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