Friday, October 14

04-13 Inventing Italy from Its Edges

Friday, October 14, 8:30 am–10:00 am
Director 4

This live event will not be recorded.

Sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Section


Chair: Michele Segretario (University of California, Berkeley) and Luisa Del Giudice (Independent Scholar, Los Angeles)

8:30 am
Italian Radio Broadcasting in the U.S. during the Interwar Years
Michele Segretario (University of California, Berkeley)

9:00 am
Indigenized Italian Identity in the Postcolonial Somalia of the 1950s
Mariagrazia  De Luca (University of California, Berkeley)

9:30 am
Inventing Italian America through the Photograph
Lauren Bartone (University of California, Berkeley)

This panel employs ethnography, narrative study, visual analysis, and more to examine how notions of center and periphery fluctuated between Italy and its diaspora during the 20th century. From the tensions that emerged between Italian fascist radio propaganda and the process of Americanization promoted by the U.S government in the 1940s to the multifaceted and conflicting identity of Italians of Somalia in the post-World War II period, and photographic representations of Southern Italian immigrants and their children in the mid-20th century in the United States, we aim to cast light on how periphery-center narratives still impact today's transnational Italy.