Changing Culture I. Past and Present Stories of Italian Immigration Tiro a Segno Undergraduate Course in Italian American Culture

Transcription

1 Changing Culture I. Past and Present Stories of Italian Immigration Tiro a Segno Undergraduate Course in Italian American Culture Fall 2014 Prof. Martino Marazzi Arturo Giovannitti, first page of Samnite Cradle Song, Courtesy David Giovannitti, Yonkers Description This course provides a cultural approach to the history of the adaptation of Italian immigrants to American culture and society, and compares it with the present change occurring in Italy, in the light of an unprecedented inbound immigration. The epical phenomenon of the Italian mass migration to the U.S. will be examined using immigrants words as primary sources analyzing novels, poetry, colonial journalism and theatre, and private letters, with a keen attention to cases of bilingualism and code-mixing. These will be scrutinized by looking, for instance, at the production of a bilingual poet like Arturo Giovannitti ( ), and of such diverse novelists like Pietro di Donato ( ) and Garibaldi Lapolla ( ). Another focus will be provided by the breathtaking inventions of popular comedians like Farfariello (the Neapolitan Eduardo Migliaccio, ) and Nofrio (the Sicilian Giovanni De Rosalia, ).

2 Furthermore, we will show how complex and deep tenets of Italian culture such as Dante s Comedy, the enduring fascination of Renaissance masterpieces, or the patriotic allure of the Risorgimento (as expressed, for instance, in Verdi s operas, or Manzoni s writings), were transplanted and reappropriated by Italian Americans in a rich variety of ways (satirically, nationalistically, in theatre and popular songs, in the visual arts, etc.). Finally we will be comparing the stratified landscape of Italian American culture with the challenging new scenario provided by immigrants culture in contemporary Italy: a country characterized by huge waves of outbound migration has reversed this tendency by becoming a destination country, home to over 4 million people (roughly the same amount of Italians who left for the U.S. from the 1870s to the 1920s) from a variety of disadvantaged nations. We will introduce a discussion on the thought-provoking scene of today s new Italians, through works like those by Amara Lakhous, Kossi Komla-Ebri, Elvira Dones, Gëzim Hajdari. Some of the issues addressed during the course will be: Unity or disunity? To what extent Italian historical emigration can be viewed in terms of opposition to Italy s mid-nineteenth-century political unity? Orality vs. textuality? How and in what terms can we account for the weight of orality within Italian America, as opposed to the sophisticated textuality of Italian American cultural artifacts? A postcolonial Italian culture really? Contemporary Italy presents a complex scenario, where postcolonial conditions meet and intertwine the outcomes of the global economic system and of geo-political upheaval. To what extent is the so-called global paradigm critically valid? Course materials The course is conducted in English; knowledge of Italian is not strictly necessary, although it could help. Course requirements Final grades will be assessed as follows: attendance and participation, 20%; class presentation, 30%; final paper, 50%. Class presentation: according to the schedule, each student will give at least one 15-minute presentation during the course. The presentation will relate on an assignment based on a literary or social topic addressed in class, and will preferably expand on a specific aspect of a work of art or of a historical phenomenon related to the migratory experience. Schedule of bi-weekly course meetings and Readings 1. Introduction. Italy and emigration: outbound, inbound. Here and There: Garibaldi in New York, Whitman in Italy Vecoli 1995 and 2010 Pretelli Zincone 2. The Italian scene: a smalltown exodus. The American scene, from East to West. Italian American in the OED Handouts 3. Rebellious brothers : transatlantic and circular migration of a poetical image. From the street to the page: the first stories

3 Handouts Ventura Marazzi Voices, Saving Private Arturo. The papers and poetry of Arturo Giovannitti Giovannitti Marazzi Voices, Harrington, The Kitchen of a Novelist. Garibaldi Lapolla and his Grand Gennaro Lapolla, The Grand Gennaro Marazzi King Belluscio, introduction to Lapolla, Fire in the Flesh 6. Tragic modernity, modernist writing. Pietro di Donato s masterpiece(s) Midterm Exam Di Donato, Christ Viscusi, Buried 53-58, Kvidera 7. The Italian American Theatre. Farfariello and Nofrio Cautela Aleandri Haller Durante 75-94, Italian Classics in Little Italy. The Italian American Press Marazzi, Our Brother Dante Marazzi, Voices Vecoli Mutual Traumas and adjustments. Booker T. Washington in Sicily, Washington Square Park by Onorio Ruotolo Booker T. Washington Handouts 10. Piazza Vittorio, Rome. Carlo Emilio Gadda and Amara Lakhous Gadda Lakhous 11. Embarassing encounters. A multicultural Italian literature Komla-Ebri Orton Parati Parati Tamburri 12. The return of the native. Pietro di Donato s Christ in Plastic. The global FIAT on an ethnoanalytic couch Handouts 13. When We Were Albanians. New perspectives and masters Dones

4 Hajdari Lombardi-Diop Romeo 14. Review session. Final Exam Required Readings [ * = available at NYU Bookstore and at Bobst Library] * Di Donato, Pietro, Christ in Concrete (New York: Signet Classic, 1993 [1939]) * Marazzi, Martino, Voices of Italian America. A History of Early Italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012) * Lakhous, Amara, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, Europa, New York 2008 Recommended Readings [ * = available at NYU Bookstore and at Bobst Library] * Lapolla, Garibaldi, The Grand Gennaro, ed. Steven J. Belluscio (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009 [1935]) (at Bobst: New York: Arno P, 1975) * Giovannitti, Arturo, The Collected Poems of Arturo Giovannitti (Chicago: Clemente, 1962; and New York: Arno P, 1975) * Haller, Hermann, Tra Napoli e New York. Le macchiette italo-americane di Eduardo Migliaccio (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006) * Orton, Marie Parati Graziella (eds.), Multicultural Literature in Contemporary Italy (Madison-Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008) Comberiati, Daniele, Scrivere nella lingua dell altro. La letteratura degli immigrati in Italia ( ) (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2010) Bibliography and Further Readings [ * = available at Bobst Library] * Aleandri, Emelise, The Italian-American Immigrant Theatre of New York City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 1999) Audenino, Patrizia Tirabassi, Maddalena, Migrazioni italiane. Storia e storie dall ancien régime a oggi (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2008) * Belluscio, Steven J., Introduction to Garibaldi Lapolla, The Fire in the Flesh [1931] (New York: Bordighera P, 2012) Bencivenni, Marcella, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture. The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, (NYU P 2011) Bendinelli Predelli, Maria Andreoni, Antonio, Piccone e poesia. La cultura dell ottava nel poema d emigrazione di un contadino lucchese (Lucca: S. Marco Litotipo, 1997) Benelli, Sarah, Christ in Concrete and the Failure of Catholicism, Bertellini, Giorgio, Italy in Early American Cinema. Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2010) Bonaffini, Luigi, Arturo Giovannitti e l establishment letterario americano, in Norberto Lombardi (ed.), Il bardo della libertà. Arturo Giovannitti ( ) (Isernia: Iannone, 2011), Casillo, Robert Russo, John Paul, The Italian in Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011) * Cautela, Giuseppe, The Italian Theatre in New York, The American Mercury, 12, 45, September 1927, De Caldas Brito, Christiana, Qui e là (Isernia: Iannone, 2004), Amanda Olinda Azzurra e le altre (Oedipus: Salerno-Milano, 2004)

5 D Acierno, Pellegrino (ed.), The Italian American Experience. A Companion to Literature and Arts (New York-London: Garland, 1999) De Rosalia, Giovanni (a.k.a. Nofrio), Nofrio record. Music CD. Palazzolo s Italian Records, 2006 Diomede, Matthew, Pietro Di Donato, the Master Builder (Lewisburg London: Bucknell University Press Associated University Presses, 1995) Dones, Elvira, Sole bruciato (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2001) * Durante, Francesco, Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti. La scena di Little Italy (Napoli: Pironti, 2013) Fante, John, Dago Red (New York: The Viking Press, 1940) Fazio, Michele, Vomit Your Poison. Violence, Hunger, and Symbolism in Pietro di Donato s Christ in Concrete, Melus, 32, 2007, Forgacs, David Lumley, Robert (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction (New York: Oxford UP, 1996) Franzina, Emilio, Gli italiani al nuovo mondo. L emigrazione italiana in America (Milan: Mondadori, 1995) Frasca, Simona, Birds of passage. I musicisti napoletani a New York ( ) (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2010) Furey, Hester L., The Reception of Arturo Giovannitti s Poetry and the Trial of a New Society, Left History, 2, Spring 1994, * Gadda, Carlo Emilio, That Awful Mess on via Merulana [1957] (New York: Braziller, 1984) Gazzoni, Andrea (ed.), Poesia dell esilio. Saggi su Gëzim Hajdari (Isernia: Iannone, 2010) Giunta, Edvige and Zamboni McCormick, Kathleen (eds.), Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2010) Guglielmo, Jennifer Salerno, Salvatore (eds.), Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America (Routledge: London-New York, 2003) Hajdari, Gëzim, Poesie scelte ( ) (Nardò: Controluce, 2008), Poema dell esilio (Santarcangelo di Romagna: Fara 2007), Muzungu. Diario in nero (Nardò: Besa, 2006) * Harrington, Joseph, Poetry and the Public. The Social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2002) * Komla-Ebri, Kossi, Neyla [Engl.] (Madison-Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2004), Imbarazzismi. Quotidiani imbarazzi in bianco e nero (Milan: Edizioni dell arco, 2002) * Kvidera, Peter, Ethnic Identity and Cultural Catholicism in Pietro di Donato s Christ in Concrete, Melus, 35, 2010, Lakhous, Amara, Divorce Islamic Style (New York: Europa, 2012) * Lombardi-Diop, Cristina Romeo, Caterina (eds.), Postcolonial Italy. Challenging National Homogeneity (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) * Marazzi, Martino, King of Harlem: Garibaldi Lapolla and Gennaro Accuci il Grande, in Aldo Bove and Giuseppe Massara (eds.), Merica. A Conference on the Culture and Literature of Italians in North America (Stony Brook, N.Y.: Forum Italicum Publishing, 2006): , Our brother Dante. Dantesque Reappropriations in Italian America, in Dennis Looney Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio (eds.), Dante politico. Ideological Reception across Boundaries, forthcoming as special issue of Mediaevalia, 2014 Mujčić, Elvira, La lingua di Ana (Castelgandolfo: Infinito, 2012) Parati, Graziella, Migration Italy. The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture (Toronto-Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2005) * Parati, Graziella Tamburri, Anthony (eds), The Cultures of Italian Migration. Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (Madison-Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2011) * Pretelli, Matteo, L emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti (Bologna: il Mulino, 2011) Seabrook, William, These Foreigners (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938) * Vecoli, Rudolph J., The Italian Diaspora, , in Robin Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995 and 2010): *, The Italian Immigrant Press and the Construction of Social Reality, , in J. Danky and W. Wiegand (eds.), Print Culture in a Diverse America (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois P, 1998): * Ventura, Luigi Donato, Peppino il lustrascarpe, trilingual edition edited by Martino Marazzi (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2007)

6 * Viscusi, Robert, Buried Caesars, and Others Secrets of Italian American Writing (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006) * Washington, Booker T., The Man Farthest Down. A Record of Observation and Study in Europe, 1912 and 1984 * Zincone, Giovanna, The Making of Policies. Immigration and Immigrants in Italy, Journal of Ethnic and Migrations Studies, 3, 2006, Useful websites