For Virgil’s Aeneas, Italy was “the land of our return” (in Robert Fagles’ 2006 translation), the place his ancestor Dardanus left generations earlier. The Aeneid is thus an epic recounting of the Trojan hero’s return, or nostos, to Italian soil. This poetic conceit offers numerous possibilities to explore the political, economic, social, and cultural impact of historical and contemporary travel and communication by Italian emigrants and their descendants to Italy.
Italian emigration was the largest movement of free labor in world history with over twenty-six million people emigrating from the 1870s to the 1970s. Italian emigrants’ objective was, for the most part, to make enough money and return home. Close to half the emigrants traveling to the Americas returned to Italy between 1905 and 1920. According to historian Donna Gabaccia, “The paese (town) had created its diaspora, but the diaspora in turn transformed the paese.” What was the impact of returning emigrants and their descendants on the home society?
The political dimensions of return are evident in the transnational movement of anarchists, as well as Risorgimento and later anti-fascist refugees. Religious belief and practice have long been a critical aspect of emigrant return, with remittances sent as donations pinned to the processed religious statue and post-World War II laborers visiting the hometown during the annual festa.
After World War II, Italian Americans journeyed to Italy increasingly as tourists and by the 1970s travel agencies began catering to this “ethnic roots” market. There, Italian Americans experienced the disparity between personal connections to an ancestral paese and the ever changing reality of the larger nation. In recent years, a growing number of descendants of Italian emigrants are reclaiming their Italian citizenship.
The imagined and actual “return” has historically been a source of creativity in all artistic genres, from comedian Eduardo “Farfariello” Migliaccio’s 1917 song “Pascale e'Turnato d’all’Italia” to author Helen Barolini’s 1979 novel Umbertina, to director Frank Ciota’s 2002 film Ciao America.
The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute’s second annual conference addresses the theme of “return” during its three-day event.
6:30–8:30 PM Welcome and Reception
Anthony Julian Tamburri
John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Queens College, CUNY
James Muyskens
Queens College, CUNY
Francesco Maria Talò
Consulate General of Italy in New York
9–9:30 AM Coffee and Pastries
Conference Room: Italian/American/Jewish/Israeli
Chair: Dawn Esposito, St. John’s University
Comparative Experiences from Different Parts of the Diaspora I
Cristina Bettin, Ben Gurion University
Comparative Experiences from Different Parts of the Diaspora II
Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Binghamton University, SUNY
You Want to be Americano?
Robert Zweig, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
Conference Room: Routes of Return
Chair: Donna Chirico, York College, CUNY
“Took a Bird to the Boot”: Hip Wop and the Digital Diasporic Consciousness
Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY
No Longer Innocents Abroad: Ethnic Tourism’s Influence on American Leisure Travel
Maria Lisella, journalist
Fuori in Italia: A Gay Grandson Encounters la madrepatria
George De Stefano, author
La Galleria: Language of Return
Chair: Maria Enrico, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
Returning with Standard Italian and the Question of Italian Linguistic Diversity
Christina Tortora, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Study Abroad Programs: Language and Identity as an Experience of Return
Elisabetta Convento and Laura Lenci
Writing on Water: The Non-existing Language of an Italian-American Would-be Intellectual
Peter Carravetta, Stony Brook University
Conference Room: Return Migration and the New Politics of Belonging in Italy
Chair: Christine Gambino, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY
Governing Diasporas: The Italian Case
Guido Tintori, FIERI, and Francesco Ragazzi, Science Po
Federico Ferrone, Michele Manzolini, and Francesco Ragazzi, directors
Film: Orizzonti e Frontiere (2007)
Ernesto Morales, director
La Galleria: The Textuality of No Return
Chair: Anthony Julian Tamburri, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY
Forms of Return as a Process of Creativity
Vincenzo Pascale, Rutgers University
On the Impossibility of Return
Paolo Giordano, University of Central Florida
Immigrant versus Emigrazione: A Tale of Laceration in
Tommaso Bordonaro’s La spartenza
Giulia Guarnieri, Bronx Community College, CUNY
Conference Room: Re/claiming Italian/European Citizenship
Chair: Robert Viscusi, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Why Italian Americans Should and Must Reclaim Italian Citizenship
Karen Tintori, author, and Lawrence S. Katz, attorney
Just Visiting: Issues Arising from Reclaiming Italian Citizenship
Lindsay A. Curcio, attorney
La Galleria: Canadian Voices
Chair: Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY
Maria Francesca LoDico, author
On Leave Takings and Monuments
Of Death and the Immigrant: A Journey
Conference Room: Absence and the Emotions of Separation across Time and Distance
Chair: Donna Gabaccia, University of Minnesota
Longing for Kin and Country: Family, Nostalgia, and Nation through the Practices and Processes of Long Distance Caregiving
Loretta Baldassar, University of Western Australia
When the Letter was the Only Tie to their Love: Exploring the Connections between Longings, Separation, and Imagination in Postwar Italian Migration to Canada
Sonia Cancian, University of Minnesota
Bridging Emotional Distance Through Television: The Montreal’s Teledomenica Experience
Bruno Ramirez, University of Montreal
Longing, Loss and Love among Rural Italian Migrants at Home and Abroad, 1880-1920
Linda Reeder, University of Missouri
Conference Room: Textual Returns: Celluloid and Paper
Chair: Mary Jo Bona, Stony Brook University, SUNY
Italian-American Persephone in a Sicilian Setting: Susan Caperna Lloyd’s No Pictures in My Grave (1992)
Theodora Patrona, Artistole Unviersity of Thessaloniki
The Poetics of Migration Houses: Return, Land, and Architecture in Camilleri’s Maruzza Musumeci
Teresa Fiore, California State University Long Beach/New York University
The Odyssey of Ideal: Lamerica/Litalia
Nicoletta Delon, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Conference Room: Religion, Politics, Commerce
Chair: Nancy Carnevale, Montclair University
The Soul of a Stranger: Italy, America, and Italian-American Protestants
Dennis Barone, Saint Joseph College
Italian Merchants and Consumption during the Age of Mass Italian Migration
Lizabeth Zanoni, University of Minnesota
The Political Dimension of Return Migration
Stefano Luconi, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
La Galleria: Metaphors of Return
Chair: George Guida, New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Fumetti as a Vehicle of Return to Italy
Gil Fagiani, The Italian American Writers Association
“We don’t have enough men to dance”: In Search of Our Music and Dance Roots
Celest DiPietropaolo, independent scholar
The Tenacity of Heritage: The Promise of Festival Foods and Parish Cookbooks as a Return to Italy
Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox, independent scholar
Conference Room: Memory and Imagining Home
Chair: Paolo Giordano, University of Central Florida
Memory, Nostalgia, Geography: Looking at the Homeland from a Distance
Patrizia La Trecchia, University of Florida
Imagining the Home Country: Intersecting Memories of Class, Generation, and Gender
Christa Wirth, Harvard University
Le Piemontesi in Argentina between Memories and Visits Home
Maddalena Tirabassi, Centro Altretalie
La Galleria: The Poetics of Return
Chair: Vincenzo Milione, Calandra Institute
Poets of Return: Emanuel Carnevali and Joseph Tusiani
Joanne Tangorra, High/Scope Education Research Foundation
Conference Room: Reclaiming/Reinventing
Chair: Edvige Giunta, New Jersey City University
Returning, Retaining, Reinventing the Homeland
Patricia D. Valenti, University of North Carolina
An Essay on Reclaiming, Reconnecting and Giving
Robert DiGiulio, Johnson State College
Presented by Matthew DiGiulio
“Bells to Saint Michael”: A Short Story
Tiziana Rinaldi Castro, author
La Galleria: Seeing and Performing Return
Chair: Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY
Observing Contemporary Italy as a Semi-Insider
Blaise Tobia, Drexel University
Return as Artistic Performance
LuLu LoLo, performance artist
4:30–5:45 PM
Conference Room: Ethnographic Approaches to Return
Chair: Anthony Julian Tamburri, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY
“Io mi considero tambien argentina”: Returning Emigrants and New Immigrants in Campania
Laura E. Ruberto, Berkeley City College
“When they all came home”: The Experience of Return Migration on the Amalfi Coast
Ailhlin Clark, Lancaster University
Between Italy and Argentina: Parents and Children’s Departures and Returns
Laura Gambi, independent scholar
All presentations are free and open to the public.
The Calandra Institute is a university institute under the aegis of Queens College.
