Spaghetti Sissies: Queering Italian American Media

Thursday, October 12, 2023, 6pm 

Spaghetti Sissies: Queering Italian American Media
Julia Heim, University of Pennsylvania
Sole Anatrone, Vassar College

Through consistent filmic representation, the image of Italian Americans has become a set of immediately recognizable characters: the hyper-macho blue-collar greaser, the anti-intellectual GTL Guido, the child-obsessed mamma, and the heteronormative Mafia family. The rhetorical and literal loudness of these characters drowns out other possible embodiments of Italian American identity such that few examples survive of Italian Americans that do not conform to these explicitly heterosexual modes of being. Spaghetti Sissies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) fills that void, foregrounding the importance of representation and of rethinking the historical narratives and cultural stereotypes surrounding Italian American identities. In bringing together personal accounts and scholarly research in an examination of LGBTQIA+ Italian American experiences and representations in North American media, this volume shines a light on a population that has long been ignored both as an object of study and as a maker and consumer of media.