Abstract
In this chapter the author summarizes the historiography on Italian-American women within the context of women's studies generally, while emphasizing potential connections between this research and topics of interest to many Italian-Americanists. As is true of immigration studies generally, surveys of Italian-American life — from scholarly reviews to more popular accounts — have often failed to incorporate women's experiences extensively. This reflects something other than the paucity of research on Italian immigrant women and their descendants. Literary studies of Italian-American women have focused on autobiography, oral history, and fiction for insight into women's authentic experiences and subjectivity. Scholars in cultural studies raise troubling questions about the existence of any such self, with its own authentic subjectivity. As the fields change, so will Italian-American women's studies as well.
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