2nd IASA International Symposium in Italy 

CALL FOR PAPERS

June 20-22, 2019

Roma Tre University Via Valco di San Paolo, 19

Rome, Italy

Transposing Landscapes and Identities in the Italian Diaspora: Visual and Verbal Representations

Deadline Extended to Friday, March 29

“A few years ago, I decided, like everyone else, to explore my ethnic roots. It lasted a very short time. I bought a pasta machine. Learned how to combine the ingredients for pasta…. Purists insist that if the sacred pasta dough is touched by metal pasta machines, it becomes slightly slippery—a quality in pasta that is akin to infidelity in wives. Oh yes, I now remember what women who do anything without their husbands are called. Puttane. Whores. I remember hearing stories in my childhood about how women like that were stoned to death in the old country.”

“A Portrait of the Puttana as a Middle-Aged Woolf Scholar” (1984)

Louise A. DeSalvo (1942-2018)

The focus of the Symposium is Italian/Italian-American and Italian diaspora crosscurrents of the 19th, 20th, or 21st century on immigrants who were engaged in refuting as well as perpetuating stereotypes and racist beliefs that disturbed Italian diasporic relations. Notions of class, gender, and cross-ethnic contamination undergird the intentions of this symposium. Italian immigrants and their progeny often repelled certain offensive imagery that categorized them as second-class citizens if not petty criminals. On the other hand, some Italian immigrants and their descendants actually embraced certain stereotypes regardless of their overall negative effects.

Pertinent to such internal attitudes is the century-plus long interactions with other U.S. ethnic/racial groups. Let us also remember, for example, that during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Italians and blacks were two groups often excluded from employment: “No Italians or Negroes Need Apply” was often listed at the bottom of ads for jobs. Gender and sexuality, on the other hand, are, and remain, a much more complicated issue. Initially, women were relegated to the home: cleaning, cooking, and caring for children. The independent woman, instead, often found herself on the margin and, depending on the degree of her “rebellion,” ostracized. Sexual identity beyond “hetero” has also been met with resistance within an Italian-American milieu; gay, lesbian, and, especially today, transgender people are often in constant negotiations with hetero-thinking mainstream.

IASA encourages proposals in diverse formats, including round tables, debates, workshops, teaching sessions, and performances. We prefer fully formed sessions, although we also encourage people to submit individual presentations. As well, we encourage submission of individuals who would prefer to moderate or to comment. If this is your interest, please submit a

Conference fee: €70; €50 (adjuncts); €30 (students). Fees include coffee breaks and reception. Payment to be made via PayPal at the following website: www.italianamericanstudies.net.

Guidelines for Proposals:

Sessions will be 75 minutes; each presenter must limit her/his remarks to 15-20 minutes each (inclusive of film clips and PowerPoint presentations) in order to allow ample time for Q&A and discussion. Proposals may be for one of three forms:

• Individual presentation, paper, or talk;
• Panel session or workshop, featuring multiple presenters;
• Performance, reading, or screening of creative work;
• Presentations may be in English or Italian.

Proposals must include:

• Proposal title and a brief description of no more than 250 words;
• Suggested topic category (see list below);
• Brief biographical statement, affiliation, and e-mail, as well as contact information and bios of all those in a proposed panel (bios no more than 75 words);
• AV requirements (provided in each room are a computer [PC not MAC], a projector, speakers). Speakers should bring their clips and/or PowerPoint presentations on a pen drive and, as we draw closer to the date of the symposium, email the files to the conference committee at: IASAConference2019@gmail.com

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Recovering Italian diasporic voices (e.g., Italian North Americans, Italian Latin Americans, Italian Australians, Italian Europeans);
• Struggles of immigrant women broadly imagined;
• Women pioneers, in professions, activism, innovation; women activists (abolitionism, anti-lynching, temperance, child labor, reform, animal rights);
• Female networks and sisterhoods—of writers, journalists, travelers;
• Women travelers and their descriptive gaze;
• Fictional and realistic descriptions of places, people, and societies;
• The effects and consequences of bi-racial or homosexual relationships (including how these impact social and religious structures);
• Treatment of bi-racial children; the psychological results of being a bi-racial child in a dominant White culture (including, but not limited to, the children of Black American soldiers and Italian women);
• The intersections and disconnections among poor, middle class, and affluent immigrants;