ICAP is pleased to announce this special edition of Italian Canadiana edited by Dr. Gabriel Niccoli (ICAP Board Member, ICAP Waterloo), with contributions by Dr. Konrad Eisenbichler (ICAP Board Member), Dr. Sam Migliore (former ICAP Board Member) and Ray Culos (ICAP 5th conference presenter, Vancouver). Published by The Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian Canadian Studies, University of Toronto, you can purchase a copy by writing to The Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian Canadian Studies, c/o Department of Italian Studies, 100 St. Joseph St. Toronto, ON, M5S, 1J4 (and cheque in the amount of $20.00).
The articles in this volume study the manner in which patterns of nostos, of journeying and returning, in Italian Canadian narratives are both identified and deployed. The contributors incorporate myriad branches of knowledge: from diaspora and postcolonial studies to cultural sociology and anthropology, from literary criticism and semiotics to the history of immigration, from high-ranking diplomacy to creative writing and documentary photography, and from comparative literature to translation. Given this array of interpretative modes, the reader will garner the dialogic and specular tenor of these texts which, while intersecting, without, paradoxically, problematizing each other, compose a thematic ensemble whose heuristic motivations grant them a common sense of literary stability and scope. All the Italian Canadian narratives analyzed share one common thread, that of erranza, of wandering, a human condition that parallels their very “migrant” mode of representation. An erranza whose exilic voice becomes the language of the migrant text itself; a text, en clair, as displaced as the voice that engenders it, a language not at home. A textual language, however, crafted ad arte, given the supreme degree of literariness that characterizes Italian Canadian writing today. Felicitous diverse colours, and profitable ones, for the Canadian literary tapestry as they weave, in an indirect and belatedly foundational manner, their exquisitely unique Italian Canadian literary weft threads through the warp fabric of Canadian literature.
Gabriel Niccoli is Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University/University of Waterloo. He has published extensively on 16th and early 17th-centuries Italian and French dramatic theory, a volume on Baroque comparative pastoral drama, as well as on women writers of the Italian Renaissance. He has also edited a volume and published a number of essays on Italian Canadian immigration studies. He is presently working on a monographic study of a Renaissance Venetian poet.
Contributors
G. Niccoli (editor), V. Austen, S.Bancheri, F. Cadel, L. Canton, S. Casini, R. CauchiSantoro, C. Concilio, R. Culos, K. Eisenbichler, S. Floriani, T. Guma, G. Iacobucci, F. Loriggio, S. Migliore, V. Pietropaolo, S. Piraro, J. Pivato, F. Sturino, S. Terzian, V. Teti.
Carrie-Ann Smith est titulaire d’une maîtrise en bibliothéconomie et sciences de l’information de l’Université Dalhousie à Halifax. Elle est devenue membre de la Pier 21 Society à l’été 1998 et occupe actuellement le poste de Device-President, Public Engagement Officer au Musée canadien de l’immigration du Quai 21. Mme Smith (ne vous fiez pas à son nom de famille) est un descendant de Federico et Mabli Artuso de San Martino di Lupari; elle a écrit une histoire sur sa vie de jeune italo-canadienne grandissant à Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, paru dans Mamma Mia: Good Italian Girls Talk Back (ECW Press). L’objectif de Mme Smith de travailler au Musée, qui est d’aider à recueillir, préserver et faire connaître les souvenirs des immigrants qui sont venus au Canada, la motive également à contribuer au travail de l’ICAP.
Sandra Parmegiani enseigne les études italiennes et européennes à l’Université de Guelph et a été présidente de la Société canadienne d’études italiennes (juin 2014 à juin 2017). Dans le passé, elle a enseigné la littérature et la langue italiennes au Trinity College de Dublin (Irlande) et à l’Université de Western Ontario. Ses recherches portent sur la littérature et la culture italiennes du XVIIIe siècle et de la période contemporaine. Depuis 2013, grâce à une bourse obtenue de Mitacs, elle encadre des travaux postdoctoraux sur la cartographie des ressources culturelles immatérielles par l’analyse de la culture de la lecture.
