The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021

Abstract

My introduction to the American Italian Historical Association (AIHA) started with a conversation with John Paul Russo, professor and chair, Department of Classics, the University of Miami, in 2003. As a graduate student in the English Department, I embarked on a quest to finalize my dissertation topic. Russo recommended that I read Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997), which I did. The text changed my way of thinking about contemporary American literature. Over several months of talking with Russo and Robert Casillo, I settled on an interdisciplinary theme of waste in fiction, film, and poetry. My goal was to select notable Italian Americans’ texts and films to analyze within the lens of waste in twentieth-century cinema and literature. I opted to focus on DeLillo's mega-novel and Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006). Unable to decide on an Italian American poet to complement DeLillo and Scorsese's works, I chose A. R. Ammons's book-length poem, Garbage (1993). At the time, Casillo was working on Gangster Priest: The Italian American Cinema of Martin Scorsese (2006), and Russo was completing The Future without a Past: The Humanities in a Technological Society, which included a seminal chapter “Don DeLillo: Ethnicity, Religion, and the Critique of Technology” (2005, 211–42). Their work on Italian American filmmakers and authors demonstrated how to incorporate one's interest with one's research.In 2007, I traveled across the country to a place I had never visited, Denver, Colorado, to join Russo at a professional conference and learn more about Italian American studies and, hopefully, about my own heritage. I entered the hotel elevator alone, having just finished a phone call with Russo; I learned that he had to cancel his travels at the last minute. I was crestfallen but determined to follow Russo's advice and seek out Fred L. Gardaphé and Anthony Julian Tamburri. Coincidentally, as the elevator door opened, Gardaphé and Tamburri walked into this impressionable learner's path and altered his trajectory. They introduced me, a young graduate student, to Rudolph “Rudy” J. Vecoli and other mentees: Ilaria Serra and Chiara Mazzucchelli. As the weekend progressed, I realized what I had been missing not having lived in a robust Italian American community or previous exposure to intellectual conversations of Italian American heritage with peers. Intrigued with the realization that Italian American studies could be combined into current professional and research interests, as a new PhD, I entered academe and followed Casillo's, Gardaphé’s, Russo's, and Tamburri's example. Inspired, almost immediately, I took on my first leadership role in the organization whose conference changed my perception of what it meant to be Italian American: the American Italian Historical Association (AIHA).Thus, my involvement with the AIHA started with being elected as an Executive Council (EC) member, becoming the secretary for two terms, and finally running for president. During my tenure in the organization, I have witnessed the name change from the American Italian Historical Association to the Italian American Studies Association and attended each annual conference and our two international symposia. During my time on the EC, Alexandra de Luise completed two terms as curator and then secretary. Currently, in 2021, she is vice president. Our story begins in the following pages, first with the movement to change the organization's name to the various domestic and international meetings. We include two appendices, which may serve to continue as living documents. Appendix A consists of the officers from 1967 through the present, while appendix B lists the conference proceedings (1968–2017). Alexandra and I hope that future officers write the next installment of our association's history.Because the idea to change the association's name started before my involvement, Alexandra de Luise and I agreed to find the best member to speak on the subject: Fred L. Gardaphé. In an email exchange, he talked at length about the questions colleagues and friends would ask: What was an American Italian? They wanted to know when we all used Italian American in our discussions. Secondly, what was a scholar of literature doing in a historical association? At this time, other groups were being formed and referring to themselves as Mexican American Studies Association, Asian American, Polish American, and so forth. Gardaphé, as a member of the American Studies Association, thought that it would be appropriate if we evolved as a scholarly association that reflected what was going on throughout the field of ethnic studies. I simply thought that we should join the ethnic studies masses with a name that would reflect the growing diversity of the scholars in AIHA. Since I was the President, I couldn't put forth a motion in a meeting unless I temporarily relinquished my presidency to introduce the motion for a name change. To that end, I asked John Mitrano, the then youngest member of the Executive Council, to make the motion. He did, and after it was seconded, we went into a long and tiring discussion of the pros and cons of changing the name of an organization that had existed for over 34 years. After a long and heated discussion that included accusations of heresy and youthful illusions, the EC voted it down. Thus, it would not be put to the vote by the Association's members. (Fred L. Gardaphé, email to Alan J. Gravano, February 2, 2021)Gardaphé contextualized the 1997 events with even more detail: “This all happened at the annual meeting in San Francisco, and when I gave the President's address, I started with, ‘How old do you have to be to be an adult in this organization? Why was I elected President if I wasn't trusted to do what's best for the organization?’ I went on to report on the discussion. After I stated the results of the EC vote, I promptly resigned.” Gardaphé explained the resolution of the matter: “The compromise to me retracting my resignation was an agreement to put it to a vote of the membership through a national ballot.” The association's name change ultimately failed because of some maneuvering by those swayed to vote a certain way. The next time it was put to another membership vote, most of those who voted against it were no longer members.On May 14, 2011, at the annual spring meeting of the Executive Council, Fred Gardaphé introduced the motion that the association change the name from AIHA to the Italian American Studies Association. The AIHA Executive Council voted, and the proposal to put the name change up to a members’ vote passed unanimously at that spring meeting. The EC publicized this information with the membership and prepared an electronic vote later that summer. At the Tampa conference meeting on October 20, 2011, the EC reviewed the results. Seventy-eight percent of the membership voted in favor of the name change; the 2012 conference was the first under the new name (Fred L. Gardaphé, email to Alan J. Gravano, February 2, 2021).Some of the background Fred Gardaphé alludes to can be found in three seminal works on the AIHA's history. They include Frank J. Cavaioli's “The American Italian Historical Association: Twenty Years Later, 1966–1986” (1989, 23–40) and The American Italian Historical Association at the Millennium (2000) as well as Jerome Krase's “The American Italian Historical Association: A View from the Bridge” (2008, 23–40). Each presents the establishment of the association at crucial moments. In most definite terms by its founders, the AIHA was made up predominantly of historians and sociologists, whose goal was to preserve and celebrate the past. Their approach required documented proof, what Cavaioli called “objective knowledge.” It coincided with the growth at this same time of archives, institutes, and centers housing Italian American primary material (e.g., the Center for Migration Studies, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, the Balch Institute in Philadelphia, and the Immigration History Research Center in Minnesota). Interdisciplinary studies, creative writing, or literature did not figure in until well later.Beginning with Jerome Krase's presidency (1993–96) to the present, there has been a shift in members’ academic disciplines away from the social sciences, such as history, to literature and communications (Krase 2008). In fact, for all the years I have attended the annual conferences (2007-present), most of the attendees have been literary and film scholars with a devoted creative writing contingent. In addition to changes in discipline, I observed the election of the AIHA's first female president, Mary Jo Bona (2007–08), and then Josephine Gattuso Hendin (2009–10). Out of sixteen presidents, only two have been women.This section highlights the various conferences and symposia that Alexandra de Luise and I attended, including keynote speakers, conference presentations, and other memorable moments. Joseph V. Ricapito (1933–2018) spearheaded the push for the 42nd annual conference of the American Italian Historical Association, Southern Exposures: Locations and Relocations in Italian Culture, hosted by Louisiana State University, October 29 through November 1, 2009. Presentations that stick with me still include John Gennari's “Killer Vees’ Whistling Dixie: Jim Valvano, Dick Vitale, and ACC Basketball as Ethnic Schicht,” Tamburri's “Michael Corleone's Tie: Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and the Rhetoric of Antinomy,” Courtney J. Ruffner's “Images of Italian American Colonization,” Josephine Gattuso Hendin's “Avant-Garde/Experimental Italian American Writing,” and John Lowe's keynote address “Tutto é Burla: Humor and Identity in Italian American Culture.”Popular Italian American writer Adriana Trigiani inaugurated the 43rd annual conference, Advocacy and Activism: Italian Heritage and Cultural Change, at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, November 11–13, 2010. Gerald J. Meyer gave a moving keynote address titled “Fiorello La Guardia (1882–1947), Leonard Covello (1887–1982), and Vito Marcantonio (1902–1954): Collaborators for Progress.” Two sessions that I attended included Paul Giaimo's “The Evolution of Don DeLillo's Italian Americans” and Bénédicte Deschamps's “‘Where she used to be a servant, let her now be a partner’: Arturo Giovannitti and the ‘Woman Question.’” Meanwhile, Maria Mazziotti Gillan organized a panel, “Reassessing the Work of Diane di Prima” with Peter Covino, Daniela Gioseffi, and Rachel Guido de Vries.Warmer weather awaited us in the beautiful city of Tampa, Florida, with accommodations near the water for seventy-one participants at the 44th annual conference on October 20–22, 2011, whose theme was Italian American Body Politics: Private Lives and the Public Sphere. We kicked off the conference with a keynote address from Gary Mormino: “From Dago Hill to Ybor City: Reflections of an Immigrant Historian.” Presentations that year included Perri Giovannucci's “The Italian Presence in Modern Egypt,” Samuele F. S. Pardini's “The Dago (Bruce Springsteen) and the Darkie (Clarence Clemons), or Love and Death on the American Stage,” Denise Scannell-Guida's “Amanda Knox and the Bella Figura: Performing a Guilty Verdict,” Danielle Battisti's “Becoming Americans: Postwar Italian American Consumer Culture, Anti-Communism, and Immigration Reform,” and Laurie and Michael Buonanno's “Italian-American Political Leadership in the Tea Party Era: Conservative, Progressive, Reactionary?” Paul Giaimo used emerging communication technology to Skype Rebecca Rey from Australia for the roundtable “All Things DeLillo: The Author in the Age of Twenty-First Century White Ethnics.”We were back in New York but at a different venue when the inaugural Italian American Studies Association annual conference was hosted by Hofstra University, November 29 through December 1, 2012, with a theme of E Pluribus: What Is Italian America? The IASA dedicated the event to the recently deceased Executive Council member Paul S. Giaimo. I met Paul at my first conference in Denver (2007). We went out for food and drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe and discussed our love of Don DeLillo. We bonded that night, and over the next several years, he organized panels on DeLillo, and we supported each other in our research endeavors. He had introduced me to Rebecca Rey, who was working on DeLillo's plays, and in 2011, he published Appreciating Don DeLillo: The Moral Force of a Writer's Work (New York: Praeger, 2011). One other commonality besides our keen interest in DeLillo was that he worked at a community college. We spoke at length about the required heavy teaching load and the commitment to balance his family life (Sarah, his wife, and two children Clare and Michael) with teaching and scholarship. Although I knew that Paul's health was precarious, he never shared with me that he was battling cancer. Paul died on June 8, 2012; he was only 50 years old.At the Hofstra conference, George Guida organized “A Tribute to IASA's Founders” and introduced Salvatore J. LaGumina, who delivered remarks on the association's founding and first years of life as the American Italian Historical Association. Guida, as IASA representative, presented LaGumina with an award commemorating his decades of dedicated service. Following the concurrent sessions, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, poet, and plenary speaker Richard Vetere addressed the question “What is an Italian American Writer?” The day concluded with Donna Gabaccia's provocative keynote “Italian American Studies: A Little History,” which analyzed the disciplinary content of the 2012 IASA sessions and argued for an increase in the number of interdisciplinary sessions. Some session highlights consisted of Maria Protti's “Philip Lamantia and His Embrace of Italian-American Imagery: The Path of a Surrealistic Mystic Poet,” William Connell's “Who's Afraid of Columbus,” Vera Lentini's “The Italian Tarantella,” Michele Fazio's “Woody Guthrie's Sicilian Sojourn: Reflections of Folk Life on the Road from Palermo to Plymouth,” and Roseanne Giannini Quinn's “Ethnicity this Way: From Connie Francis to Lady Gaga and the Embodied Legacy of Italian American Female Performance.” Robert Viscusi read excerpts from his 2009 epic poem, Ellis Island. Dawn Esposito chaired the session “Lavender Paesans: Italian American Gay and Lesbian Identities” with Michael Carosone, Joseph Anthony LoGiudice, and Vittoria repetto. Overall, the 2012 conference had forty sessions and ninety participants. The annual event brought its mission of sharing, enriching, and promulgating Italian American history and culture to an area with one of the largest Italian American populations in the US.The 46th annual conference in New Orleans, Italian American Identity Politics, October 3–5, 2013, consisted of twenty-five panels and included Gil Fagiani's “Vito Marcantonio: Beloved Son of Italian Harlem, Master of the Multiethnic Coalition,” Sarah Salter's “Il Bambino in Pericolo: Reproductive Futurity and Italian-American Identity,” Jessica Barbata's “Before the Lynchings: Revising our Understanding of the Italian Experience in Louisiana (1880s-1890s),” George De Stefano's “‘They Were Just Neighbors’: Cosimo Matassa and the New Orleans Sound,” and Mark Pietralunga's “Amerigo Ruggiero's Italiani in America and the Question of Italian Identity.” Bruce Boyd Raeburn's delivered an excellent keynote, “Italian Americans in New Orleans Jazz: Bel Canto Meets the Funk.” Other notable sessions consisted of Theirry Rindaldetti's “Bringing Distant Communities Together: Italian Birds of Passage in the Mining Districts of the United States” and Clorinda Donato's “Fashioning a New Identity for Italian American Woman: The Media Politics of Adriana Trigiani.”IASA members needed their passports for the 47th annual conference, Italians Without Borders: Transnational Italian (American) Experience, at the University of Toronto, October 17–19, 2014. The stately, gothic architecture of the University of Toronto's campus was an appropriate setting for such talks as Luisa Del Giudice's “Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts: Art, Migration, Development” and Aaron Baker's “The Real Rocky: Television Documentary and the American Dream.” Ryan Calabretta-Sajder organized Queer Italian American Literature: Space, Place, and Class and presented a talk titled “Caught Between ‘Two’ Worlds: Space, Class, and Gender in Robert Ferro's The Family of Max Desir and The Blue Star.” Again, several notable presentations included Luca Lanzilotta's “More than a Deviation: Felice Picano's Italian Journey” and Taylor Papallo's “Alterity and the Evolving Italian American Family in Philip Gambone's ‘Enrollment.’” Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta's session, “A Labor of Love: Learning about Life, Work, and Intellectual Engagement with Louise DeSalvo,” featuring Mary Jo Bona, Kimberly Costino, Ilaria Serra, and Anthony Tamburri with DeSalvo as respondent, had an energy all its own. Historian Bruno Ramirez gave a keynote titled “Transnationalism and Italian Migrations to the US and Canada.”In 2014, the association made a more concerted effort to gather together its documents, accumulating at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute since the early 2000s, for preservation. The materials in CMS.008C consist of Series I: Frank J. Cavaioli Papers, Series II: Publications, Series III: Financials 1967–2010, Series IV: Papers 1990–2013, Series V: Digital 1998–2013, Series VI: Photographs, Series VII: Audiotape, Pietro Di Donato 1983, Series VIII: Addendum 2014 (Italian American Studies Records).1 Alexandra de Luise, as the IASA's curator, transferred the archival material to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). Mary Brown, archivist and bibliographer at the CMS, happily received our materials. With the new submissions, she and Alexandra de Luise, then IASA curator, decided to develop a new electronic finding aid that would incorporate information on all the deposits, both the most recent and the older collection importantly. This modification was long overdue, and it resulted in easier discoverability of our holdings (Center for Migration Studies n.d.).Before the association finalized the location of the 48th annual conference, President George Guida asked John Viola, chief operating officer of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), to attend our May 17, 2014, EC meeting at the Calandra Institute. Viola presented a proposal to IASA. If we held our conference in Washington, DC, NIAF would print the program, provide lanyards and name badges, coffee, and a light breakfast for Friday and Saturday morning. They would supply the AV equipment and the necessary space for our annual event. The decision to partner with NIAF did not come without controversy. Some IASA members did not agree with the organization's conservative viewpoints and its representatives. However, recognizing the opportunity to expand membership and IASA's dire financial situation, the EC voted in favor of the motion to collaborate.Thus, we joined together in invited sessions, conversations, and food with the NIAF for the 48th annual conference, Italian American Values, in Washington, DC, October 15–17, 2015. The talks covered a range of topics and included Anna Ciamparella's “Discovering Italian Canadian Literature,” Teresa Fava Thomas's “Columbus Day 1938: Why Celebrate? Italian Americans in Massachusetts and the Hurricane of ’38,” Alessandra Galassi's “‘Tutti a Tavola!’ Family, Food, and Stereotypes in Moonstruck,” Rose De Angelis's “Revisiting Women's Roles: Motherhood, Family, and the Italian Way,” Joseph Tumolo's “A Conflicted Self: A Postmodern Reading of Diverging Narratives of Values and Identity in John Fante's Ask the Dust,” Donna Chirico's “How Pasta Fazool is Destroying Your Heritage: The Negative Impact of the Bastardization of Language in Psychological Development,” Amy Riolo's “The Role of Food in Italian American Culture and Identity,” Michelle Rodino-Colocino's “Making Italian Americans Productive: Notes from A Cultural History of New Media and Labor Management,” Anthony Dion Mitzel's “Breaking Bread: Appropriating Italian Cuisine on TV Cooking Shows,” and John Champagne's “Liminal Masculinities, Liminal Italians/Americas: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Corrado Cagli.” There were hundreds of NIAF members in attendance. Although some of our colleagues complained about the noise from the numerous NIAF attendees swarming to the nearby Expo Italiana, other IASA members enjoyed the chance to get one or more free espressos. Even more partook of the drink and food tastings amid the music and cacophony of sounds. Some have considered Robert Cohen's presentation “Mario, Bob. Bob, Mario: The Making of an Italian American Radical,” one of the more notable keynotes.Those of us fortunate to attend our next conference on the West Coast felt energized by the warm November weather and classroom settings both indoors and outdoors. The 49th annual conference, Recorded, Reported, Projected, and Pixelated—Italian Americans in Mass Media, was held at California State University, Long Beach, November 3–5, 2016. We were overdue for a West Coast meeting. The last two West Coast conferences were in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2001, and San Francisco, in 1999. The George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies, Clorinda Donato, made us all feel welcome. She and her team delivered on every aspect of the conference, from the planning to the logistics. That year we arranged for two talks because, in addition to IASA funding one keynote, Donato worked vigorously to find support for a second one. The first night, Louisa Ermelino delivered her address “From Sinatra to Gaga: Seventy Years of Italian Americans Center Stage and Behind the Scenes in Art, Music, Theater, Literature, and Sports.” On the following day, Pasquale Verdicchio gave his keynote “Italian Americans Represented: The Pleasure of Pixels and the Wisdom of Images.”In addition to the two guest speakers and a roundtable on pedagogy, there were so many memorable presentations: Joshua Alan Hoxmeier's “Effects of Military Service during World War II on the Identity of Italian American Men,” Enrico Vettore's “The Italian American Contribution to the Art of Jazz Guitar: Joe Pass and Pat Martino,” Mary Ann McDonald Carolan's “Once Upon a Time in Quentin Tarantino's New West,” Alberto Zambenedetti's “Acting Transcultural: Craft and Transformation in the ‘Tony Mustante Papers,’” Joseph Conte's The Ritornati: Migration and Remigration in Sciascia's ‘The Long Crossing’ and Tucci's Big Night,” Shira Klein's “Italian American Jews and the Myth of the Good Italian,” Colleen Ryan's “Enclaves and Ensembles: Performative Masculinities in Galluccio's Mambo Italiano,” and JoAnne Ruvoli's “Italian American Period Dramedies: Penny Marshall's Nostalgic Melancholia.” I also recall that Long Beach was the first session of an ongoing series on pedagogy; during the roundtable session “Teaching Italian American Studies in North America,” conceived by Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, we swapped Italian American studies and film syllabi and talked about teaching methods and what worked. There were not enough seats for this session; many stood in the back of the classroom to listen. Luisa Del Giudice organized a guided tour of Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers on Sunday morning of the conference, sponsored by California State University, Long Beach, and IASA. Were that not enough artistic enlightenment, we had a memorable visit to the Italian American Museum in Los Angeles to view an interactive show of Italian material culture and witness the creative ways they document the Italian American experience in Los Angeles and on the West Coast. Marianna Gatto and her team arranged an exhibit and refreshments for our members.Some mention needs to be made of the notable film screenings we enjoyed watching during the conferences or, on occasion, in sessions. Alexandra de Luise and I recall Antonino D'Ambrosio's Frank Serpico (a documentary on the former NYPD officer and whistleblower) screening (and Stanislao G. Pugliese's introduction) at the 2015 Washington, DC, conference and film director Mikki (Mitch) del Monico screening a part of his film Alto at the 2016 Long Beach conference. Performance art, theatre, and poetry slams also were part of our conferences, such as Annie Lanzillotto's L is for Lion: An Italian American Butch Freedom Memoir at the 2012 Hofstra conference, the Poetry Nightcap featuring ten poets the first night of the 2014 Toronto conference, and the Italian American Theatre company performance in Chicago in 2018.Early on during my tenure on the EC, there were conversations about having a conference or symposium abroad. However, many did not respond favorably and cited the cost and a low number of participants as reasons against the idea. As president, I championed hosting events in Italy. Some members were reluctant to organize both our annual conference and an international one. Luckily, I found enough like-minded individuals who supported this initiative and actively participated in making it happen. Nine years later, we organized both the annual conference in the US, Faith, (Ir)reverence, and the Italian Diaspora: Fifty Years of Italian American Studies, and an international symposium, Theorizing the Italian Diaspora,” at the University of Calabria, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian American Studies Association. In addition to panels presenting scholarship on John Fante, the Italian diaspora, and cultural studies, the Symposium Committee felt the need for a connected series of hands-on workshops focused on the basics for the graduate students in attendance. The concept behind the workshops at the symposium, though, was developed by IASA Executive Council members Jessica Femiani, Michele Fazio, and Ryan Calabretta-Sajder. Graduate students are often so overwhelmed with their courses, papers, and teaching assignments that when they do seek a professional organization that shares their passion they do not receive enough guidance and support. They can feel insignificant, forgotten, overwhelmed, and, unfortunately, even unwelcome at certain academic meetings, so reaching out to them and requesting their participation beyond just taking a seat in the audience can foster growth and development. Fourteen graduate students enrolled in the nine-credit course called “Cultura e Letteratura Italiana Americana” (CLIA) [Italian American Culture and Literature] at the University of Calabria presented at the symposium. This mix of Italian, American, Argentinian, Venezuelan, and other international students gave papers in English on topics ranging from Louise DeSalvo and Gay Talese to The Sopranos. Meeting and working with the graduate students provided the foundation that Professor Margherita Ganeri, director of CLIA, and others agreed would benefit these younger students of Italian American studies—an opportunity that I would have jumped at the chance for all those years ago.Regarding the IASA's first international symposium (AIHA had had a couple of smaller conferences in Italy in the past), Theorizing the Italian Diaspora, hosted by the University of Calabria, I am indebted to Margherita Ganeri, professor of contemporary Italian literature and director of the Program on Italian American Studies, and Gianpiero Barbuto, manager of International Relations. They worked tirelessly to sponsor a fantastic inaugural event in Italy. Overwhelmingly successful, the symposium had close to twenty graduate students from the University of Calabria present on various diasporic topics. Ultimately, the IASA produced a special volume, Theorizing the Italian Diaspora: Selected Essays (Calabretta-Sajder, Gravano, and Ruffner Grieneisen 2018), with ten graduate students’ contributions.With the help of Mary Brown, archivist and bibliographer at CMS and a scholar of Italian church history, images highlighting AIHA board members throughout the decades were featured in the program, in celebration of the fiftieth-anniversary conference Faith, (Ir)reverence, and the Italian Diaspora: Fifty Years of Italian American Studies in Washington, DC, November 2–4, 2017. Speakers kept to the theme of faith in many of the sessions, as did keynote speaker and professor of religion Robert Orsi, who capped off his humorous opening talk with a roundtable discussion composed of like-minded professors of religion, mostly former students of his (Kristy Nabhan-Warren and Susan Ridgely), in a stimulating back and forth. There were various paper topics, such as Michele Deramo's “Me, I'm from the Mezzogiorno: An Autoethnographic Analysis of Memory, Migration, and Imagined Communities,” Giuliana Muscio's “Censoring Italian Women's Religious Practices: The Miracle, The Rose Tattoo, Full of Life and Film Censors,” Dennis Barone's “The (Italian) American Mercury: Mencken's Publication (Sacred and Profane) of Cautela, Fante, and Turano,” Cinzia Marongiu's “Border-Crossing Madonna: Religious Images and Multi-Ethnic Coalition in Kym Ragusa's The Skin between Us,” Jerry Krase's “The Italians of Brooklyn Revisited,” Lorraine Mangione's “Italian American Daughters and Dads: Relationship of Spirituality and Religion,” Jonathan Cavallero's “Putting Faith in the Visual: Television, Authorship, Gender, and The Sopranos,” and Benjamin Lawton spent an hour discussing pedagogical strategies in the session Teaching The Godfather Films. Additionally, we had an Italian Canadian–themed session featuring Jan Marta's “Faith as Identified and Source of Resilience: Italian Canadians in WWII and Muslim Canadians in the 21st Century” and Jessica Leonara Whitehead's “The Italian-Canadian Internment: The Case of the Mascioli Brothers of Timmins, Ontario.” There were moments of reflection during panels on Past AIHA & IASA Presidents (with Candeloro, Krase, Gardaphé, Guida, a