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Acknowledgments  In the mid-1980s when I began my foray into the literature of Italian America, it felt like walking into the barren spaces of the great Northwest, despite the fact that most of the narratives were urban-centered, cluttered, and noisy. Yet, as Gretel Ehrlich has so eloquently written of the solace of open spaces, I felt a peaceful coming-home among works that were largely unknown in the literary academy. Over the past twenty-five years, I and other scholars have attempted to make visible those writers of Italian America, traversing a literary terrain that is as wide ranging and complex as the villages, cities, and countries about which they write. This land is their land, too, inclusive of the literary landscape, finalmente. Many colleagues have instrumentally shaped my thinking about the literature of Italian America, offering useful suggestions on organizational and theoretical approaches to interpret this body of work. I should like to thank Nancy Workman for discussions on the initial framework of the book, with especial emphasis on the function texts serve to create a public identity through a sustained and constantly evolving community of voices. Sandra M. Gilbert’s early support of my work when the field was still in its infancy further provided invaluable scholarly validation. Scholars of Italian America have persuasively explored theoretical avenues that helped me think more deeply about the vernacular origins of written expression and from them I have drawn enormous sustenance throughout the writing process: William Boelhower, Dawn Esposito, Thomas Ferraro, Fred L. Gardaphe, Edvige Giunta, Josephine Gattuso Hendin, Mary Ann Mannino, Martino Marazzi, Chris Messenger, Louise Napolitano, Mimi Pipino, Roseanne Lucia Quinn, John Paul Russo, Anthony J.Tamburri, and Robert Viscusi.With deepest gratitude I thank in particular Josephine Gattuso Hendin—la mia collega preferita—for her careful and unstinting work as a reader of drafts of every chapter of this ix x Acknowledgments book. Josephine’s contribution to this book is inestimable; however, any limitations in thought or deficiencies in execution are purely my own. I would also like to thank my wonderful colleague at Stony Brook University , Andrea Fedi, for his useful advice on my translations of Italian proverbs and phrases and for reading the entire manuscript with a fine-tooth comb. Developing an academic field of Italian American literature also could not be sustained without a generation of graduate students whose work has both inspired and influenced my own.In particular,I thank those students, former and present, with whom I have worked closely: Patrizia Benolich, Kristin Girard, Jessica Maucione, Michele Fazio, Jennifer DiGregorio Kightlinger,and JoAnne Ruvoli Gruba.Chapter 4 of this book on Guido D’Agostino proved to be a joy to write collaboratively with JoAnne Ruvoli Gruba; together, we mined the archives of this largely unknown writer, and made connections with relatives still living in the rural Pennsylvania so ably memorialized in D’Agostino’s final novel. A much-needed and appreciated sabbatical at Stony Brook University enabled the completion of this book. And to those academic organizations that have allowed me to share largely untested ideas and arguments on literary Italian America I thank the following: the American Italian Historical Association, MELUS (the association of Multiethnic Literature of the United States), the Modern Language Association, the Center for Italian Studies at Stony Brook University, the Calandra Institute at City University of New York,the New York Council for the Humanities Speakers Program, and the National Italian American Foundation, which supported my work as a professor at Stony Brook University, enabling more penetrating analyses of Italian American culture. A preliminary version of chapter 1 was published in LIT: Literature, Interpretation,Theory 13 (2002),201–223.A portion of chapter 2 appeared in Joseph A. Varacalli et al. eds., Models and Images of Catholicism in Italian Americana: Academy and Society (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 2002), 162–174. Portions of chapter 6 first appeared in Elizabeth Messina, ed., In Our Own Voices: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Italian and Italian American Women (Boca Raton: Bordighera, 2003), 145–160. In very different and condensed form, an earlier incarnation of my analyses of postmodern texts featured in chapter 7 first appeared in Philip V. Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds., The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism:Politics , Labor, and Culture (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 287–299. I heartily thank James Peltz at State University of New York Press, and Fred Gardaphe, SUNY series editor of Italian/American Culture, [18.188.152.162] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 23:22...

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