Ancestral Migration Research Articles

Introduction: Italianita in 2003: The State of Italian American Literature

We can expect that as long as there is an Italy, as long as there is a memory flavored with Italianita, there will be American writers of descent whose contribution to American letters will add new dimensions to what it means to be American and whose work will require critics able to negotiate the signs found on these American streets. --Fred Gardaphe, Signs, American Streets When the 1987 MELUS special issue on American literature first appeared, the field of American criticism was still in its infancy. In that Fall-Winter issue (which actually appeared in 1989), the articles proved to be groundbreaking in two ways. First, few in academia regarded American literature as a category unto itself, with a resonance distinguishing a cultural group that shares a history, a country, a diaspora, and an aesthetically rich response to migration. The articles in that issue illuminated such a resonance. For example, critics writing on Pietro Di Donato's classic proletariat novel, Christ in Concrete, or on third generation writers re-imagining ancestral migrations, formulated hermeneutical responses to texts sharing basic features of nineteenth-century history and immigrant readjustment to a hostile America. Second, the critics in the 1987 issue fruitfully presaged the interdisciplinary nature of the field itself, from writers in America who wrote about emigrants to film portrayals of Americans, beginning in the silent era and culminating in the landmark film, The Godfather. Perhaps a third, and equally innovative response to introducing a hitherto invisible body of work is to make useful and striking connections between canonical and unknown works, between literary versus popular writers, and between nineteenth and twentieth-century texts. (1) American literature lends itself to such comparisons, especially because the development of such a literature occurred during the heaviest influx of immigrants from Italy and Sicily to the United States, eliciting a variety of late nineteenth and twentieth-century responses by both immigrants and native-born Americans. (2) Despite the fact that few in academia and fewer in the larger arena of letters knew much about American literature, by the 1980s, important critical work was produced. Helen Barolini's 1985 anthology, The Dream Book, had been published by a reputable trade press, and her indispensable introduction provided one of the first sustained critical analyses of literature written by American women. (3) Establishing a list of writers, Barolini began the important process of canonization for American women, following in the footsteps of her critical precursors, Olga Peragallo and Rose Basile Green. (4) An advertisement for a new and cultural review on American literature also first appeared in the 1987 MELUS issue. Since 1990, VIA: Voices in Americana, has continued to disseminate information regarding the varied contributions of Americans in creative and critical realms, from diverse fields such as literature, anthropology, film, and sociology, providing a complement for Americana, a cultural and historical review. Thus the 1980s and 1990s saw a bountiful harvest of third generation creative and critical writers, aware of and writing about the complexities and variable meanings of the binomial nomenclature Italian American. Gaining a sense of how to approach American writers critically, Fred Gardaphe credits reading the criticism of other minority cultures, especially the work of Henry Louis Gates Jr., who writes: 'W.E.B. DuBois argued that evidence of critical activity is a sign of a tradition's sophistication, since criticism implies an awareness of the process of art itself and is a second-order reflection upon those primary texts that define a tradition and its canon.... All great writers demand great critics' (qtd. …

Genesis Aand the Anglo-Saxon ‘migration myth’

In his study ofMigration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, Nicholas Howe has argued that the Anglo-Saxons regarded the ancestral migration from the Continent as ‘the founding and defining event of their culture’. He suggests that theadventus Saxonumgave the Germanic tribes in England a shared identity, and proved central to their historical, cultural and even theological self-definition. Howe investigates what he calls the Anglo-Saxon ‘migration myth’, which links the Germanic tribal migration to England with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, both being transmarine journeys from a land of spiritual bondage to one of spiritual salvation.Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon Englandtraces the development of this concept from Bede'sHistoria ecclesiasticato Wulfstan'sSermo Lupi, and discusses its function in the writings of Alcuin and Boniface, as well as in Old English poetry. Howe's elegant analysis succeeds in demonstrating the pervasiveness of migration as a cultural myth, that is, a story that endures in a people's memory because it speaks powerfully to their collective imagination.

Distribution of haplotypes from a chromosome 21 region distinguishes multiple prehistoric human migrations.

Despite mounting genetic evidence implicating a recent origin of modern humans, the elucidation of early migratory gene-flow episodes remains incomplete. Geographic distribution of haplotypes may show traces of ancestral migrations. However, such evolutionary signatures can be erased easily by recombination and mutational perturbations. A 565-bp chromosome 21 region near the MX1 gene, which contains nine sites frequently polymorphic in human populations, has been found. It is unaffected by recombination and recurrent mutation and thus reflects only migratory history, genetic drift, and possibly selection. Geographic distribution of contemporary haplotypes implies distinctive prehistoric human migrations: one to Oceania, one to Asia and subsequently to America, and a third one predominantly to Europe. The findings with chromosome 21 are confirmed by independent evidence from a Y chromosome phylogeny. Loci of this type will help to decipher the evolutionary history of modern humans.

Moiety Endogamy and Anthropometrical Variation Among the Maravi

The traditional history of the Maravi, the largest population group in Malawi, tells of an ancestral migration towards the end of which the migrants segmented into two exogamous clans, Banda and Phiri. Subsequent segmentations produced a further array of daughter clans. An alternative hypothesis favoured by many recent historians claims that only the Phiri were migrants, while the Banda represented earlier settlers from the same area of origin. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the anthropometric characters of men whose parents both belong to clans in the Banda moiety with those of men with both parents of the Phiri moiety and men with one parent from either moiety. The finding of significant physical differences between the products of the two classes of intramoiety mating, with the hybrids lying intermediate, furnishes good evidence that the Phiri and the Banda originally represented different stocks between which panmixis is not yet complete.

Chemosystematics-Analyses of Populational Differentiation and Variability of Ancestral and Recent Populations of Juniperus ashei

Chemosystematics-Analyses of Populational Differentiation and Variability of Ancestral and Recent Populations of Juniperus ashei

Orientation Behavior of Four Species of Waterfowl

INITIAL investigations of the orientation of Mallards (Anas platyrkynchos) by the sun and stars were made in the fall of 1956 (Bellrose, 1958a). Since then, data from continuing experiments with this species, as well as initial experiments with Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors), Pintails (Anas acuta), and Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), have added materially to the information available on the orientation behavior of waterfowl. These experiments have reinforced the original findings that waterfowl use celestial cues to fly a particular direction both by day and by night. A recent report by Matthews (1961) extends the use of the sun for direction-finding to the nonmigratory Mallards of England. Moreover, this study shows that Mallards in England orient northwestward, a direction similar to that taken by Mallards orienting to celestial cues in Illinois. Evidence is accumulating that birds exhibit two fundamental types of compass This is shown by experiments in which birds (1) select directions similar to those taken by the species in migration, or (2) select a particular compass direction regardless of the migration direction or the direction of home. Examples of orientation along migrational directions are: (1) Kramer's (1952) early experiments with caged starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) which showed orientation southwestward, the ancestral migration direction in autumn; and (2) Sauer and Sauer's (1955) experiments with caged Garden Warblers and Blackcaps (Sylvia borin and S. atricapilla) which chose the traditional migration direction of south-southwest to southwest in the autumn. Examples of orientation to a particular compass direction are: (1) the findings of Griffin and Goldsmith (1955) and Goldsmith and Griffin (1956) that Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) orientated to the southeast under clear skies by day notwithstanding the place of release or the direction of their breeding sites; and (2) Bellrose's (1958a) finding that Mallards released under clear skies both by day and by night flew northward regardless of the direction of their home lake. Another group of experiments suggests that birds can be displaced from home, yet readily determine their homeward course from celestial cues. This has been termed goal orientation. It implies the ability of birds to recognize their latitudinal and longitudinal location in relation