Clarissa Clò
Clarissa Clò is Professor and Chair of the Department of European Studies, and Director of the Italian Program. Her research focuses on contemporary Italian cultural studies and her interests include migration and postcolonial studies, feminist and queer theory, literature, film, music, popular culture and transmedia storytelling. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Ácoma, Annali d’Italianistica, California Italian Studies, Diacritics, Diaspora, Forum Italicum, Italian Culture, Italica, Research in African Literatures, Transformations, The Italian American Review, and The Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies. She contributed to book collections such as The Cultures of Italian Migration (edited by Graziella Parati and Anthony J. Tamburri, 2011), Postcolonial Italy (edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, 2012), Nuovo Cinema Politico (edited by Giancarlo Lombardi and Christian Uva, 2016), Encounters with the Real in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema (edited by Loredana Di Martino and Pasquale Verdicchio, 2017), Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice (edited by Luca Caminati and James Leo Cahill, 2021). She has edited a special double issue of the journal Il lettore di provincia on Italian regional studies (123/124, 2005), and co-edited with Anita Angelone a special double issue of the journal Studies in Documentary Film entitled Other Visions: Italian Documentary Cinema as Counter-Discourse (5.2/5.3, 2011). She serves on the advisory board of the journal Italica and g/s/i and has served on the editorial board of Italica: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (2014-2019) and on the executive committee of the Modern Language Association’s Italian American Forum (2015-2020).
Address: Department of European Studies
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7704
Address: Department of European Studies
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7704
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Journal Articles by Clarissa Clò
L’articolo discute i romanzi Confetti for Gino e The Invisible Glass, ambientati uno a San Diego e l’altro a Bassano alla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. In entrambi, l’autore Lawrence Madalena tratta questioni di razza, genere, sessualità e nazionalità, ma nega che affinità tra membri di comunità diverse possano trasformarsi in relazioni stabili negli anni che precedono i movimenti per i diritti civili e gay. Tuttavia, il trattamento di tematiche controverse in un formato ambiguo e fecondo come quello del pulp offre un archivio inaspettato e alternativo, popular e transnazionale, in cui ricercare quegli aspetti queer che né in Italia né negli USA si vorrebbero associati agli italiani.
English
This article discusses the novels Confetti for Gino and The Invisible Glass set in San Diego and Bassano del Grappa respectively at the end of WWII. In both cases, the author, Lawrence Madalena, weaves issues of race, gender, sexuality and nationality through the narrative, but ultimately denies that affinities among members of different communities could yield stable relationships in the years preceding the civil rights and gay movements. Nonetheless, the expression of such taboo themes through a popular genre like pulp offers an unexpected archive, both alternative and transnational, where to look for queer aspects seldom associated with Italians either in Italy or the US.
By following some of the journeys and connections, both sonic and cinematic, figurative and material, ephemeral and embodied, improvised and performed, from underground clubs and parties in New York to countryside “balere” (dance halls) and discoteche in Italy, I consider how Italians at home and in the diaspora were not just passive consumers and imitators of disco music, but also active co-producers and co-creators. The Italian involvement in disco is represented by a vast cast of characters, from those literally playing them on screen, to those making and producing the tracks, to the many DJs on both sides of the Atlantic that promoted them, to all those dancing away in remote and more prominent locations. Looking and listening for such diasporic sonorities offers a distinctive way to examine the complexity of Italian identities where cultural journeys across the Atlantic often emphasize the complicated and contradictory construction of national communities.
Ideally, and perhaps idealistically, we wanted to engage students, colleagues and local communities in a transnational dialogue across continents on issues that are global, and which are as much about biopolitics and ethics as they are about poetics and aesthetics. Formerly the site of multiple European and American colonial and imperialist conquests, California is a state that has been traversed and transformed historically and physically by different waves of migration. As such, it offered each of us, through our respective geographical and cultural points of belonging, the opportunity to engage the work of Liberti, Segre, and Yimer from a variety of perspectives and refraction points.
We believe that a theoretical and aesthetic discussion of the films must be accompanied by a reflection on our locations, our academic work, and our pedagogical practices. Precisely because we welcomed our guests at both public and private institutions, with different missions, objectives, and audiences, we find it compelling to examine the various permutations and kinds of reception that these presentations produced. This essay, therefore also addresses the role that collaboration plays not only in organizing events of such magnitude and import, but also in providing pedagogical and scholarly advantages for us as intellectuals and for students who are the recipients of such practices. Our collaboration has forced us to consider, among other things, why broader academic exchanges such as ours do not happen more frequently, and to explore the material and intellectual obstacles that render such collaborations rare, not simply in Italian Studies, but in the humanities in general, across campuses and colleges.
Ever since its inception, the Italian nation has struggled to provide an integrated image of itself and its culture to its own citizens and to the rest of the world. This was the case after Unification as much as it was in the postwar period (Ascoli and Von Henneberg; Bouchard). In the present age of postmodern globalization, national unity continues to be subject to debate. Placed at the core of a variety of cultural practices, it also informs a recent set of documentary films about Emilia-Romagna and the Po Valley whose subject-matter and formal narrative structures intervene directly in the ongoing struggle to define the local, national and global nature of Italian identity. Indeed, documentaries, such as Gianni Celati’s Visioni di case che crollano (2003), Davide Ferrario’s Mondonuovo (2003), Giuseppe Bertolucci’s Segni particolari: appunti per un film sull’Emilia-Romagna (2003), and Nello Ferrieri and Raffaele Rago’s Mozambico dove va il cinema (2002), point to an unresolved crisis of postmodernity in Italian society and subvert a notion of identity based on territorial belonging. At the same time, these documentaries suggest a relational understanding of subject- and community-formation constructed through the encounter and negotiation with other cultures within and outside Italy. They do so by underscoring a number of elements that shed new light on the construction of Italy and Italians since the postwar period with respect to the country’s internal national divides (exemplified by the “Southern Question,” on the one hand, and by the separatist attacks of the Northern League, on the other hand) and in relation to the challenges put forth by the phenomenon of global migration which is forcing an expansion of cultural boundaries and a reflection on the foundations of local histories.
Posted by permission from Diaspora.
Book Chapters by Clarissa Clò
In a consciously self-reflexive effort, all three films star the directors themselves, Gustav and Luca, as protagonists. As in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Comizi d’amore (1964), his inquest on sex, in which the body of the homosexual poet was constantly on screen, in their documentaries Hofer and Ragazzi are also always on display, their bodies the markers of sameness and difference simultaneously, exposing the assumption and limit of the Italian heteronormative hegemonic order. By casting themselves and acting in front of the camera, in a calculated choice to embody the very issues they are addressing, the directors also challenge the presumed objectivity of the documentary genre emphasizing instead its subjective and performative aspects.
This essays articulates my intervention at the conference "Presente Imperfetto: eredità coloniali e immaginari razziali contemporanei" convened by Giulia Grechi and Viviana Gravano at the Casa della memoria in Rome, Nov. 27-28, 2014
Also published in Italian as Clarissa Clò. “Hip Pop all’italiana. L’immaginazione postcoloniale delle seconde generazioni.” L’Italia Postcoloniale. Ed. Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo. Firenze: Le Monnier-Mondadori Accademica. 2014. 249-264.
L’articolo discute i romanzi Confetti for Gino e The Invisible Glass, ambientati uno a San Diego e l’altro a Bassano alla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. In entrambi, l’autore Lawrence Madalena tratta questioni di razza, genere, sessualità e nazionalità, ma nega che affinità tra membri di comunità diverse possano trasformarsi in relazioni stabili negli anni che precedono i movimenti per i diritti civili e gay. Tuttavia, il trattamento di tematiche controverse in un formato ambiguo e fecondo come quello del pulp offre un archivio inaspettato e alternativo, popular e transnazionale, in cui ricercare quegli aspetti queer che né in Italia né negli USA si vorrebbero associati agli italiani.
English
This article discusses the novels Confetti for Gino and The Invisible Glass set in San Diego and Bassano del Grappa respectively at the end of WWII. In both cases, the author, Lawrence Madalena, weaves issues of race, gender, sexuality and nationality through the narrative, but ultimately denies that affinities among members of different communities could yield stable relationships in the years preceding the civil rights and gay movements. Nonetheless, the expression of such taboo themes through a popular genre like pulp offers an unexpected archive, both alternative and transnational, where to look for queer aspects seldom associated with Italians either in Italy or the US.
By following some of the journeys and connections, both sonic and cinematic, figurative and material, ephemeral and embodied, improvised and performed, from underground clubs and parties in New York to countryside “balere” (dance halls) and discoteche in Italy, I consider how Italians at home and in the diaspora were not just passive consumers and imitators of disco music, but also active co-producers and co-creators. The Italian involvement in disco is represented by a vast cast of characters, from those literally playing them on screen, to those making and producing the tracks, to the many DJs on both sides of the Atlantic that promoted them, to all those dancing away in remote and more prominent locations. Looking and listening for such diasporic sonorities offers a distinctive way to examine the complexity of Italian identities where cultural journeys across the Atlantic often emphasize the complicated and contradictory construction of national communities.
Ideally, and perhaps idealistically, we wanted to engage students, colleagues and local communities in a transnational dialogue across continents on issues that are global, and which are as much about biopolitics and ethics as they are about poetics and aesthetics. Formerly the site of multiple European and American colonial and imperialist conquests, California is a state that has been traversed and transformed historically and physically by different waves of migration. As such, it offered each of us, through our respective geographical and cultural points of belonging, the opportunity to engage the work of Liberti, Segre, and Yimer from a variety of perspectives and refraction points.
We believe that a theoretical and aesthetic discussion of the films must be accompanied by a reflection on our locations, our academic work, and our pedagogical practices. Precisely because we welcomed our guests at both public and private institutions, with different missions, objectives, and audiences, we find it compelling to examine the various permutations and kinds of reception that these presentations produced. This essay, therefore also addresses the role that collaboration plays not only in organizing events of such magnitude and import, but also in providing pedagogical and scholarly advantages for us as intellectuals and for students who are the recipients of such practices. Our collaboration has forced us to consider, among other things, why broader academic exchanges such as ours do not happen more frequently, and to explore the material and intellectual obstacles that render such collaborations rare, not simply in Italian Studies, but in the humanities in general, across campuses and colleges.
Ever since its inception, the Italian nation has struggled to provide an integrated image of itself and its culture to its own citizens and to the rest of the world. This was the case after Unification as much as it was in the postwar period (Ascoli and Von Henneberg; Bouchard). In the present age of postmodern globalization, national unity continues to be subject to debate. Placed at the core of a variety of cultural practices, it also informs a recent set of documentary films about Emilia-Romagna and the Po Valley whose subject-matter and formal narrative structures intervene directly in the ongoing struggle to define the local, national and global nature of Italian identity. Indeed, documentaries, such as Gianni Celati’s Visioni di case che crollano (2003), Davide Ferrario’s Mondonuovo (2003), Giuseppe Bertolucci’s Segni particolari: appunti per un film sull’Emilia-Romagna (2003), and Nello Ferrieri and Raffaele Rago’s Mozambico dove va il cinema (2002), point to an unresolved crisis of postmodernity in Italian society and subvert a notion of identity based on territorial belonging. At the same time, these documentaries suggest a relational understanding of subject- and community-formation constructed through the encounter and negotiation with other cultures within and outside Italy. They do so by underscoring a number of elements that shed new light on the construction of Italy and Italians since the postwar period with respect to the country’s internal national divides (exemplified by the “Southern Question,” on the one hand, and by the separatist attacks of the Northern League, on the other hand) and in relation to the challenges put forth by the phenomenon of global migration which is forcing an expansion of cultural boundaries and a reflection on the foundations of local histories.
Posted by permission from Diaspora.
In a consciously self-reflexive effort, all three films star the directors themselves, Gustav and Luca, as protagonists. As in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Comizi d’amore (1964), his inquest on sex, in which the body of the homosexual poet was constantly on screen, in their documentaries Hofer and Ragazzi are also always on display, their bodies the markers of sameness and difference simultaneously, exposing the assumption and limit of the Italian heteronormative hegemonic order. By casting themselves and acting in front of the camera, in a calculated choice to embody the very issues they are addressing, the directors also challenge the presumed objectivity of the documentary genre emphasizing instead its subjective and performative aspects.
This essays articulates my intervention at the conference "Presente Imperfetto: eredità coloniali e immaginari razziali contemporanei" convened by Giulia Grechi and Viviana Gravano at the Casa della memoria in Rome, Nov. 27-28, 2014
Also published in Italian as Clarissa Clò. “Hip Pop all’italiana. L’immaginazione postcoloniale delle seconde generazioni.” L’Italia Postcoloniale. Ed. Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo. Firenze: Le Monnier-Mondadori Accademica. 2014. 249-264.
Because of its very multimedia nature, this multifaceted cultural operation also allows us to consider the relevance of other recent female authored theatrical productions involving stories, songs and live shows and dealing with suppressed histories formed through migration and colonialism, such as stage actress Ivana Monti’s Mia cara madre and Italian Ethiopian writer Gabriella Ghermandi’s “All’ombra dei rami sfacciati carichi di fiori rossi vermiglio.” Like Mondine - Di madre in figlia, these two performances account for the role of diverse oral and aural traditions, memories and communities in the construction and negotiation of Italian identity in Italy and in the diaspora, “dagli Appennini alle risaie,” from the Po Valley to Africa and the Americas.
E. PALANDRI
Con questa dichiarazione tratta dal film documentario Il popolo alto, girato in anni recenti, Enrico Palandri ritorna sull'aspetto generazionale della sua narrativa e, in particolare, sul tema centrale della giovinezza, per sostenerne la sua capacità rivoluzionaria di scardinamento dei parametri rigidi, repressivi e conformisti della società.
Data l’importanza dell’aspetto generazionale nella riflessione critica di Palandri e più ancora dei giovani in quanto «ribelli», «pericolosi», «pieni di desideri» – e quindi potenzialmente ca- paci di cambiare, se non salvare, il mondo – in questo saggio mi concentrerò sull’analisi di tre romanzi che hanno come protagonisti dei «ragazzini» in tre distinte epoche che, pur con le dovute e necessarie differenze, sviluppano soluzioni poetiche, narratori e temi affini ed offrono un’interessante riflessione sulla cultura giovanile e sull’Italia che descrivono: Boccalone, apparso nel 1979, Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo di Enrico Brizzi, pubblicato nel 1994, e Verso la notte Bakonga di Jadelin Mabiala Gangbo, uscito nel 1999, ma appartenente alla decade successiva per i risvolti ancora molto attuali della vicenda narrata.
This essay reflects on how I plan to use some works by Italian American women writers in a course on “Europe and its ‘Others’” and "Italian diasporas.” The texts in question are Susanne Antonetta’ s Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, Pamela E. Barnett’s “Other People’s Food”—included in Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta’s The Milk of Almonds—and poems by Rosette Capotorto. My goal is to show how these texts insert themselves within a larger transnational framework, primarily Atlantic and Mediterranean, that debunks the notion of homogeneous and separate nations, communities, and movements, including feminism, and insists on the interconnectedness, interdependence, and inequalities among and between the local and the global, the personal and the political, the first and other worlds, us and them.
print for several years.
There is little doubt that the documentary film in Italy since the new millennium constitutes some of the most daring cinematic work being produced there today, maybe because in the face of austere budgets and other adversities on many fronts (from production to distribution and circulation), it has the least to lose and often makes the best use of limited resources.
The present double-issue of Studies in Documentary Film is an attempt to assess this recent movement in Italian cinema, and brings together scholars from both the Italian and English-speaking traditions.
Con il termine «spaesamenti» si voleva indicare, in senso generale, un nutrito e variegato corpus di produzioni culturali emiliano-romagnole – dalla letteratura al cinema, dal teatro alla musica, fino alla fotografia e alle arti figurative – che negli ultimi decenni hanno messo al centro della loro pratica di lavoro la de-familiarizzazione e il disorientamento come processi di conoscenza attraverso i quali avvicinarsi alla realtà locale della pianura padana (o allontanarsene per poi tornare) con occhi nuovi e accostamenti solo apparentemente inconsueti che aiutano a meglio comprendere la straordinaria complessità della nostra società moderna. Si partiva quindi dall’idea di analizzare lo «spaesamento» adottato da tanti autori padani come strategia epistemica: la necessità di intendere in «altro» modo il proprio contesto familiare, il proprio «paese», per capire diversamente ciò che l’abitudine, la consuetudine, la smemoratezza o il revisionismo avevano contribuito a rendere «normale» e scontato, assopendo così la capacità critica di una cultura di ripensarsi, mettersi in discussione e interrogarsi sul proprio percorso.
Tra i numerosi documentari spiccano Materiale Resistente (1995, co-diretto assieme a Davide Ferrario), La memoria inquieta (1995), Volare (1998), Una questione privata: vita di Beppe Fenoglio (1998), Provini per un massacro (2000), Alice è in Paradiso (2002) e Sono stati loro: 48 ore a Novi Ligure (2003). Chiesa ha pubblicato inoltre libri di cinema e musica, ha scritto per diverse testate giornalistiche ed è stato redattore della rivista musicale Rumore.
Questa intervista si è svolta il 16 aprile 2005 a Chapel Hill, NC, dove il regista era stato invitato a presentare la prima americana di Lavorare con lentezza e a partecipare alla venticinquesima edizione della conferenza dell’American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS). Ulteriori scambi, qui riportati, tra Guido Chiesa e Clarissa Clò si sono tenuti tramite corrispondenza elettronica durante l’autunno del 2005.
Questa intervista è stata realizzata il 24 dicembre 2002 a Cerreto Alpi.
Questa intervista si è svolta a Los Angeles il 19 agosto 2005 in occasione della tournée estiva nordamericana del gruppo.
Al momento dell'intervista la band era composta da quattro elementi, tre donne e un uomo: Lady Jessica Lombardi, polistrumentista (piva emiliana, bodhran, flauto, basso elettrico, cori), Medhin Paolos, DJ italo-eritrea (sintetizzatore, elettronica, campionamenti, cori), Silvia Orlandi, in arte Fiamma (voce), ora sostituita da Roberta Carrieri, e Alberto Cottica (fisarmonica, pianoforte, chitarra) ex fisarmonicista e co-fondatore dei Modena City Ramblers.
March 5, 2019, San Diego State University
Italian-Ethiopian author and performer Gabriella Ghermandi will discuss her multifaceted work as writer, singer and storyteller. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Queen of Flowers and Pearls, a marvelous voyage in time and space intertwining multiple stories of resistance from the age of Italian colonialism to contemporary migrations. Originally published in Italian in 2007, it was translated in English in 2015 and in Amharic in 2017.
Gabriella Ghermandi was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, her mother's land, and lived there until the late 1970s when she was forced to relocate in Bologna, Italy, her father's hometown, where she still lives. She credits storytelling and live performance with the ability to reach diverse audiences and foster mutual empathy. She is also the creator and lead singer of The Atse Tewodros Project, an artistic collaboration between Ethiopian and Italian musicians.
Co-sponsored with the Italian Program, Circolo Italiano, Department of Africana Studies, Department of Women's Studies, Common Experience: Time, Interdisciplinary Human Rights Initiative, the College of Arts and Letters
February 26, 2019, San Diego State University
Sponsored by the Italian Studies Program and the Department of European Studies
Andrea Righi is Associate Professor of Italian at Miami University of Ohio. He is the co-author with Cesare Casarino of Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), and the author of Italian Reactionary Thought and Critical Theory: An Inquiry into Savage Modernities (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) and Biopolitics and Social Change in Italy: From Gramsci to Pasolini to Negri (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).
Hi new book under review is entitled The Other of Digitality: The Sacrificial Economy of Neoliberalism. He holds a PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell University and a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Bologna.
February 26, 2019, San Diego State University
Co-sponsored by the Italian and European Studies Programs, the Departments of European Studies and Women's Studies
Andrea Righi is Associate Professor of Italian at Miami University of Ohio. He is the co-author with Cesare Casarino of Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), and the author of Italian Reactionary Thought and Critical Theory: An Inquiry into Savage Modernities (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) and Biopolitics and Social Change in Italy: From Gramsci to Pasolini to Negri (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).
Hi new book under review is entitled The Other of Digitality: The Sacrificial Economy of Neoliberalism. He holds a PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell University and a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Bologna.
Ibitocho Sehounbiatou (Ibi) took pictures and filmed her life in Italy for over 10 years. Inspired by Ibi's images, creativity and energy, the film is based on the self-narration, direct and spontaneous, made by an immigrant woman telling about herself and about her Europe to her sons in Africa.
Ibi was born in Benin in 1960. In 2000 she decided to take a big risk in order to give her three children a better future. She left them with her mother and accepted to transport some drug from Nigeria to Italy – but she didn’t succeed. She spent three years in jail in Naples. Once released she stayed in Italy, unable to see her children and her mother for 15 years. In Italy, she became a photographer and started to film her life in order to make them understand what it was like. She described her life and her house in Castel Volturno, where she lived with her new companion, Salami, and Italy where she tried to get her dignity and hope back. This film was made starting from the images Ibi shot.
Andrea Segre returns to SDSU with a powerful new documentary. Segre is an award-winning director of films and documentaries for cinema and television. His filmmaking is concerned primarily with issues of migration and human rights. Among his documentaries are South of Lampedusa (2006), Like A Man on Earth (2008), and Closed Sea (2012). His feature films include Shun Li and the Poet (2011), First Snowfall (2013) and The Order of Things (2017). He is also a researcher in Sociology of Communication and the founder of the association ZaLab, which develops collaborative productions and participatory video workshops.
Sponsored by the Italian Studies Program, the Circolo italiano, Le Cercle Français, the Department of European Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, the Department of Women’s Studies, the College of Arts and Letters, and the San Diego Italian Film Festival.
October 4, 2018. San Diego State University
Co-sponsored by the Italian Program and the San Diego Italian Film Festival
Respondent: Norma Bouchard (Dean, College of Arts and Letters, SDSU)
April 2, 2018, San Diego State University
Co-sponsored by the Italian Studies Program, The Department of European Studies, MALAS (Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences), and the Common Experience
Adapted from Fiore’s recent book Pre-occupied Spaces (Fordham UP 2017), this lecture poses Italy as a unique laboratory to rethink national belonging and participation at large in our era of massive demographic mobility. Italy's formation and development are analyzed on a transnational map that spans the Mediterranean and the Americas through the interrogation of cultural texts addressing travel and living spaces. Special attention will be devoted to memoirs and films that engage the “passage” across the Atlantic Ocean and the Channel of Sicily by interlocking stories of colonialism, slavery, and migration from/to Italy in complex and creative ways. By demonstrating how contemporary demographic movement in Italy today is preoccupied by its past emigration and imperialism, the lecture aims at stressing commonalities and dispelling the preoccupations that are increasingly accompanying discussions about migrants in the European Union as well as at the global level. The operation of re-mapping proposed by the lecture is also an occasion to rethink the discipline of Italian Studies in a dynamic way, using the country’s multiple forms of mobility to identify spaces of cross-pollination within a transnational and translingual vision.
Teresa Fiore is the Theresa and Lawrence R. Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University, New Jersey, USA. The recipient of several fellowships (De Bosis, Rockefeller, and Fulbright), she was Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University, NYU, and Rutgers University. She is the author of Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy's Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (May 2017) and the editor of the 2006 issue of Quaderni del ‘900, devoted to John Fante. Her numerous articles on migration to/from Italy linked to 20th- and 21st-century Italian literature and cinema have been published in Italian, English and Spanish in both journals (Bollettino d’italianistica, Annali d’Italianistica, Studi italiani, El hilo de la fabula, Diaspora, Zibaldone, Journal of Italian Media and Cinema Studies) and edited collections (Postcolonial Italy; Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture; The Cultures of Italian Migration). Recent publications include two articles on the new migration flows from Italy to the U.S. in edited volumes on Italian emigration to the U.S. by Routledge and the University of Illinois Press. She coordinates a regular program of cultural events and educational initiatives on campus that focus on the circulation of people, ideas, products from/to Italy: montclair.edu/inserra
March 12, 2018, San Diego State University
Co-sponsored by the SDSU Italian Program, The Department of European Studies and MALAS (Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences)
This discussion-based presentation probes the complex legacy of Frank Sinatra in the context of current political and cultural dissension. What is the resonance of Sinatra’s performance in the WWII-era propaganda film The House I Live In, a paean to anti-bigotry and national unity, in our own time of deep division over issues of race, immigration, and citizenship? How do we make sense of Sinatra’s work along edges and borders (masculinity/femininity, white/black, ethnic outsider/celebrity insider, Democrat/Republican) in the wake of #blacklivesmatter, #metoo, and other roiling currents of the moment? If Frank Sinatra is still in our house, what tune is he singing to us?
John Gennari is Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. He is an American Studies-trained cultural historian with specializations in jazz and popular music, race and ethnicity, Italian American culture, food, sports, and cultural criticism. He is the author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), a study of black/Italian cultural intersections in music, film, sports, and foodways. His earlier book, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006), was awarded the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture. Gennari has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.
Date: March 6, 2018; 11-12:30, DH Space, SDSU Love Library
Sponsors: Co-sponsored by the Circolo italiano with SSF funds, the Italian Studies Program, and the Department of European Studies.
Event #2: A Cross-Cultural Conversation About Hip Hop
A discussion about the local and transnational influence of hip hop featuring Italian-Egyptian rapper Amir Issaa, San Diegan rapper Parker Edison and Italian talent promoter Flavio Zocchi.
Date: March 6, 2018, 4pm, SDSU Love Library room 430
Sponsors: Co-sponsored by the Circolo italiano with SSF funds, the Italian Studies Program, and the Department of European Studies.
Event #3: Film screening of Scialla (Easy, 2011), in Italian with English subtitles.
A comedy set in Rome about a rebellious teenager and his father. The film will be introduced by Italian-Egyptian rapper Amir Issaa, author of its award-winning soundtrack, and will be followed by a Q&A.
March 8, 2018, 7:30pm, SDSU Little Theatre
Co-sponsored by the Circolo italiano with SSF funds, the Italian Studies Program, the Department of European Studies, and the San Diego Italian Film Festival.
December 12, 2017.
Organized by the SDSU Italian Program and the Circolo Italiano.
October 17, 2017. San Diego State University.
Organized by the Italian program and the Circolo Italiano.
Thursday April 6, 2017, Love Library 430-431, 12-4pm, San Diego State University
12-2pm: student-led “freestyle” session/showcase
2-3:15pm: keynote roundtable session with guest speakers Dr. Joseph Sciorra, (Queen’s College, CUNY), Dr. Jon I. Gil, (CSULB), Medhin Paolos (artist from Milan, Italy), and Parker Edison (rapper from San Diego).
3:15-4pm: reception
On display during the events: the Italian Hip Hop and Rock en Español collections from the library archives
Co-organized by Dr. Clarissa Clò (Italian and European Studies), Dr. Emily Hicks, (Chicano/a Studies), and Dr. Roy Whitaker (Religious Studies)
Co-sponsored by The Common Experience, The Italian Studies Program, The Departments of European Studies, Religious Studies, Chicana/o Studies, The Circolo Italiano, The Center for European Studies, The Center for Latin American Studies and SDSU Arts Alive.
Affiliated student events sponsored by AS and SSF:
Percival Everett lecture, Monday April 3rd. Theater at Student Union. 4pm.
One Be Lo lecture, Thursday April 6th. Montezuma Hall, 4:30-5:30pm.
GZA lecture, Tuesday April 11th. Montezuma Hall, 11am-1pm.
BIOS
Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (City University of New York). He researches and publishes on vernacular culture, including religious practices, cultural landscapes, and popular music, among other topics. He is the author of Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City (University of Tennessee Press, 2015) and the co-editor of many volumes, including Neapolitan Postcards: The Canzone Napolitana as Transnational Subject (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), Reframing Italian America: Historical Photographs and Immigrant Representations (John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 2015), Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora (University of Mississippi Press, 2014). From 1998 to 2012, Sciorra managed the website www.italianrap.com, an English language site dedicated to Italian hip hop. In 2014 he donated part of his Italian hip hop collection to San Diego State University’s Special Collections.
Jon Ivan Gill (M.Th. Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University) is a lecturer at CSU-Long Beach. He is a scholar of religious studies, metaphysics, cultural studies, aesthetics, and philosophy. His staunch support of a truly philosophical and theological trans-disciplinary discourse involves the inclusion of everything from aesthetic atheism and religious pluralism to subversive use of the arts. He pens his own lyrics and poetry, raps and performs hip hop under the moniker Gilhead7. For more information, see www.jonivangill.com .
Medhin Paolos is a filmmaker, photographer, musician and activist based in Milan, Italy. Her first film Asmarina (2015), which she co-directed with Alan Maglio, depicts the presence of the habesha community in the city of Milan through the collective memories of the community recorded in personal archives through photograph, music and stories. For ten years (1999-2009) Paolos was part of the folk-electronic band Fiamma Fumana. She is the co-founder of the Milano chapter of Rete G2 (Second Generation Network), a national organization that promotes the human and civic rights of children of immigrant in Italy. Currently, she is conceptualizing an educational platform for bringing forth a plurality voices, histories, and cultures to the forefront through media artistic interventions.
Parker Edison considers himself a hustler -- more in line with Too Short than Tony Montana. But even though he raps, directs music videos and lectures at universities, that persona is who he identifies most with. At a time when many artists clog Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines with incessant, ALL CAPS self-promotion, Parker lays in the cut, quietly rebirthing the “cool.” It’s the same type of cool that Miles Davis fathered in 1957. Parkers name and music are already being passed around like San Diego’s best kept secret. But soon, everyone will be in on that secret too.
12-2pm: student-led “freestyle” session/showcase
2-3:15pm: keynote roundtable session with guest speakers Dr. Joseph Sciorra, (Queen’s College, CUNY), Dr. Jon I. Gil, (CSULB), Medhin Paolos (artist from Milan, Italy), and Parker Edison (rapper from San Diego).
3:15-4pm: reception
On display during the events: the Italian Hip Hop and Rock en Español collections from the library archives
Co-organized by Dr. Clarissa Clò (Italian and European Studies), Dr. Emily Hicks, (Chicano/a Studies), and Dr. Roy Whitaker (Religious Studies)
Co-sponsored by The Common Experience, The Italian Studies Program, The Departments of European Studies, Religious Studies, Chicana/o Studies,
The Circolo Italiano, The Center for European Studies, The Center for Latin American Studies and SDSU Arts Alive.
BIOS
Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (City University of New York). He researches and publishes on vernacular culture, including religious practices, cultural landscapes, and popular music, among other topics. He is the author of Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City (University of Tennessee Press, 2015) and the co-editor of many volumes, including Neapolitan Postcards: The Canzone Napolitana as Transnational Subject (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), Reframing Italian America: Historical Photographs and Immigrant Representations (John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 2015), Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora (University of Mississippi Press, 2014). From 1998 to 2012, Sciorra managed the website www.italianrap.com, an English language site dedicated to Italian hip hop. In 2014 he donated part of his Italian hip hop collection to San Diego State University’s Special Collections.
Jon Ivan Gill (M.Th. Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University) is a lecturer at CSU-Long Beach. He is a scholar of religious studies, metaphysics, cultural studies, aesthetics, and philosophy. His staunch support of a truly philosophical and theological trans-disciplinary discourse involves the inclusion of everything from aesthetic atheism and religious pluralism to subversive use of the arts. He pens his own lyrics and poetry, raps and performs hip hop under the moniker Gilhead7. For more information, see www.jonivangill.com .
Medhin Paolos is a filmmaker, photographer, musician and activist based in Milan, Italy. Her first film Asmarina (2015), which she co-directed with Alan Maglio, depicts the presence of the habesha community in the city of Milan through the collective memories of the community recorded in personal archives through photograph, music and stories. For ten years (1999-2009) Paolos was part of the folk-electronic band Fiamma Fumana. She is the co-founder of the Milano chapter of Rete G2 (Second Generation Network), a national organization that promotes the human and civic rights of children of immigrant in Italy. Currently, she is conceptualizing an educational platform for bringing forth a plurality voices, histories, and cultures to the forefront through media artistic interventions.
Parker Edison considers himself a hustler -- more in line with Too Short than Tony Montana. But even though he raps, directs music videos and lectures at universities, that persona is who he identifies most with. At a time when many artists clog Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines with incessant, ALL CAPS self-promotion, Parker lays in the cut, quietly rebirthing the “cool.” It’s the same type of cool that Miles Davis fathered in 1957. Parkers name and music are already being passed around like San Diego’s best kept secret. But soon, everyone will be in on that secret too.
Asmarina (2015) is a film about the Eritrean/Ethiopian community in Milan, Italy, co-directed by Medhin Paolos and Alan Maglio.
Medhin Paolos is a filmmaker, photographer, musician and activist. Her first film Asmarina (2015), which she co-directed with Alan Maglio, depicts the presence of the habesha community in the city of Milan through the collective memories of the community recorded in personal archives through photograph, music and stories. For ten years (1999-2009) Paolos was part of the folk-electronic band Fiamma Fumana. Paolos is the co- founder of the Milano chapter of Rete G2 (Second Generation Network), a national organization that promotes the human and civic rights of children of immigrant in Italy. Currently, she is conceptualizing an educational platform for bringing forth a plurality voices, histories, and cultures to the forefront
through media artistic interventions.
"Blaxploitalian" is a documentary about 100 Years of Blackness inItalian cinema directed by Fred Kuwornu.
Fred Kuwornu is an activist-producer-writer-director. He was born and raised in Italy and is now based in Brooklyn. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Mass Media, from the University of Bologna. As a teenager, he started his career as a DJ and Producer. Later, he moved to Rome where he began working as a TV show writer for RAI public television.
After his experience, working with the production crew of Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna”, Fred decided to research the unknown story of the 92nd Infantry “Buffalo Soldiers” Division, an African American segregated combat unit, which fought in Europe during WW II. He produced and directed the Award-winning documentary Inside Buffalo which was screened at the Pentagon, and the Library of Congress.
In 2012, he released the documentary 18 IUS SOLI which looks at questions of citizenship denied for the one million children of immigrants born and raised in Italy but are not yet Italian citizens.
He is the founder of the Association Diversity Italia promoting the importance of racial and ethnic diversity in Italy and Europe using film and other art forms as tools for building a more inclusive society.
December 13, 2016. San Diego State University.
Organized by the SDSU Italian Program and the Circolo italiano.
October 20, 2016, 6-8pm.
Organizers: Mounah Abdel-Samad (School of Public Affairs), Clarissa Clò (Italian and European Studies), Kellie Quinn (School of Communication)
Sponsors: The Common Experience, The College of Arts and Letters, The Circolo italiano, The School of Public Affairs, SDSU Arts Alive.
Co-sponsors: The Center for Arabic and Islamic Studies, The Department of European Studies, ISCOR, The Italian Studies Program
Amara Lakhous was born in Algeria in 1970. He moved to Italy in 1995. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and another in cultural anthropology from the University of Rome, La Sapienza where he completed a Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Living Islam as a Minority.” He is the author of five novels, three of which were written in both Arabic and Italian. His best known works are the much acclaimed Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), Divorce Islamic Style (2012), A Dispute over an Very Italian Piglet (2014). His last novel, The Prank of the Good Little Virgin in Via Ormea, came out in Italian in 2014 and published in English by Europa Editions in May 2016.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781683933144/Contemporary-Italian-Diversity-in-Critical-and-Fictional-Narratives