dandyism in the Socio-Economic Context of Italian Americana: Robert Ferro

Robert Ferro, a noted Italian American author of NYC’s 1980s gay scene, penned four books, one being the first novel to mentioned HIV. A founding member of “The Violet Quill,” he died of HIV complications in 1988. Ferro received recognition and literary accolades during his lifetime; however, very little critical attention has been given to his works since then. Thus, Ferro’s works warrant a serious critical literary analysis that considers: his literary genius in general, his importance as an American, Italian American, and Italian author, his homosexuality and the influence of being HIV positive. Incorporating archival research from the Beinecke Library (Yale) and examining three novels: The Family of Max Desir (1983), The Blue Star (1985), and Second Son (1988), I argue that Ferro’s ethnic identity creates an internal conflict with social class through his protagonists and their longing for a life unavailable to them. Theoretically, I embrace queer and cultural studies theory, particularly Elisa Glick’s theoretical model from Materializing Queer Desire: Oscar Wilde to Andy Warhol in which she discusses the interconnected nature of Marxism and queer theory to analyze the internal and external struggle Ferro’s protagonists assume being both homosexual (sometimes dying of AIDS) and Italian American in an already marginalized world, that of the heterosexual.

La Mia Strada: A Personal Tratturo Connecting Ethnicity and Culture

The discussion and screening will be an examination of ancient and contemporary Italian culture with its Italian-American counterpart. It’s a discovery of how fragile the bonds are that connect a family from generation to generation, from country to country, even as they search for ways to adapt to an ever-changing world. These heart-felt accounts take us down perilous trails, ultimately winding their way back to a universal theme of shared humanity, compassion and understanding of one’s journey to connect to their past.

A celebrated director and producer of documentaries, television programs, commercials, and corporate productions, MICHAEL DILAURO has earned five Emmy Awards, a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival, and the Gabriel Award for outstanding television programming.

In support of his aims, DiLauro has received major funding from the Bill of Rights Commission, Catholic Communications Campaign, National Italian American Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council in the Humanities, Pennsylvania Public Television Network, Ohio Arts Council, Ohio Humanities Council, Ohio Educational Television Network, and UNICO. In April 2013, he received a production grant to produce a documentary on the Allegheny Conference from the R.K. Mellon Foundation.

His feature documentary film Prisoners Among Us: Italian American Identity and WWII was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the New York International Film Festival and Montreal Film Festival and has been screened in over seventy venues in the United States and Canada. DiLauro’s recent feature length documentary, La Mia Strada-My Road was screened at the Palestrina Film Festival in Rome and several venues in the United States. The story serves as a metaphor linking the ancient traditions of Italian culture with contemporary Italian Americans.

Recently, the University of Pittsburgh honored DiLauro with the Italian American Heritage Award for his service to the Italian American community. In 2011, UNICO awarded DiLauro their Mille Grazie Award for cultural contributions to the Italian American community.

Sex, Power and ‘Coming Out of the Closet’ in Nunzio's Second Cousin

Tom DeCerchio’s Nunzio’s Second Cousin (1994) is a little known, short film full of note- worthy themes and tropes close to the Italian American experience ... and then there is the homosexual male protagonist, Tony Randozza, who is a somewhat closeted, at least to his family. This presentation will examine not only the gender structure present within the film, but also the indirect racial politics the director introduces. Through using both race and gender, the director creates a multi-layered discourse difficult to analyze in separate discourses. Therefore, I aim to demonstrate how gender, race, and ethnicity are intertwined in order to underscore the various prejudices present with the Italian American mindset in hopes to breaks the ‘chains’ cast on the past.

Viewing & discussion: Blaxpoitalian (2016)

BlaxploItalian is a diasporic, hybrid, critical, and cosmopolitan dimension documentary that uncovers the careers of a population of entertainers seldom heard from before: Black actors in Italian cinema starting from 1915 when the first black actor appeared in an Italian film.

BlaxploItalian cleverly discloses the personal struggles classic Afro-Italian; African-American; Afro-Caribbean and African diasporic actors faced, correlating it with the contemporary actors who work diligently to find respectable and significant roles. Thus our alternative aim is for the stories in BlaxploItalian to serve as a call-to-action with the intention of challenging worldwide mainstream filmmakers and audiences into calling for an enhancement and practicing of ethnic and racial diversity in casting for important roles within the international film/media industries.

The fight for diversity and increased inclusion in the media, specifically film and television, is not limited to the United States or the United Kingdom, but is a global concern. Much like how #OscarsSoWhite exposed this problem to a new generation of film-goers, what we are doing with our BlaxploItalian documentary is introducing to audiences precisely how global this issue is, starting with one of the last places you expect to find the African diaspora – Italy.

Fred "Kudjo” Kuwornu is an activist-producer-director-speaker born and raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. His mother is an Italian Jew, and his father a Ghanaian surgeon who lived in Italy since the early 60's. Fred Kuwornu holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Mass Media, from the University of Bologna. After his experience, working with the production crew of Spike Lee film’s Miracle at St. Anna, in 2010 Fred Kuwornu produced and directed the Award-winning documentary Inside Buffalo about the African-American veterans who fought in Italy during World War II. In 2012, he released 18 IUS SOLI which examines Afro- Italians in Italy but also specifically looks at questions of citizenship for the one million children of immigrants born and raised in Italy but not yet Italian citizens.

The Issue of Italian Canadian Poetry

The discussion will revolve around the current state of affairs of Italian Canadian poetry today across the country.

Born in Milan, Italy, since 1987 Paina has been living in Toronto, Canada, where he serves as editorial director of the quarterly magazine ItalyCanada Trade. He is also the Deputy Director and Editor of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Toronto News.

He has published Hoarse Legend, The Dowry of Education, and The Alphabet of the Traveler with Mansfield Press. In Italy he has published a collection of short stories di corsa (Monteleone, Vibo Valentia), stolen time (Atelier 14-Milan), a collection of poems in collaboration with renowned painter Sandro Martini, darsena inquinata (Moderata Durant-Latina) and Tra Rothko e tre finestre (Ibiskos), and l’alfabeto del viaggiatore con Silvia editrice (Milano).

He also edited, with Denis De Klerck, College Street – Little Italy – Toronto’s Renaissance Strip, published by Mansfield Press.