Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture
- Editors: Edvige Giunta, Kathleen Zamboni McCormick
- Pages: xii & 360 pp.
- Published: 2010
- ISBN: 9781603290678 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603290661 (Hardcover)
“It is safe to say that this volume will stand for years to come alongside many of those same anthologies on the bookshelf of valued teaching resources for courses, modules, and lessons on the Italian-American experience. In particular, the concrete pedagogical support that consistently undergirds this volume will aid nonspecialists and specialists alike as we continue to look for effective ways to interpret the Italian-American reality for and with our students.”
—Italian American Review
Italian American studies has long been in conversation with American culture at large and is increasingly present in American universities and colleges. Yet once-celebrated works, such as Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, have slipped from the public consciousness, and many scholars fear that representations of Italian Americans in popular culture, as in The Godfather films and the television series The Sopranos, have obscured genuine historical inquiry and understanding. This volume aims to foster a deeper and more complex appreciation for the importance of Italian American texts in the study of American culture.
The editors open the volume by outlining the history of Italians in the United States and exploring the potential of literature and the arts to enable the recovery of a forgotten, even repressed, historical past. Over thirty scholars and teachers then present innovative ways of teaching Italian American texts and integrating them with other texts in courses ranging from American literature and history to multiethnic and women’s studies. Contributors discuss Italian American fiction, poetry, memoir, oral history, and theater and performance. A section on film and television provides an overview of popular as well as lesser-known works and interrogates the stereotyped portrayals of Italian Americans. Other contributors offer historical and interdisciplinary approaches to Italian American texts that revolve around themes of race and gender politics, work and social class, and historical intersections. The volume concludes with a review of anthologies that can be used in teaching Italian American studies.
Carol Bonomo Albright
Emelise Aleandri
Mary Jo Bona
Peter Bondanella
Giulia Centineo
Clarissa Clò
Kimberly A. Costino
Peter Covino
Rose De Angelis
Luisa Del Giudice
David Del Principe
Louise DeSalvo
Elvira G. Di Fabio
Teresa Fiore
Donna R. Gabaccia
Fred Gardaphé
Jennifer Guglielmo
Josephine Gattuso Hendin
Peter Kvidera
Dora Labate
Bernadette Luciano
RoseAnna Mueller
Mark Pietralunga
Roseanne Giannini Quinn
Caterina Romeo
Courtney Judith Ruffner
John Paul Russo
Joseph Sciorra
Ilaria Serra
Anthony Julian Tamburri
Stefania Taviano
Marisa Trubiano
Robert Viscusi
Acknowledgments (xi)
Introduction (1)
Part I: Mapping Italian American Studies
The History of Italians in the United States (33)
The History of Italian American Literary Studies (43)
The History of Italian American Film and Television Studies (59)
Italian American Studies in Italy (70)
Creating a Program in Italian American Studies (79)
Part II: Considering Italian American Literature
Fiction and Poetry
Rich Harvest: An Overview of Italian American Fiction (87)
Innovation, Interdisciplinarity, and Cultural Exchange in Italian American Poetry (97)
“Stripping Down” Gender Roles in Italian American Fiction by Women (109)
Religion in Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Underworld (115)
Avant-Garde Italian American Fiction: Experiential Experimentalism (124)
Autobiography and Memoir
Remembering, Misremembering, and Forgetting the Motherland (132)
Past and Present: Teaching the Family Memoir (141)
Oceans Away: Rethinking Italian American Autobiography in the Antipodes (146)
When the Story Is Silence: Italian American Student Writers and the Challenges of Teaching—and Writing—Memoir (154)
Oral History
Spoken Memories: Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian American Studies (160)
From the Classroom to the Community and Back Again: Oral Histories and the Italian American Experience Course (168)
Theater and Performance
Italian American Immigrant Theater (175)
A Lived History under Scrutiny: Italian American Performance Art (182)
Uncovering and Performing Italian American Stories (200)
Part III: Revisiting Italian American Film and Popular Culture
A Contested Place: Italian Americans in Cinema and Television (209)
Palookas, Romeos, and Wise Guys: Italian Americans in Hollywood (217)
Language and Dubbing in the Filmic Representation of Italian Americans (223)
Cultural Stereotyping in Happy Days and The Sopranos (231)
Part IV: Historical and Interdisciplinary Approaches
Race and Gender Politics
Situating Italian Immigrant Women’s Radical Writing in American History (239)
Recrossing Ocean Parkway: Teaching Italian American Literacy Narratives and Racial Formation in First-Year Composition Courses (247)
Teaching Italian American Literature through Popular Culture and Intersectionality in an Ethnic Studies Class (253)
“How Is Sicily Like Jamaica?”: Gendered Multiethnic Identities and Cross-Cultural Encounters (258)
Work and Social Class
Class and Ethnicity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Christ in Concrete (266)
The Immigrant Question in the Italian American Experience Course (273)
Historical Intersections
Imagining the Italian: Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Italian Immigrant Writing, and the Power of Literary Representation (279)
Travel Literature: Negotiating the Gaze between Italy and America (289)
Part V: Resources
A Review of Anthologies for Teaching Italian American Studies (297)
Notes on Contributors (307)
Works Cited (315)
Index (351)
“This journey through the diverse and varied legacy of the Italian American experience constitutes an innovative tool and resource guide for many other fields and disciplines.”
—Simona Zecchi, i-Italy
“The diversity of the critical approaches compiled in the essays featured make it a successful and valuable textbook for both teachers and students interested in the topic.”
—Journal of Popular Culture
