Can two centuries of Italian diaspora across the globe fit into a 30-second sound bite?
“No, no and no again,” say the faculty of the 8th edition of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar (IDSSS) now taking place in Ostiense, a southern quarter of Rome, Italy sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and Roma Tre University.
The 16 participants arrived from Turkey, Canada, and Italy and from across the U.S.: California, Colorado, Indiana, New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
The IDSSS is the dream-child of an academic team of innovative scholars who have supported Italian American Studies programs on the undergraduate and graduate levels, and have enriched scholars to examine this scattering of Italians.
The three-and-half-week intensive experience features several disciplines: cinema, diplomacy, history, language, literature, psychology, and sociology with guest lecturers from Italy: Roberto Dolce, Daniele Fiorentino and Anna Camaiti Hostert.
The three coordinators — Distinguished Professor Fred Gardaphe, Dean Anthony J. Tamburri, of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, and Associate Professor Sabrina Vellucci (Roma Tre University) have garnered a reputation for “making things happen” in this multi-disciplinary field on both sides of the Atlantic that was born as a curriculum in the 1970s at Queens College (CUNY), New York.
Since 2018, when many of the organizers met in Melbourne, Australia, the interest has increased exponentially; three subsequent editions of that conference followed, with the fifth taking place this coming December 2024 in Genova, Italy.
“A number of previous fellows have returned to their home institutions and offered courses on Italian-American studies for the first time at their respective institutions,” reports Tamburri.
Among the Italian American benefactors that are supporting the IDSSS are: the Alexandra De Luise Gift, the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI), the Giambelli Foundation, the Italian Language Inter-Cultural Alliance (ILICA), the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), and UNICO.
Participants range from journalists to teachers of Italian to PhD candidates – reflect a wide range of projects: from memoirs, to curriculum, to groundbreaking research. Italian is one of the most studied languages in the world; two million people enroll in Italian language classes annually.
Gardaphe who specializes in literature, opened the session with: “What happens when you find the American history you are being taught does not reflect your history or your life”? Where do you fit in? Where does your family fit in?
The Italian diaspora is vast. Besides the 18-20 million that settled in the US, another 32 million settled in Brazil and 22 million Argentina. But diasporas are a natural phenomenon, that does not belong to just one group: Italian Americans, Jews, Irish, African and Asian Americans, Latins, Middle Eastern are a few. Some were persecuted in their home countries, others left due to economic and social injustice, but new and ongoing scholarship is an attempt to set the historic records straight.
Psychology Professor Donna Chirico of York College, posed the seemingly simple yet complex question: How do you identify yourself? New arrivals are expected to subsume their identity … what does it mean to hyphenate?
“Right now we are witnessing multiple ‘forced’ diasporas, changing the language of how we speak about diaspora…we are now using words like expelled, massacre and annihilation, forced diasporas are different from leaving by choice.”
Historically, Professor David Aliano stressed studying diasporas comparatively: the transnational nature of immigration out of Italy and into Italy is dramatically different than that of Italians’ who went to Argentina and quickly played a big role in an economic boom versus their movement to the U.S..
Cinematically, Italian Americans excel. “Through films we make and break stereotypes through popular culture,” says Professor Anna Camaiti Hostert who lives and works in Italy and the U.S. teaching in several American universities.
Among many other films, Hostert discussed Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and how Charlie is a victim of la bella figura to remain part of his community.
“Italian American directors have a sense of that aesthetic even if they are not aware of it; they are also good story tellers and have incorporated imagery from their Italian roots, and have thus had an impact on American popular culture.”
Participants arrived with long and short-term projects: essays, scholarly research, teaching materials to push the conversation to the public vis a vis classrooms from high schools to universities.
CONTACT: John D. Calandra Italian American Institute; events are free to the public or for information on the IDSSS 2025; call 212-642-2095; 25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10036 US.
