Virtual Conference, Italian Borderlands: Restrictions, Breaches, Encounters

This year’s conference will be entirely virtual. Each weekday from April 5 to April 21, 2021, one presentation or panel will take place at 2pm EST.

Capacity at each Zoom event is 100 participants max.

See session descriptions below for registration links for each event.

For a PDF version of the complete program, click here.

 

Conference Program

MONDAY, APRIL 5
New York Borderlands

Negotiating the Upstate/Downstate Divide: Fiorello H. La Guardia, New York State’s Milk Crises, and the Potential for Rural-Urban Coalitions Today
AMY E. TRAVER, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

Wyckoff Heights? Italian American Borderland on the Brooklyn/Queens Line
STEPHEN J. CERULLI, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY

The Young Italians’ Visions and Dreams of New York: Myth or Reality? ROSEMARY SERRA, University of Trieste

Click here to register for this session.

 

TUESDAY, APRIL 6
Literature beyond Borders

Giose Rimanelli, a Border Writer
ROSINA MARTUCCI, Independent Scholar

Border Crossings and Kinship in Women’s Letteratura della Migrazione
MERIEL TULANTE, Thomas Jefferson University

Albania as Perennial Italian Borderland in the Novels of Albanian Italophone Authors
VIKTOR BERBERI, University of Minnesota Morris

Click here to register for this session.

 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7 ROUNDTABLE
Hope Amidst the Chaos of the New Migrations to Southern Italy: Principles, Realities, and Trends

FILIPPO PISCOPO, director, It Will Be Chaos (2018)
KATIA PASSERINI, Seton Hall University
ARTURO PAGÁN, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Click here to register for this session.

 

THURSDAY, APRIL 8
Cultural Encounters between Italy and Latin America

Italian Immigrants and Ideas in Nineteenth-Century Argentina
HEATHER SOTTONG, University of California, Los Angeles

Crossing Cultural Borders: Fernando Ortiz and Italian Thought in Latin America
DAVID ALIANO, College of Mount Saint Vincent

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FRIDAY, APRIL 9
Cinematic and Musical Borderlands

Italian American Borderlands in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever
MARIE-CHRISTINE MICHAUD, Université de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient

The Politics of Italian Identity: Alessandro Mahmoud and Sanremo 2019
ANTHONY D. SARGENTI, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Bonding across Borders in Matteo Troncone’s Arrangiarsi (Pizza … and the Art of Living)
EVELYN FERRARO, Santa Clara University

Mediterranean Border: The Case of Venice
GIULIANA MUSCIO, University of Padua

Click here to register for this session.

 

MONDAY, APRIL 12
Families, Neighborhoods, and Beyond

The Italian/American Question: Memory, Space, and Identity
JACQUELINE MAY, Independent Scholar

Breaking Down Borders in the Digital Age: A Case Study of the Descendants of
Gaspare Cario
AMY DEUINK, Pennsylvania State University, and MELISSA E. MARINARO, Senator John Heinz History Center

Arbëreshë, Italian Albanians, Albanian Americans, Italian Americans: Intersecting Borders during the Migrations of the 1890s–1920s
FRANCESCA CANADÉ SAUTMAN, Hunter College, CUNY

Click here to register for this session.

 

TUESDAY, APRIL 13
Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar

Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione

Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

Uguccione Ranieri, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and the Teaching of Italian Language in the United States in the 1930s
ROBERTO DOLCI, University for Foreigners of Perugia

The Journey away from the Fascist Regime in the Wartime Experience of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello
RUGGERO RANIERI, Romeyne Robert and Uguccione Sorbello Foundation

“The Italian Scene”: A Cultural Bridge between Postwar Italy and the United States
ANTONELLA VALOROSO, The Umbra Institute

Click here to register for this session.

 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14
Colonial Africa

Research Resources on Italians in the Horn of Africa
COLLEEN BRADLEY-SANDERS, Brooklyn College Library

Italy’s Recruitment of Migrants in the Interwar Years: Empire and Labor Mobilization
DONATELLA STRANGIO, Sapienza University of Rome

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THURSDAY, APRIL 15
Negotiating Boundaries, Negotiating Identities

The Arrests of Alberto Mario and Jessie White Mario: British Exceptionalism, Transnational Families, and Derivative Citizenship
DIANA MOORE, John Jay College, CUNY

Testing Hybridity: Arab-Muslim Solidarity and the Italian Conquest of Ottoman Tripolitania, 1911–1912
CHRIS J. ROMINGER, University of North Florida

Returning Home as Enemies: Luigi Antonini, the Italian-American Labor Council, and the Fight against Italy during World War II
ANTONIA CUCCHIARA, The New School of Social Research

Click here to register for this session.

 

FRIDAY, APRIL 16
Sicily as Mediterranean Borderland

From Micheli to the Baracche: The Polis in Flux and Stasis after the 1908 Earthquake of Messina
LINA INSANA, University of Pittsburgh

The Rebirth of a Mediterranean Migration System: Migration between Sicily and Tunisia
GIULIANO FLERI, The Graduate Institute, Geneva

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MONDAY, APRIL 19
Northeast Italy

Fostering a Nationalist Geographical Fantasy: Women Writers and the Italian Northeastern Border (1915–1918)
CRISTINA GRAGNANI, Temple University

Redrawing the Map, Reconstructing Identity: Italian-Yugoslavian Borderlands and Anti- Slavism in Italian Discourse during Fascism
LUISA MORETTIN, NCI University in London

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TUESDAY, APRIL 20 ROUNDTABLE
Crossing Borders with Ulysses’s Second Eye: Searching for Italy’s Identity in Il secondo occhio di Ulisse

SILVIA CARLOROSI, Bronx Community College, CUNY
PETER CARRAVETTA, Stony Brook University, SUNY
WILEY FEINSTEIN, Loyola University Chicago
DANIELE FIORETTI, Miami University
SIMONA WRIGHT, The College of New Jersey
Discussant: SANTE MATTEO, Miami University

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21 KEYNOTE
Where Is Italy? Borders and Borderlands from Metaphor to Geopolitics

DONNA GABACCIA, University of Toronto (Emerita)

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Hourly Schedule

Day 1

From 2pm EST - To 3:30pm EST