Italian Signs, Italian Values: Producing and Consuming Italian American Identities
Course Description
In her book Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (1990), sociologist Mary Waters revealed that the Americans she surveyed believed Italian Americans to be the “strongest ethnic group,” pointing at the richness and distinctiveness of Italian American family and community culture as clear evidence. But what actually are the contours of Italian American identity that are perceived to be so “strong”? What have been the materials and discourses involved in the production of Italian American culture? And what are the sources of so many outsiders’ fascination with it? What are the Italian American identities that have become objects of desire in American consumer culture, and why? Are there any detectable meanings and practices in the consumption of Italian American ethnicity?
The course presents an interdisciplinary approach to such questions. The first section of the course is devoted to the making of Italian American culture. It begins with an examination of the ways in which the ideas of class, gender, race, and nation have been articulated in Italian American identity. It then moves on to discuss the role of consumption in identity formation, exploring themes such as the significance of immigrants’ encounter with the mass market in processes of acculturation and the symbolical function of the consumption of material and immaterial “things Italian” among subsequent generations of Italian Americans. The second section of the course deals with Italian American identities as objects of cross-cultural consumption. Drawing its theoretical references from social history, cultural studies, anthropology of consumption, and tourism studies, this section investigates issues such as the encoding of “Italian-Americaness” in the branding of products and experiences, the marketing strategies of “Italian American” images and products, and the uses and meanings constructed through the consumption of Italian American identities.
Italian Signs, Italian Values is a lecture and discussion class. Lectures, supported by PowerPoint presentations, will provide the historical, analytical, and theoretical background to each class subject. In-class and online discussions of scholarly readings, analyses of primary sources, and viewings of films will allow students to actively explore the strategies and meanings of the production, circulation, and commodification of Italian American culture in the United States. Classroom activities will be based on a variety of cultural artifacts, such as oral history, autobiography, fiction, poetry, newspaper articles, films and critical essays, and involve the investigation of areas as diverse as advertising, retailing, film, television, food, fashion, sport, and popular music.
Course Objectives
The course will explore the production and consumption of Italian American identities in the United States combining socio-historical and cultural methods of analysis. The course ultimately aims at showing the indivisibility of cultural production and consumption, especially in the wake of the emergence of a large post-Fordist cultural industry, whose main raison d’être is to market differences and sell cultural otherness.
One of the main concerns of the course is to help students to improve their writing skills in general and to enhance their capacity of producing an academic research paper in particular. Students will have the opportunity, through the independent preparation and writing of a 15-20 page paper, to choose and define for themselves an interdisciplinary question they wish to illuminate; to identify and work with relevant source materials from books, articles and websites; to put their sources in the appropriate historical and cultural context and use them to shape a well-argued and coherent analytical discussion; to apply a standard citation style and attach a proper bibliography to their essay; and to deliver an original research result which sheds light on given features of the production and consumption of Italian American culture.
It is worth noting that, from a scholarly point of view, the experience of Italian Americans as consumers and the cross-cultural consumption of Italian American identity are still largely uncharted territories. The most significant works about the construction and consumption of the other, for example, deal with the relationship between “Western” and “Non-Western,” or post-colonial, subjects. That means that students enrolled in the course will meet the extra excitement (and challenge) to produce a truly original and innovative research output.
Course Readings
Required and suggested articles (see Course Schedule) will be available as Course Packet and/or on Electronic Reserve.
Required text:
Thomas J. Ferraro, Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, New York, New York University Press, 2004.
Required readings in preparation of the first class:
Arjun Appadurai, "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in (Cultural aspects of exchange)
Susan J. Terrio, "Crafting Chocolates in France," (The commodization of authenticty in postmodern consumer culture)
Benedict Anderson, “Introduction,” in Id., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York, Verso, 1991: 1-8.
Werner Sollors, “Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity,” in Id. The Invention of Ethnicity, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991: IX-XX.
Kathleen Conzen et al. “The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the U.S.A.,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 12, 1, Fall 1992: 3-16.
Fredrik Barth, “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries,” in Werner Sollors (ed.), Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader, London, Macmillan, 1996: 294-324.
Herbert Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America," Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1979: 1-20.
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.), Colonial Discourse & Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993: 392-403.
Recommended bibliography:
Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2000.
Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience, New York, HarperPerennial, 1993.
Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985.
Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, New York, Routledge, 2003.
Pellegrino D'Acierno (ed.), The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, New York, Garland Publishing, 1999.
Fred Gardaphe, From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities, New York, Routledge, 2006.
Mary Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990.
Marylin Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity, New York, Schocken Books, 2000.
Suggested reference material:
Salvatore J. LaGumina et al. (eds.), The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia, New York, Garland, 2000.
Course Requirements
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance). A fundamental element for the success of the course is the active participation of students in every classroom (and online, see below) discussion. Students are expected to engage in an ongoing dialogue in class, whose initial food for thought is provided by lectures, readings, oral presentations of research projects (see below), film screenings and handouts. To keep the discussion informed and valuable every student should always do the required readings and come to the class prepared and ready to work.
Students enrolled in this course will also be part of a computer conference group (forum) which will allow everyone to communicate with each other between classes. The forum will be used on occasion to continue in-class discussions, to raise issues not covered during the meetings, and to share comments about the research projects that are brought to the attention of the class (see below, oral presentations). This electronic interaction ought to be considered an integral part of the course.
Response papers. Two 5-page response papers, due by class #5 and #9 respectively, will allow students to elaborate on ideas brought up by and formulate a thesis in response to the assigned readings of section 1 of the course, “Who Are the Italian Americans?” Students may choose either to do an in-depth analysis of a single article or to present some thesis that responds to multiple articles, resorting to other course readings, the required texts, and recommended bibliography to corroborate their argument. No outside research is required in the preparation of the response papers.
Research paper. A 15-20 page final research essay is due by the date of the last class. Students may select a topic of their choice, providing it is consistent with the subject of the course. They must discuss their choice with the instructor, who will help them to frame an initial bibliography. Primary sources may be any significant piece of evidence (a novel, a film or a number of films, oral histories, autobiographies, newspaper or popular magazine articles, printed or audiovisual ads, statistical datasets, consumer behavior surveys, legal documents, etc.), but students should remember that they will have to make clear in their paper the extent their sources are valuable to illuminate a specific issue. Students should also bear in mind that the very significance and quality of the research process rests on their ability to critically address their sources with the help of and in relation to the pertinent analytical and theoretical bibliography. Finally, students should think of writing the research paper as a process—involving continuing rereading and rewriting and, when needed, further research—rather than a one-time effort. For that purpose, students will periodically be asked to submit written reports delineating the progress of their work:
1) one page statement summarizing the issues their paper will address (due by the date of Class #5);
2) a working bibliography of the essential books and articles (due by the date of Class #7);
3) a five page draft of text taken from the most advanced and polished part of the paper (due by the date of Class #11);
4) the final paper (due by the date of Class #15).
Oral/multimedia presentation. During the second half of the semester, each student will give an oral presentation to the class, illustrating the state of advancement of his/her research project and teaching the class about it. The use of multimedia, such as PowerPoint presentations, is encouraged. The class will actively interact with the speaker, asking questions and introducing comments and suggestions.
Grading criteria.
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance) will make up 15% of the final grade;
Response paper #1 15%;
Response paper #2 15%;
Oral/multimedia presentation 15%;
Research paper 40%.
Course Schedule
Class topics: The Italian American Citizen as Consumer during the New Deal
Topics for Research Paper: The Italian Pavillon at the 1939 New York World Fair, Pushcart Peddlers (Bluestone)
Section 1: Who Are the Italian Americans? The Making of an Ethnic Identity
Class #1:
Cultural and Class Identities
Required readings:
Rudolph J. Vecoli, “The Search for an Italian American Identity: Continuity and Change,” in Lydio F. Tomasi (ed.), Italian Americans: New Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity, New York, Center for Migration Studies, 1985: 88-112.
Pellegrino D'Acierno, “The Making of the Italian American Cultural Identity: From La Cultura Negata to Strong Ethnicity,” in Id. (ed.), The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, New York, Garland Publishing, 1999: XXIII-XL.
Suggested readings:
Robert A. Orsi, “The Domus-Centered Society,” in Id., The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985: 75-106.
Thomas J. Ferraro, “Job: Close to the Flesh and Smell and Joy of Them,” in Id., Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, New York, New York University Press, 2004: 51-71.
Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo, "Mysticism and the Household Saints of Everyday Life," Voices in Italian Americana, 7, 2, Fall 1996: 55-68.
Classroom activities:
Introductions.
Q & A on course requirements, grade distribution, and related topics.
Discussion of Vecoli and D'Acierno.
Special slide presentation:
A Geographical/Historical Tour of Italian America: From Little Italy to the Suburbs.
Screening:
Clip from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974).
Class #2:
Gender Identities
Required readings:
Michaela di Leonardo, The Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class, and Gender among California Italian Americans, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994: 191-229.
Carol Lynn McKibben, Beyond Cannery Row: Sicilian Women, Immigration, and Community in Monterey, California, 1915-99, University of Illinois Press, 2006
Miriam Cohen, Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in New York City, 1900-1950, Cornell University Press, 1993
Louise C. Odencrantz, Italian Women in Industry: Study of Conditions in New York City, 1919
Rose Laub Coser, Laura S. Anker, and Andrew J. Perrin, Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York, Greenwood Press, 1999
Kathie Friedman-Kasaba, Memories of Migration: Gender, Ethnicity, and Work in the Lives of Jewish and Italian Women in New York, 1870-1924, State University of New York Press, 1996
Thomas J. Ferraro, “Honor: Friday Bloody Friday,” in Id., Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, New York, New York University Press, 2004: 9-27.
Giovanna Capone, "A Divided Life: Being a Lesbian in an Italian American Family," in Anthony Tamburri (ed.), Fuori: Essays by Italian/American Lesbians and Gays, West Lafayette, IN, Bordighera Press, 1996: 29-49. Suggested readings:
Louise De Salvo, Vertigo, New York, Dutton, 1996: selections.
Tina De Rosa, Paper Fish, New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996: selections.Mary Cappello, (1996) "Nothing To Confess: A Lesbian in Italian America," in Anthony Tamburri (ed.), Fuori: Essays by Italian/American Lesbians and Gays, West Lafayette, IN, Bordighera Press, 1996: 89-108.
Philip Gambone, "Learning and Unlearning and Learning again the Language of Signori," in Anthony Tamburri (ed.), Fuori: Essays by Italian/American Lesbians and Gays, West Lafayette, IN, Bordighera Press, 1996: 60-80.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of di Leonardo, Ferraro, Capone.
Exercises on handouts:
Sheldon Posen, Joseph Sciorra, and Martha Cooper, “Brooklyn’s Dancing Tower,” Natural History, 92, 6, June 1983: 30-37.
Screening:
Clips from Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar (1931), Delbert Mann’s Marty (1955), and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).
Class #3:
Racial Identities
Required readings:
Thomas Guglielmo, “No Color Barrier: Italians, Race, and Power in the United States,” in Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, New York, Routledge, 2003: 29-43.
David A.J. Richards, “Italian American Identity and American Racism,” in Id., Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity, New York, New York University Press, 1999: 181-212.
Thomas J. Ferraro, “Skin: Giancarlo and the Border Patrol,” in Id., Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, New York, New York University Press, 2004: 162-180.
Suggested readings:
Robert A. Orsi, "The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920–1990," American Quarterly, 44, 3, Sep. 1992: 313-347.
Fred Gardaphè, “We Weren’t Always White: Race and Ethnicity in Italian American Literature,” Literature Interpretation Theory, 13, 2002: 185-199.
Joseph Sciorra, “’Italians against Racism’: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins (R.I.P.) and My March on Bensonhurst,” in Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, New York, Routledge, 2003: 192-209.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Guglielmo, Richards, Ferraro.
Exercises on handouts:
Joel Perlmann, “’Race or People’: Federal Race Classification for Europeans in America, 1898-1913,” The Levy Institute Working Papers, 320, January 2001.
Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1985.
Exploring website:
Racism in Bensonhurst, journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/race_class/cops_benson/bensonhurst.htm
Screening:
Clips from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and Summer of Sam (1999).
Class #4:
National Identities in the Diaspora
Required readings:
Ernest Gellner, “Diaspora Nationalism,” in Id., Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca, Cornell Unviersity Press, 1983: 101-108.
John Dickie, “Introduction,” in Id., Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900, London, Macmillan, 1999: 1-23.
Pasquale Verdicchio, “Bound by Distance: The Italian Immigrant as Decontextualized Subaltern,” in Id., Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora, Madison, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
Ralph Cunsolo, “Italian Emigration and Its Effect on the Rise of Nationalism,” Italian Americana, 12, 1, 1993: 62-72.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gellner, Dickie, Verdicchio, Cunsolo.
Exercises on handouts:
Articles from Il Progresso Italo-Americano.
Class #5:
Identity and Topographies of Consumption: The Ethnic Body, Home and Neighborhood
Required Readings:
Elizabeth Ewen, “First Encounters,” in Id., Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925, New York, Monthly Revirew Press, 1985: 60-74.
Vittoria Caterina Caratozzolo, “A Change of Clothes: Italian Women Immigrants from Out-of-Fashion to the Height of Fashion,” in William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi (eds.), Public Space, Private Lives: Race, Gender, Class, and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2004: 297-304.
Giorgio Bertellini, “Shipwrecked Spectators: Italy’s Immigrant at the Movies in New York, 1906-1916,” The Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film and Television, 44, Fall 1999: 39-53.
Herbert Gans, “Consumer Goods and the Mass Media: Selective Acceptance of the Outside World,” in Id., The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans, New York, The Free Press, 1962: 181-196.
Suggested readings:
Lizabeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s," American Quarterly, March 1989:
Andrew R. Heinze, “From Scarcity to Abundance: The Immigrant as Consumer,” in Id., Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity, New York, Columbia University Press, 1990: 33-48.
Kathy Peiss, “Putting on Style,” in Id., Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in New York City, 1880-1920, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1986: 56-76.
William Boelhower, “Pushcart Economics: The Italians of New York,” in William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi (eds.), Public Space, Private Lives: Race, Gender, Class, and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2004: 97-110.
Discussion of Ewen, Caratozzolo, Bertellini, Gans.
Exercise on handouts:
Dorothy Reed, Leisure Time of Girls in a "Little Italy," Portland, OR, 1932.
Printed ads from popular magazines and the ethnic press.
Oral histories from John Kisseloff, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II, New York, Schocken Books, 1990.
First 5-page response paper due.
One page statement summarizing the issues addressed by the research project due.
Class #6:
Patterns of Consumption and Identity: The Case of Food
Required readings:
Harvey Levenstein and Joseph Conlin, “The Food Habits of Italian Immigrants to America: An Examination of the Persistence of a Food Culture and the Rise of ‘Fast Food’ in America,” in R. Browne, et al. (eds.), Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture, Bowling Green, Popular Culture Press, 1990: 231-246.
Donna Gabaccia (ed.), “Food, Recipes, Cookbooks, and Italian American Life,” Italian Americana, 16, 1, Winter 1998; 2, Summer 1998.
Donna Gabaccia, “Ethnicity in the Business World: Italian and American Food Industries,” Italian American Review, Fall-Winter 1998.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Levenstein-Conlin, Gabaccia (1), Gabaccia (2).
Exercise on handouts:
Oral histories from Leonard Covello, The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967.
Recipes and memoirs from Nancy Verde Barr, We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking, New York, Knopf, 1990.
Screening:
Clip from Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974).
Class #7:
Consuming the Ethnic Past: (Re)Constructing Italian American Memory
Required readings:
Robert A. Orsi, “The Fault of Memory: ‘Southern Italy’ in the Imagination of Immigrants and the Lives of Their Children in Italian Harlem, 1920-1945,” Journal of Family History, 15, 2, 1990.
Fred L. Gardaphè, “The Later Mythic Mode: Reinventing Ethnicity through the Grandmother Figure,” in Id., Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative, Durham, Duke University Press, 1996.
Richard Gambino, ”The Crisis of Italian American Identity,“ in A. K. Ciongoli and J. Parini (eds.), Beyond The Godfather: Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience, Hanover, NH, University Press of New England, 1997: 269-288.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Orsi, Gardaphè, Gambino.
Screening:
Film clips from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974) and Helen De Michiel’s Tarantella (1995).
Essential bibliography for the research paper due.
Class #8:
Going Back to My Roots: Tourism to the Ancestral Home
Required readings:
Robert Wood, “Tourist Ethnicity: A Brief Itinerary,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21, 2, 1998: 218-241.
Loretta Baldassar, “Tornare al paese: territorio e identità nel processo migratorio,” Altreitalie, 23, luglio-dicembre 2001: 1-23.
Alison D. Goeller, “Persephone Goes Home: Italian American Women in Italy,” MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Fall 2003.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Wood, Baldassar, Goeller.
Exercises on handouts:
Selections from Anne Calcagno (ed.), Italy: True Stories of Life on the Road, San Francisco, Travelers’ Tales, 1998.
Browsing websites.
Second 5-page response paper due.
Final consultations with the instructor on research projects.
Section 2: Consuming Italian American Identities in the United States
Class #9:
Theories of Cross-Cultural Consumption: Seeing, Reading, Eating the Other
Required readings:
Edward Said, “Introduction,” in Id., Orientalism, New York, Vintage, 1979: 1-30.
Michaela di Leonardo, “Patterns of Culture Wars: Place, Modernity, and the Contemporary Political Economy of Difference,” in Id., Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, and American Modernity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000: 314-368.
Chris Rojek, “Indexing, Dragging and the Social Construction of Tourist Sights,” in Chris Rojek and John Urry (eds.) Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory, New York, Routledge, 1997: 52–74.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Exhibiting the Quotidian,” “Performing Culture,” and “Performing Difference,” in Id., Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998: 47-78.
Constance Classen and David Howes, “Epilogue: The Dynamics and Ethics of Cross-Cultural Consumption,” in David Howes (ed.), Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities, London, Routledge, 2000: 178-194.
Arjun Appadurai, “Knowledge and Commodities,” in Id. (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986: 41-56.
bell hooks, "Eating the Other," in Black Looks: Race and Representation, Toronto, Between the Lines, 1992: 21-40.
Marilyn Halter, “Longings and Belongings: An Introduction,” in Id., Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity, New York, Schocken Books, 2000: 3-24.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of required readings.
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Class #10:
The Grand Tour: The Romantic Origins of the Consumption of Italians
Required readings:
Jeremy Black, Italy and the Grand Tour, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003: chapter.
Chloe Chard, “Introduction,” in Id., Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography 1600-1830, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999:1-39.
Robert Aldrich, “Introduction: The Mediterranean Obsession,” in Id., The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art, and the Homosexual Fantasy, New York, Routledge, 1993: 1-12.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Black, Chard, Aldrich.
Browsing websites:
Italy on the Grand Tour (Getty Museum) http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/grand_tour/Oral/Multimedia Interactive Research.
The Grand Tour (Metropolitan Museum)
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm.
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Class#11
Imagining Italian Americans in Early-Twentieth-Century New York
Required readings:
Jacob Riis, “The Italian in New York,” in Id., How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890.
I.W. Howerth, “Are Italians a Dangerous Class?” in Lydio F. Tomasi (ed.), The Italians in America: The Progressive Views, 1891-1914, New York, Center for Migration Studies, 1978: 199-219.
Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration, “Religious Life of New York Italians,” in Id., The Italians of New York, New York, Random House, 1938: 75-92.
Suggested readings:
Pasquale Verdicchio, “Imaging America: The Photography of Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis,” in William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi (eds.), Public Space, Private Lives: Race, Gender, Class, and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, Amsterdam, VU University Press, 2004: 333-340.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Riis, Howerth, Federal Writers’ Project.
Exercises on handouts:
Newspaper articles on Italian American life in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York.
Browsing website:
Documenting “The Other Half”: The Social Reform Photography of Jacob Riis & Lewis Hine, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/photography/reform/reform.html
Special PowerPoint presentation:
Redefining the Italian American Image, from Primitivism to Ethnic Culture: WPA Federal Writers’ Project’s Italians of New York.
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Five page draft of text from the research paper due.
Class #12:
Screening: Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990).
Discussion.
Class #13:
“Racializing” Italian Americans on Film and Television: The Politics of Style
Required readings:
Giorgio Bertellini, “Black Hands and White Hearts: Italian Immigrants as ‘Urban Racial Types’ in Early American film Culture,” Urban History, 31, 3, 2004: 374-398.
Fred Gardaphé, “A Class Act: Understanding the Italian American Gangster,” in Anna Camaiti Hostert and Anthony Julian Tamburri (eds.), Screening Ethnicity: Cinematographic Representations of Italian Americans in the United States, Boca Raton, FL, Bordighera Press, 2002: 48-68.
Robert Casillo, “Moments in Italian-American Cinema: From Little Caesar to Coppola and Scorsese,” in Anthony J. Tamburri, Paolo A: Giordano, and Fred L. Gardaphè (eds.), From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana, West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press, 2000: 394-416.
Jay Parini, “The Cultural Work of the Sopranos,” in Regina Barreca (ed.), A Sitdown With the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV's Most Talked-About Series, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002: 75-88.
Classroom activities:
Continuing discussion of Goodfellas.
Dicsussion of Bertellini, Gardaphè, Casillo, Parini.
Screening:
Clips from Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980), John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever (1977), and The Sopranos (1999).
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Class #14:
Consuming the Sexual Other: Popular Media and the Commodification of Italian American Femininity and Masculinity
Required readings:
Aaron Baker and Juliann Vitullo, “Screening the Italian-American Male,” in Peter Lehman (ed.), Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture, New York, Routledge, 2001: 213-226.
E. Anthony Rotundo, “Wonderbread and Stugots: Italian American Manhood and The Sopranos,” in Regina Barreca (ed.), A Sitdown With the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV's Most Talked-About Series, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002: 47-74.
Joanne Lacey, “’One for the Boys?’ The Sopranos and Its Male, British Audience,” in David Leary (ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002:
Thomas J. Ferraro, “Diva: Our Lady the Dominatrix of Pop,” in Id., Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, New York, New York University Press, 2004:143-161.
bell hooks, “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, Toronto, Between the Lines, 1992: 151-164.
Suggested reading:
Robert Casillo, “Dirty Gondola: The Image of Italy in American Advertisements,” Word & Image, 1, 4, Oct.-Dec. 1985.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Baker-Vitullo, Rotundo, Lacey, Ferraro, hooks.
Exercise on handouts:
Noel F. Busch, “Joe Di Maggio: Baseball’s Most Sensational Big-League Start Starts What Should Be His Best Year So Far,” Life, May 1, 1939: 62-69.
Screening:
Frank Sinatra, I’ve Got You under My Skin (1965) and Madonna, Like a Prayer (1989).
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Class #15:
Serving Ethnicity: The Industrialization and Post-Industrialization of Italian Food
Required readings:
Sean Chadwell, “Do Large Italian American Families Really Eat at the Olive Garden? Ethnic Food Marketing and the Consumption of Authenticity,” Studies in Popular Culture, 24, 3, April 2002: 1-15.
Sara Lewis Dunne, “The Brutality of Meat and the Abruptness of Seafood: Food, Violence, and Family in The Sopranos,” in David Leary (ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002: 215-226.
How Sbarro Became the #1 Italian Food Franchise, http://www.sbarro.com.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Chadwell, Dunne, Sbarro.
Exercises on handouts:
Printed ads, labels and packages of Italian food products;
Selections from Nancy Verde Barr, We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking, New York, Knopf, 1990.
Browsing websites:
Sbarro; Olive Garden; Fazoli’s.
Screening:
Clips from Alessandra Tantillo’s Cannoli Line (2004).
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Class #16:
From Ethnic Ghetto to Disneyland: The Remodeling of Little Italy as Tourist Attraction
Required readings:
Donna Gabaccia, "Inventing Little Italy," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progresive Era, 67, 1, January 2007: 7-42.
Lewis A. Erenberg, “The Apotheosis of Slumming,” in Id., Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of the American Culture, 1890-1930, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984: 252-259.
Mark Gottdiener, “Themed Culture and Themed Environments,” in Id., The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1997: 73-103.
Joseph M. Conforti, “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions,” Annals of Tourism Research, 23, 4, 1996: 830-842.
Jerome Krase, “The Present/Future of Little Italies,” http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/soc/semiotics/v1n1/main.html
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Erenberg, Gottdiener, Conforti, Krase.
Oral/multimedia research presentation(s).
Discussion.
Final research essay due.
domenica 23 dicembre 2007
Syllabus Undergraduate
The Italian American Experience
Course Description
The case of the Italian Americans is paradigmatic of the experience of modernity and postmodernity. At the turn of the twentieth century many Italian immigrants were drawn to the United States to serve as work force for an unprecedented industrial expansion of the American economy, as part of a global labor diaspora that propelled several million people out of the recently unified country. In the United States, the turn-of-the-twentieth-century immigrants, their descendants, and further newcomers from Italy became members of a multicultural and diverse society, developing plural, complex American ethnic identities—while in many cases retaining some sense of affiliation and actual transnational relations with the “point of origin” across the ocean.
The aim of the course is to help students making sense of these processes, providing an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of the Italian American presence in the United States. Classes will highlight the historically changing meaning and the variety of Italian American identities. Questions of class, race, gender, and multiculturalism that define current interpretations of the Italian American experience will be addressed throughout the course.
The Italian American Experience is a lecture and discussion class, with an emphasis on students’ participation. Lectures, any of which will be approximately 20 minute long and supported by PowerPoint presentations, will provide the historical, analytical, and theoretical background to each class subject. In-class and online discussions of scholarly readings, analyses of primary sources, and viewings of films will allow students to actively explore the development of major themes in Italian American life, such as community life, gender roles, interethnic relations, contributions to American culture, stereotypical representations in the media, and collective memory. The instructor will circulate visual slides, material objects, newspaper articles, tables, graphs, and other pertinent handouts. In particular, course materials include oral history, autobiography, fiction, poetry, films, and other cultural artifacts which provide subjective accounts.
Course Objectives
The course has a distinct interdisciplinary approach. Students will be presented with many dimensions of Italian American social and cultural life and introduced to a vast array of resources for the understanding of the Italian American experience. The broader goal of the course is to help students to understand Italian American Studies as an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry; to develop their skills in reading, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant texts with reference to the appropriate social and cultural contexts; and to expand their abilities in oral and written communication.
Course Readings
No textbook is required. The following readings, though, are recommended as an introduction to the course:
Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience, New York, HarperPerennial, 1993.
Pellegrino D'Acierno (ed.), The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, New York, Garland Publishing, 1999.
Required and suggested articles (see Course Schedule) will be available as Course Packet and/or on Electronic Reserve.
Suggested reference material:
Salvatore J. LaGumina et al. (eds.), The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia, New York, Garland, 2000.
Course Requirements
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance). As mentioned above, this course emphasizes active participation. Students are expected to engage in an ongoing dialogue in class, whose initial food for thought is provided by lectures, readings, mini-presentations (see below), film screenings and handouts. To keep the discussion informed and valuable every student should always do the required readings and come to the class prepared and ready to work.
Students enrolled in this course will also be part of a computer conference group (forum) which will allow everyone to communicate with each other between classes. The forum will be used on occasion to continue in-class discussions, to raise issues not covered during the meetings, and to circulate the synopsis of the suggested readings that will be bring up in the next class (see below, mini-presentations). This electronic interaction ought to be considered an integral part of the course.
Mini-presentation on suggested readings. Each student will choose or be assigned one suggested reading to summarize orally for the whole class. Presentations will be very short, about ten minute long, with the class acting as the audience, free to ask questions to the speakers. In order to make the debate knowledgeable, weekly presenters are asked to post at least 24 hours in advance a one-page summary on the forum for everybody else to read and comment.
Exams. There are two written examinations. Students will have to answer broad questions designed to test their general understanding of the problems raised by lectures, readings, and discussions. The mid-term examination is an exercise dealing with the issues treated during classes in section 1, “The Socio-Historical Background.” The final examination is an exercise synthesizing the content of the course.
Grading criteria.
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance) will make up 25% of the final grade;
Mini-presentation 10%;
Mid-term exam 25%;
Final exam 40%.
Course Schedule
Section 1: The Socio-Historical Background and the Protagonists
Class #1: The “Chinese of Europe”: The Italian Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Required Reading:
Marie Hall Ets (ed.), Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999: 1-27.
Classroom activities:
Introductions.
Q & A on course requirements, grade distribution, and related topics.
Discussion of Ets.
Exercises on handouts:
Excerpt of Inchiesta Jacini on peasant life in late-nineteenth-century Italian countryside;Excerpt of Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli.
Letters home of Italian immigrants;
Lewis Hine’s photographic portfolio of Italian immigrants at Ellis Island, 1907-1924.
Class #2:
The Italian Immigrant Family
Required reading:
Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, “New Wine in Old Bottles: Family, Community, and Immigration,” in Id., Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977: 55-81.
Suggested readings:
Jerre Mangione, Mount’Allegro, New York, Knopf, 1952: selections.
Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim, New York, Random House, 1997 (1964): selections.
Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Crossing Ocean Parkway, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1994: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Yans-McLaughlin.
Mini-presentations on Mangione, Puzo, De Marco Torgovnick.
Screening:
Alessandra Tantillo’s Vaccaro’s Pastry Shop (2004).
Class #3:
Life in Little Italy: Community, Housing, Work, Religion, and Education
Required readings: Rudolph J. Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of American History, 51, Dec. 1964: 404-417.
Lillian W. Betts, “The Italian in New York,” University Settlement Studies. Quarterly, Oct. 1905-Jan. 1906: 90-104.
Suggested readings:
Donna Gabaccia, “Tenement Residential Patterns,” in Id., From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1984: 86-99.
Leonard Covello, “The Influence of Southern Italian Family Mores Upon the School Situation in America,” in Id., The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967: 281-326.
Robert A. Orsi, “The Theology of the Streets,” in Id., The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985: 219-231.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Vecoli and Betts.
Mini-presentations on Gabaccia, Covello, Orsi.
Screening:
Clip from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974).
Browsing website:
Life on the Lower East Side.
Class #4:
Identity and Difference—Are Italians White? (1) Popular/Scientific Racism and the Johnson-Reed Act - (2) The “In-Between People” Confront “Non-Whites”: Turf Wars, White Flight, and the Turn Against Liberalism
Required reading:
Robert A. Orsi, "The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920–1990," American Quarterly, 44, 3, Sep. 1992: 313-347.
Suggested readings:
Thomas A. Guglielmo, “’The White Peril of Europe,” in Id., White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003:59-75.
Kym Ragusa, “Sangu Du Sangu Meu: Growing Up Black and Italian in a Time of White Flight,” in Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, New York, Routledge, 2003: 29-43.
Pasquale Verdicchio, "’If I Was Six Feet Tall, I Would Have Been Italian’: Spike Lee's Guineas,” Differentia, 6/7, 1995.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Orsi.
Exercises on handouts:
Excerpts from Edward E. Ross, The Old World and the New (1921), Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916), and U.S. Congress, Report of the Immigration Commission (1911);
Articles from The New York Times and Daily News reporting the assassination of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, NY (8.23.1989).
Screening:
Clips from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991).
Class #5:
Towards a Political Anthropology of the Italian Americans: The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism
Required reading:Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Italian Immigrants in the Labor Movement of the United States from 1880 to 1929," in Bruno Bezza (ed.), Gli italiani fuori d’Italia: gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d'adozione, 1880-1940, Milano, Angeli, 1983: 257-306.
Suggested readings:(Italian American Radicalism and Anti-Fascism)Nunzio Pernicone, "Carlo Tresca: Life and Death of a Revolutionary," in Richard N. Juliani and Philip V. Cannistraro (eds.), Italian Americans, New York, AIHA, 1989: 216-235.Philip V. Cannistraro, "Luigi Antonini and the Italian Anti-Fascist Movement in the United States, 1940-1943, Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 1985: 21-40.(Italian Americans and Politics in Mid-Twentieth-Century New York)Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Italians—Politics,” in Id., Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, Cambridge, MA, The M.I.T. Press, 1963: 208-216.
Herbert Kaufman, “Fiorello H. La Guardia, Political Maverick: A Review Essay,” Political Science Quarterly, 105, 1, Spring 1990: 113-122.
Gerald Meyer, “Italian Harlem’s Biggest Funeral: A Community Pays Its Last Respects to Vito Marcantonio,” Italian American Review, 1, 2000: 108-120.
(Sacco and Vanzetti)
Paul Avrich, “Sacco and Vanzetti’s Revenge,” in Philip V. Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2003: 163-170.Nunzio Pernicone, "Luigi Galleani and Italian Anarchist Terrorism in the United States," Studi Emigrazione, 30, 111, 1993: 469-489.Eric Foner, “The Men and the Symbols: Sacco and Vanzetti”, The Nation, 225, Aug. 20-27, 1977.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Vecoli.
Special PowerPoint presentation:
Sacco & Vanzetti and the Public History of Italian America.
Screening:
Clip from John Sayles’ Matewan (1987).
Class #6:
Italian American Women
Required reading:Donna Gabaccia, "Italian Immigrant Women in Comparative Perspective," Altreitalie, January-June 1993: 163-183. Suggested readings:
Michaela di Leonardo, The Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class, and Gender among California Italian Americans, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994: 191-229.
Louise De Salvo, Vertigo, New York, Dutton, 1996: selections.
Mary Cappello, Night Bloom, Boston, Beacon Press, 1998: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gabaccia.
Mini-presentations on di Leonardo, De Salvo, Cappello.
Exercises on handouts:
Poems by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, “I Dream of My Grandmother and Great-Grandmother,” http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/Gillan.html, and “Public School #18: Paterson,New Jersey,” http://www.pccc.cc.nj.us/poetry/poems3.htm.
Screening:
Clips from Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar (1931), Delbert Mann’s Marty (1955), and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).
Class #7:
Mid-Term Exam
Section 2: Cultural Expressions
Class #8:
Italianamericana: Trauma and Adaptation in the Immigrant Narrative
Required readings:
Fred L. Gardaphè, “The Early Mythic Mode: From Autobiography to Autobiographical Fiction,” in Id., Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative, Durham, Duke University Press, 1996.
Pietro Di Donato, “Christ in Concrete,” in Bill Tonelli (ed.), The Italian American Reader: A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry, New York, HarperCollins, 2003: 405-418.
Pietro Di Donato, “The World of Tomorrow/Il mondo di domani,” Acoma, 7, 19, primavera/estate 2000: 48-53, http://www.acoma.it/volumi/volume19/19didonato.pdf.
Suggested readings:
Pascal D’Angelo, Son of Italy, New York, Arno Press , 1975 (1924): selections.
Emanuel Carnevali, The Autobiography of Emanuel Carnevali, New York, Horizon, 1967: selections.
Constantine Panunzio, The Soul of an Immigrant, New York, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1928: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gardaphè and Di Donato.
Mini-presentations on Cianfarra, Carnevali, Panunzio.
Screening:
Clips from Giuseppe Tornatore’s La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano (1998) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974).
Class #9:
Reflexive Ethnicity: Italian American Writers Explore Their Identities
Required readings:
Robert Viscusi, “Breaking the Silence: Strategic Imperatives for Italian American Culture,” Voices in Italian Americana, 1, 1990, 1-13.
Fred L. Gardaphè, “Criticism as Autobiography,” in Id., Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2004: 101-122.
Suggested readings:
Helen Barolini, Umbertina: A Novel, New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999: selections.
Tina De Rosa, Paper Fish, New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996: selections.
Rita Ciresi, Sometimes I Dream in Italian, New York, Delacorte Press, 2000: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gardaphè and Di Donato.
Mini-presentations on Barolini, De Rosa, Ciresi.
Class #10:
Screening: Nancy Savoca’s Household Saints (1993).
Discussion.
Class #11:
Italian Americans on Film and Television: Representations of Family and Gender in the Italian American Experience
Required readings:
Daniel Sembroff Golden “The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film,” in Randall M. Miller (ed.), The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, New York, Jerome S. Ozer Publisher, 1995: 73-97.
Suggested readings:
Daniel Golden, "Pasta or Paradigm: The Place of Italian-American Women in Popular Film,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies, 2, January 1979: 3-10.
Edvige Giunta, "The Quest for True Love: Ethnicity in Nancy Savoca's Domestic Film Comedy," MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 22, Summer 1997: 75-89.
Cindy Donatelli and Sharon Alward, ”‘I Dread You’: Married to the Mob in The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos,” in David Leary (ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002.
Classroom activities:
Continuing discussion of Household Saints.
Discussion of Sembroff Golden.
Mini-presentations on Golden, Giunta, Donatelli and Alward.
Screening:
Clips from Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That’s Knocking on My Door? (1969), Nancy Savoca’s True Love (1989), and Tony Vitale’s Kiss Me Guido (1997).
Class #12:
Italian Americans on Film and Television: Riddles of the Gangster Image
Required readings:
Carlos E. Cortes, "Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons," MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 14, 3-4, 1992: 89-108.
Jonathan J. Cavallero, "Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American Stereotype Anxiety," Journal of Popular Film & TV, 32, 2, 2004, pp. 50-63.
George DeStefano, “Ungood Fellas,” The Nation, Feb. 7, 2000.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Cavallero, Cortes, DeStefano.
Exercises on handouts:
Libero Della Piana, “Shark Tale Controversy: Are Italians the New Ant-Racist Front?” The Black Commentator, 109, Oct. 14, 2004.
Screening:
Clips from Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).
Class #13:
Food as Metaphor of Family and Community
Required reading:
Hasia Diner, “’The Bread Is Soft’: Italian Foodways, American Abundance,” in Id., Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001: 48-83.
Suggested readings:
Simone Cinotto, ”’Sunday Dinner? You Had To Be There!’: Food, Family, and Community Among Italian Immigrants of New York,” The Italian American Review, 8, 2, Autumn/Winter 2001: 11-44.
Donna Gabaccia, “Ethnicity in the Business World: Italian and American Food Industries,” Italian American Review, Fall-Winter 1998: 1-19.
Helen Barolini, “Heritage Lost, Heritage Found,” Italian Americana, 16, 2, Summer 1998: 126-132.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Diner.
Mini-presentations on Cinotto, Gabaccia, Barolini,
Exercises on handouts:
Printed ads, labels and packages of Italian food products;
Selections from Nancy Verde Barr, We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking, New York, Knopf, 1990.
Screening:
Clips from Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974) and Helen De Michiel’s Tarantella (1995).
Class #14:
The Twilight of Ethnicity or a New Dawn? Italian Americans Think about Their Past and Identity
Required readings:
Donald Tricarico, “The ‘New’ Italian American Ethnicity,” Journal of Ethnic Studies, 12, 3, Fall 1984: 75-94.
Mary Jo Bona, “A Process of Reconstruction: Recovering the Grandmother in Helen Barolini's Umbertina and Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish,” in Id., Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Tricarico and Bona.
Special PowerPoint presentation:
Time, Memory, and Genealogy in the Ethnic Experience of the Italian Americans.
Browsing websites:
Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty Foundation Website, http://www.ellisisland.org;
H-Itam Italian American Studies, http://www.h-net.org/~itam/;
Una storia segreta, http://www.segreta.org.
Screening:
Clip from Helen De Michiel’s Tarantella (1995).
Class #15:
Final Exam
Course Description
The case of the Italian Americans is paradigmatic of the experience of modernity and postmodernity. At the turn of the twentieth century many Italian immigrants were drawn to the United States to serve as work force for an unprecedented industrial expansion of the American economy, as part of a global labor diaspora that propelled several million people out of the recently unified country. In the United States, the turn-of-the-twentieth-century immigrants, their descendants, and further newcomers from Italy became members of a multicultural and diverse society, developing plural, complex American ethnic identities—while in many cases retaining some sense of affiliation and actual transnational relations with the “point of origin” across the ocean.
The aim of the course is to help students making sense of these processes, providing an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of the Italian American presence in the United States. Classes will highlight the historically changing meaning and the variety of Italian American identities. Questions of class, race, gender, and multiculturalism that define current interpretations of the Italian American experience will be addressed throughout the course.
The Italian American Experience is a lecture and discussion class, with an emphasis on students’ participation. Lectures, any of which will be approximately 20 minute long and supported by PowerPoint presentations, will provide the historical, analytical, and theoretical background to each class subject. In-class and online discussions of scholarly readings, analyses of primary sources, and viewings of films will allow students to actively explore the development of major themes in Italian American life, such as community life, gender roles, interethnic relations, contributions to American culture, stereotypical representations in the media, and collective memory. The instructor will circulate visual slides, material objects, newspaper articles, tables, graphs, and other pertinent handouts. In particular, course materials include oral history, autobiography, fiction, poetry, films, and other cultural artifacts which provide subjective accounts.
Course Objectives
The course has a distinct interdisciplinary approach. Students will be presented with many dimensions of Italian American social and cultural life and introduced to a vast array of resources for the understanding of the Italian American experience. The broader goal of the course is to help students to understand Italian American Studies as an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry; to develop their skills in reading, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant texts with reference to the appropriate social and cultural contexts; and to expand their abilities in oral and written communication.
Course Readings
No textbook is required. The following readings, though, are recommended as an introduction to the course:
Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience, New York, HarperPerennial, 1993.
Pellegrino D'Acierno (ed.), The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, New York, Garland Publishing, 1999.
Required and suggested articles (see Course Schedule) will be available as Course Packet and/or on Electronic Reserve.
Suggested reference material:
Salvatore J. LaGumina et al. (eds.), The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia, New York, Garland, 2000.
Course Requirements
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance). As mentioned above, this course emphasizes active participation. Students are expected to engage in an ongoing dialogue in class, whose initial food for thought is provided by lectures, readings, mini-presentations (see below), film screenings and handouts. To keep the discussion informed and valuable every student should always do the required readings and come to the class prepared and ready to work.
Students enrolled in this course will also be part of a computer conference group (forum) which will allow everyone to communicate with each other between classes. The forum will be used on occasion to continue in-class discussions, to raise issues not covered during the meetings, and to circulate the synopsis of the suggested readings that will be bring up in the next class (see below, mini-presentations). This electronic interaction ought to be considered an integral part of the course.
Mini-presentation on suggested readings. Each student will choose or be assigned one suggested reading to summarize orally for the whole class. Presentations will be very short, about ten minute long, with the class acting as the audience, free to ask questions to the speakers. In order to make the debate knowledgeable, weekly presenters are asked to post at least 24 hours in advance a one-page summary on the forum for everybody else to read and comment.
Exams. There are two written examinations. Students will have to answer broad questions designed to test their general understanding of the problems raised by lectures, readings, and discussions. The mid-term examination is an exercise dealing with the issues treated during classes in section 1, “The Socio-Historical Background.” The final examination is an exercise synthesizing the content of the course.
Grading criteria.
Participation (timely readings and active class attendance) will make up 25% of the final grade;
Mini-presentation 10%;
Mid-term exam 25%;
Final exam 40%.
Course Schedule
Section 1: The Socio-Historical Background and the Protagonists
Class #1: The “Chinese of Europe”: The Italian Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Required Reading:
Marie Hall Ets (ed.), Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999: 1-27.
Classroom activities:
Introductions.
Q & A on course requirements, grade distribution, and related topics.
Discussion of Ets.
Exercises on handouts:
Excerpt of Inchiesta Jacini on peasant life in late-nineteenth-century Italian countryside;Excerpt of Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli.
Letters home of Italian immigrants;
Lewis Hine’s photographic portfolio of Italian immigrants at Ellis Island, 1907-1924.
Class #2:
The Italian Immigrant Family
Required reading:
Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, “New Wine in Old Bottles: Family, Community, and Immigration,” in Id., Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977: 55-81.
Suggested readings:
Jerre Mangione, Mount’Allegro, New York, Knopf, 1952: selections.
Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim, New York, Random House, 1997 (1964): selections.
Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Crossing Ocean Parkway, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1994: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Yans-McLaughlin.
Mini-presentations on Mangione, Puzo, De Marco Torgovnick.
Screening:
Alessandra Tantillo’s Vaccaro’s Pastry Shop (2004).
Class #3:
Life in Little Italy: Community, Housing, Work, Religion, and Education
Required readings: Rudolph J. Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of American History, 51, Dec. 1964: 404-417.
Lillian W. Betts, “The Italian in New York,” University Settlement Studies. Quarterly, Oct. 1905-Jan. 1906: 90-104.
Suggested readings:
Donna Gabaccia, “Tenement Residential Patterns,” in Id., From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1984: 86-99.
Leonard Covello, “The Influence of Southern Italian Family Mores Upon the School Situation in America,” in Id., The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967: 281-326.
Robert A. Orsi, “The Theology of the Streets,” in Id., The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985: 219-231.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Vecoli and Betts.
Mini-presentations on Gabaccia, Covello, Orsi.
Screening:
Clip from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974).
Browsing website:
Life on the Lower East Side.
Class #4:
Identity and Difference—Are Italians White? (1) Popular/Scientific Racism and the Johnson-Reed Act - (2) The “In-Between People” Confront “Non-Whites”: Turf Wars, White Flight, and the Turn Against Liberalism
Required reading:
Robert A. Orsi, "The Religious Boundaries of an Inbetween People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920–1990," American Quarterly, 44, 3, Sep. 1992: 313-347.
Suggested readings:
Thomas A. Guglielmo, “’The White Peril of Europe,” in Id., White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003:59-75.
Kym Ragusa, “Sangu Du Sangu Meu: Growing Up Black and Italian in a Time of White Flight,” in Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America, New York, Routledge, 2003: 29-43.
Pasquale Verdicchio, "’If I Was Six Feet Tall, I Would Have Been Italian’: Spike Lee's Guineas,” Differentia, 6/7, 1995.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Orsi.
Exercises on handouts:
Excerpts from Edward E. Ross, The Old World and the New (1921), Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916), and U.S. Congress, Report of the Immigration Commission (1911);
Articles from The New York Times and Daily News reporting the assassination of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, NY (8.23.1989).
Screening:
Clips from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991).
Class #5:
Towards a Political Anthropology of the Italian Americans: The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism
Required reading:Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Italian Immigrants in the Labor Movement of the United States from 1880 to 1929," in Bruno Bezza (ed.), Gli italiani fuori d’Italia: gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d'adozione, 1880-1940, Milano, Angeli, 1983: 257-306.
Suggested readings:(Italian American Radicalism and Anti-Fascism)Nunzio Pernicone, "Carlo Tresca: Life and Death of a Revolutionary," in Richard N. Juliani and Philip V. Cannistraro (eds.), Italian Americans, New York, AIHA, 1989: 216-235.Philip V. Cannistraro, "Luigi Antonini and the Italian Anti-Fascist Movement in the United States, 1940-1943, Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 1985: 21-40.(Italian Americans and Politics in Mid-Twentieth-Century New York)Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Italians—Politics,” in Id., Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, Cambridge, MA, The M.I.T. Press, 1963: 208-216.
Herbert Kaufman, “Fiorello H. La Guardia, Political Maverick: A Review Essay,” Political Science Quarterly, 105, 1, Spring 1990: 113-122.
Gerald Meyer, “Italian Harlem’s Biggest Funeral: A Community Pays Its Last Respects to Vito Marcantonio,” Italian American Review, 1, 2000: 108-120.
(Sacco and Vanzetti)
Paul Avrich, “Sacco and Vanzetti’s Revenge,” in Philip V. Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2003: 163-170.Nunzio Pernicone, "Luigi Galleani and Italian Anarchist Terrorism in the United States," Studi Emigrazione, 30, 111, 1993: 469-489.Eric Foner, “The Men and the Symbols: Sacco and Vanzetti”, The Nation, 225, Aug. 20-27, 1977.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Vecoli.
Special PowerPoint presentation:
Sacco & Vanzetti and the Public History of Italian America.
Screening:
Clip from John Sayles’ Matewan (1987).
Class #6:
Italian American Women
Required reading:Donna Gabaccia, "Italian Immigrant Women in Comparative Perspective," Altreitalie, January-June 1993: 163-183. Suggested readings:
Michaela di Leonardo, The Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class, and Gender among California Italian Americans, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994: 191-229.
Louise De Salvo, Vertigo, New York, Dutton, 1996: selections.
Mary Cappello, Night Bloom, Boston, Beacon Press, 1998: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gabaccia.
Mini-presentations on di Leonardo, De Salvo, Cappello.
Exercises on handouts:
Poems by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, “I Dream of My Grandmother and Great-Grandmother,” http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/Gillan.html, and “Public School #18: Paterson,New Jersey,” http://www.pccc.cc.nj.us/poetry/poems3.htm.
Screening:
Clips from Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar (1931), Delbert Mann’s Marty (1955), and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).
Class #7:
Mid-Term Exam
Section 2: Cultural Expressions
Class #8:
Italianamericana: Trauma and Adaptation in the Immigrant Narrative
Required readings:
Fred L. Gardaphè, “The Early Mythic Mode: From Autobiography to Autobiographical Fiction,” in Id., Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative, Durham, Duke University Press, 1996.
Pietro Di Donato, “Christ in Concrete,” in Bill Tonelli (ed.), The Italian American Reader: A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry, New York, HarperCollins, 2003: 405-418.
Pietro Di Donato, “The World of Tomorrow/Il mondo di domani,” Acoma, 7, 19, primavera/estate 2000: 48-53, http://www.acoma.it/volumi/volume19/19didonato.pdf.
Suggested readings:
Pascal D’Angelo, Son of Italy, New York, Arno Press , 1975 (1924): selections.
Emanuel Carnevali, The Autobiography of Emanuel Carnevali, New York, Horizon, 1967: selections.
Constantine Panunzio, The Soul of an Immigrant, New York, Arno Press and The New York Times, 1928: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gardaphè and Di Donato.
Mini-presentations on Cianfarra, Carnevali, Panunzio.
Screening:
Clips from Giuseppe Tornatore’s La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano (1998) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 2 (1974).
Class #9:
Reflexive Ethnicity: Italian American Writers Explore Their Identities
Required readings:
Robert Viscusi, “Breaking the Silence: Strategic Imperatives for Italian American Culture,” Voices in Italian Americana, 1, 1990, 1-13.
Fred L. Gardaphè, “Criticism as Autobiography,” in Id., Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian American Culture, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2004: 101-122.
Suggested readings:
Helen Barolini, Umbertina: A Novel, New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999: selections.
Tina De Rosa, Paper Fish, New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996: selections.
Rita Ciresi, Sometimes I Dream in Italian, New York, Delacorte Press, 2000: selections.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Gardaphè and Di Donato.
Mini-presentations on Barolini, De Rosa, Ciresi.
Class #10:
Screening: Nancy Savoca’s Household Saints (1993).
Discussion.
Class #11:
Italian Americans on Film and Television: Representations of Family and Gender in the Italian American Experience
Required readings:
Daniel Sembroff Golden “The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film,” in Randall M. Miller (ed.), The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, New York, Jerome S. Ozer Publisher, 1995: 73-97.
Suggested readings:
Daniel Golden, "Pasta or Paradigm: The Place of Italian-American Women in Popular Film,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies, 2, January 1979: 3-10.
Edvige Giunta, "The Quest for True Love: Ethnicity in Nancy Savoca's Domestic Film Comedy," MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 22, Summer 1997: 75-89.
Cindy Donatelli and Sharon Alward, ”‘I Dread You’: Married to the Mob in The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos,” in David Leary (ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002.
Classroom activities:
Continuing discussion of Household Saints.
Discussion of Sembroff Golden.
Mini-presentations on Golden, Giunta, Donatelli and Alward.
Screening:
Clips from Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That’s Knocking on My Door? (1969), Nancy Savoca’s True Love (1989), and Tony Vitale’s Kiss Me Guido (1997).
Class #12:
Italian Americans on Film and Television: Riddles of the Gangster Image
Required readings:
Carlos E. Cortes, "Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons," MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 14, 3-4, 1992: 89-108.
Jonathan J. Cavallero, "Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American Stereotype Anxiety," Journal of Popular Film & TV, 32, 2, 2004, pp. 50-63.
George DeStefano, “Ungood Fellas,” The Nation, Feb. 7, 2000.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Cavallero, Cortes, DeStefano.
Exercises on handouts:
Libero Della Piana, “Shark Tale Controversy: Are Italians the New Ant-Racist Front?” The Black Commentator, 109, Oct. 14, 2004.
Screening:
Clips from Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).
Class #13:
Food as Metaphor of Family and Community
Required reading:
Hasia Diner, “’The Bread Is Soft’: Italian Foodways, American Abundance,” in Id., Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001: 48-83.
Suggested readings:
Simone Cinotto, ”’Sunday Dinner? You Had To Be There!’: Food, Family, and Community Among Italian Immigrants of New York,” The Italian American Review, 8, 2, Autumn/Winter 2001: 11-44.
Donna Gabaccia, “Ethnicity in the Business World: Italian and American Food Industries,” Italian American Review, Fall-Winter 1998: 1-19.
Helen Barolini, “Heritage Lost, Heritage Found,” Italian Americana, 16, 2, Summer 1998: 126-132.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Diner.
Mini-presentations on Cinotto, Gabaccia, Barolini,
Exercises on handouts:
Printed ads, labels and packages of Italian food products;
Selections from Nancy Verde Barr, We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking, New York, Knopf, 1990.
Screening:
Clips from Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974) and Helen De Michiel’s Tarantella (1995).
Class #14:
The Twilight of Ethnicity or a New Dawn? Italian Americans Think about Their Past and Identity
Required readings:
Donald Tricarico, “The ‘New’ Italian American Ethnicity,” Journal of Ethnic Studies, 12, 3, Fall 1984: 75-94.
Mary Jo Bona, “A Process of Reconstruction: Recovering the Grandmother in Helen Barolini's Umbertina and Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish,” in Id., Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Classroom activities:
Discussion of Tricarico and Bona.
Special PowerPoint presentation:
Time, Memory, and Genealogy in the Ethnic Experience of the Italian Americans.
Browsing websites:
Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty Foundation Website, http://www.ellisisland.org;
H-Itam Italian American Studies, http://www.h-net.org/~itam/;
Una storia segreta, http://www.segreta.org.
Screening:
Clip from Helen De Michiel’s Tarantella (1995).
Class #15:
Final Exam
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