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Italian-American Youth” A symposium
presented by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. October 25,
2007 1-5PM Admission: Free “Italian-American
youth” constitutes a category that has been ascribed with symbolic,
iconic, and even mythic attributes. Historic cinematic depictions of
Italian-American teenagers were broadly painted caricatures of the male
juvenile delinquent and his sexually active female counterpart, while current
television images have, to some degree, been mollified. For the news media, “Italian-American
youth” is all too often a pathological problem that is susceptible to
the allure of organized crime and featured in front-page articles and on
evening broadcasts about racial violence and criminal activities. For many ethnic-based
organizations, “Italian-American youth” is a target audience for interventionist
services of social and cultural uplift, from Italian language classes to “heritage”
initiatives to travel programs to Second-generation
Italian-American youth in the first half of the twentieth century has been
the subject of scholarly research by historians and other social scientists
who have explored topics such as the often contentious relationship with
immigrant parents. Sociologist
William Foote Whyte’s urban ethnography Street Corner Society (1943) remains an influential treatise on
Italian-American youth at mid-century.
What of Italian
American youth today? This symposium brings together six scholars from
diverse disciplines who are investigating various aspects of contemporary
Italian-American youth. They look at the ways in which Italian-American
adolescents and young adults negotiate the social and cultural landscapes
that involve educational achievement, employment opportunities, and patterns
of stress, as well as mass media, popular music, consumption, and cultural
style. Conference Program President James
L. Muyskens ( Dean Anthony
Julian Tamburri (John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Transcendent Imagination and the Struggle
for Educational Attainment Among Italian-American Women Dr. Donna Chirco
( Italian-American
Educational Achievements in the Twenty-First Century and the Impact of
Negative Stereotypes Dr. Vincenzo Milione
(John D. Calandra Italian American Institute) Stress Patterns
in Adolescents: A Multicultural Perspective Pierre Tribaudi
(John D. Calandra Italian American Institute) Discussant: Dr.
Dawn Esposito ( Identity and
Culture Chair: Dr. Peter
Vellon ( Italian-American
Identity Today (But Will There Be a Tomorrow?): The Fragility of Ethnic
Identity in the Twenty-First Century Dr. John Mitrano
( Youth Culture,
Ethnic Choices, and the Identity Politics of Guido Dr. Donald
Tricarico ( The Ethnoscape of
Hip Wop: Translocal Migrations of Italian-American Hip Hop Dr. Joseph
Sciorra (John D. Calandra Italian American Institute) Discussant: Dr. Peter
Carravetta (
[Return to the Academic & Cultural Programs page.] |
