Thursday, October 13, 2:30 pm–4:30 pm
Director 4
This live event will not be recorded.
Sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Section
Chair: Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College)
2:30 pm
From Auto-Ethnography to Global Politics: A Personal Journey through the Italian Diaspora
Luisa Del Giudice (Independent Scholar, Los Angeles)
3:00 pm
Migration, Cultural Memory, and a Scholarship of Praxis
Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College)
3:30 pm
The Cultural Politics of the Presepio: Autoethnography, Artistry, and Protest from the Italian American Imaginarium
Joseph Sciorra (Queens College, City University of New York)
4:00 pm
optional discussion time
In this panel three scholars working on aspects of ethnography, oral history, and material culture discuss their individual work as it concerns the cultural politics of transnational migrations to and from Italy. The presenters offer self-reflections on their community-based scholarship conducted at the intersect of local, national, and transnational contexts as specifically activist acts highlighting and problematizing Italian identities that address contemporary concerns of social inequities surrounding increasingly policed and surveilled environments. Together these papers offer personal and scholarly insights into how ideological perspectives inform the work of folkloristics in the intimate praxis of ethnography, collective projects, and creativity.