Representation of Ethnicity as Problem: Essence or Construction

Horizons de Recherche/Research Horizons III Alumni C.L.E. Recherche Actes du colloque du 29 juin 2016 Conference Proceedings from June 29th, 2016, 2017

The aim of this work is to present the results of a study of discursive techniques and procedures for inclusion and exclusion of individuals and groups present in the Italian migrant literature. The study is based on analysis of three narrative autobiographic text belonging to the abovementioned category: "Il mio viaggio della speranza dal Senegal all'Italia in cerca di fortuna" by Bay Mademba, "Il mio nome è regina" by Marie Reine Toe and "In fuga dalle tenebre" by Jean Paul Pougala. The first part offers brief introduction into the theoretical premises on which the analysis of the texts is based. The other part provides an overview of the results of the analysis. The objective of the analysis was to identify and classify the techniques and the strategies used by the authors for construction of group identity and for expression of their social identity.

EUM - Macerata, 2022

This book expands, enriches, and questions current notions of multiculturalism by integrating the study of the literature of two significant European immigrant groups in the United States (the Italians and the Jews) into larger theoretical theorizations of the Other in the American literature university curriculum. It seeks to reintroduce these two literatures, now significantly ignored, into this general literary discussion of alterity and ultimately question how they might figure in the multicultural and World Literature classroom. The comparison of these two immigrant literatures allows us to investigate how the discourse of race contributed to the configuration of ethnic identity, both by dominant White American culture and within these immigrant groups themselves. This volume also seeks to tie the study of these two immigrant literatures to pressing theoretical and pedagogical concerns, namely, the role of American ethnic literature in the multicultural classroom and its place in Comparative Literature and World Literature curricula. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Historical Overwiew Dorothy M. Figueira, Jewish and Italian Migrant Fictions: Syncretisms and Interchangeabilities Born of a Shared Immigrant Experience Part I, Italian American Literature Chapter 1, Marina Camboni, Going Native: Identity and Identification in Carol Maso’s Ghost Dance and Robert Viscusi’s ellis island Chapter 2, Mary Jo Bona, Adria Bernardi’s Openwork and Italian Women’s Diasporas Chapter 3, Leonardo Buonomo, Ethnicity, Gender, and Culture in Garibaldi M. Lapolla’s Miss Rollins in Love Chapter 4, John Wharton Lowe, Humor as Counterpoint and Engine in di Donato and Binelli Chapter 5, Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh, Salvatore Scibona’s The End: Italian American Literature in Translation between Italy and the US Chapter 6, Valerio Massimo De Angelis, The Unfortunate Pilgrim: Mario Puzo’s Deconstruction of the American Myths of Migration Part II, Jewish American Literature Chapter 7, David M. Schiller, From Ethnic Stereotyping to Geopolitics in the Vaudeville and World War I Era Songs of Irving Berlin and Al Piantadosi Chapter 8, Doris Kadish, Jewish Immigrants in the 1930s: Politics, Literature, Religion Chapter 9, Marta Anna Skwara, The Polish Factor in Jewish American Writing. Three Cases: Sholem Asch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Jerzy Kosiński Chapter 10, Marjanne E. Goozé, The Holocaust Memoir as American Tale: Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive Chapter 11, Paolo Simonetti, “Sounds Like Jew Talk to Me”: Assimilation and Alienation in Bernard Malamud’s The People Chapter 12, Charles Byrd, In Nabokov’s Philosemitic Footsteps: Selected Russian-Jewish American Immigrant Novels of Gary Shteyngart and Irina Reyn Part III, Canon, Pedagogy, and the Other Chapter 13, Fred L. Gardaphé, Art of the State: The Politics of Multiculturalism in American Literary Studies; or, Who Hung the Rembrandt on the Multicultural Mural? Chapter 14, Franca Sinopoli, “Transnationalism” and/or the Canon in Comparative Literary Studies Part IV, Multiculturalism from Other Perspectives Chapter 15, Thomas E. Peterson, Weltliteratur and Literary Anthropology: The Case of Italian American Literature Chapter 16, Ulrike Schneider, Contextualizing Jewish American Literature Chapter 17, Sabnam Ghosh, Pedagogies of Immigrant Otherness Chapter 18, Ipshita Chanda, Plural Cultures, Pluralist Ethics and the Practice of Comparative Literature Conclusion, Ethics of the Other Chapter 19, S Satish Kumar, Rethinking Collectivities and Intersubjectivities: Inenarrability, Hospitality and Migrancy Chapter 20, Jenny Webb, Theoretical Fluencies Contributors Note Italia, Americhe e altri mondi Collana del Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi ItaloAmericani (CISIA) dell’Università di Macerata 1

2018

During the 1970s and the 1980s, Italian Canadian Literature in English represented a thriving field of literary expression in Canadian culture. The first generation of writers narrated the trauma of displacement while shaping the cultural basis of Italian Canadiana and its place within contemporary Canadian literature. In the last twenty years, the new generations of writers of Italian origin have reinterpreted and questioned the label of ethnic literature; the constellations of literary tropes and attachments that represented the first wave of Italian Canadian literature is a spectral presence to be reinterpreted within contemporary Canadian fiction. Miche!le Alfano, Ucia Canton and Terry Favro reinterpret Italian Canadiana in transcultural terms by retaining the spectral presence of the ancestral culture. I argue that the transcultural spaces of their narratives write a dialogue between the past and the present through spectrality and affects; it also shows how they have overcome the h•auma of dislocation and it evidentiates their identification with Canadian culture.

2004

So far, textual hetero-representations of the Romani people (usually called `Gypsies' by the non-Roma) have focused on their foreignness and alleged `non-conformity' to the dominant order. Such depictions, conflating history and myth, art and reality, promote the perception of an unbridgeable divide between the `primitive', `illiterate' Roma and the `civilized' society. In this respect, the forging of a fictional `Gypsy' identity can be seen as an ethnic strategy aimed at endorsing harsh policies of oppression and social marginalization of the Roma. The recent rise of *a Romani written literature has shown that, contrary to common belief, the Roma cannot simply be defined as people `without writing'. This thesis aims to highlight the complex features of their literature, characterized by an irreducible plurality of voices and styles which is in striking contrast with the rigid, monolithic structure of the conventional images of the 'Gypsy'. The in...

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2004

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 2017

The Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozie Adiche in her insightful TED talk, expounds on "the danger of the single story." I have always had a tacit knowing about this, that one story is just that: one story. If a story is told long and often enough, it becomes the truth, going possibly unquestioned through generations. I continue to explore my father's nuclear family and the narratives of his siblings regarding their lives with their Sicilian father. Disrupting the "Master Narrative" using poetic inquiry and respondents' own words help to redress the lack of their voice(s) in their own experience(s).

so-called exile in his writings illustrates clearly the otherness in and of displacement.

Canadian multicultural society can be studied with the help of Canadian ethnic literature. It presents various experiences of ethnic minorities and immigrants. Canada welcomes people from all over the world and thus people find shelter in the country. Immigrants, but then, come across some issues. Identity struggle is apparent. Immigrants with different ethnic identity find it difficult to acquire new national identity because of different values. Thus, we can see identity quest and that is aptly reflected in Canadian literature. The Italian is written by F. G. Paci, an Italian-Canadian writer. In this novel, he presents how members of Italian immigrant family are set in conflict to know their real identity. Their lives are caught in between Italian identity and Canadian identity.

Teaching Subjectivity: Travelling Selves for Feminist Pedagogy (Silvia Caporale and Melita Richter, eds), 2009