Italian American Values
The Marriott—Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D. C.
October 15th-17th, 2015
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
Send Proposals by Email Only to Alan Gravano, President, alan.gravano@outlook.com
The Italian American Studies Association welcomes proposals for individual presentations and full panels at its 48th annual conference in Washington, D. C. Especially encouraged are scholarly and creative presentations and panels focused on the broad theme of the conference: the nature, history, dynamics, and problematics of an Italian American system of values—current and historical, perceived or imagined, personal or social.
Present-day Italian American identities are often grounded in systems of values and beliefs emergent from transnational histories. Family structure, religion, state politics, economics, social class, and the experience of migration itself shape these systems of value, which finds expression in personal and communal behavior, expressive, and material culture, and forms of social life, from the family to the larger communities. The persistent American concern with values and ethics in U. S. society has, since the earliest Italian immigration, continued to raise questions about the nature of Italian American and other "ethnic" values in U. S. society.
Possible presentation and panel topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Defining Italian American systems of value: approaches, problematics, positions, and prospects
- Varieties of Italian American value and belief systems: personal, social, political, cultural
- Imagining Italian American values: representation, embodiment, and expression in literature, art and material culture
- Is that Italian? Italian American values as responses to larger forces, and as seen and perceived by others
- Finding/voicing/facing our own values: Italian American self-reflection in popular culture and the arts
- Traces of value: looking for an Italian American legacy of value in politics, culture, and social life
- Italian American values in contact with race, class, and other ethnicities: learning from history
The conference is interdisciplinary in its perspective and methods, and thus is open to scholars in different fields and approaches, and to creative writers (novelists, poets, and memoirists), and visual and media artists. The conference committee will also consider proposals that do not specifically address, but which might complement, this year's conference theme.
For Further Information, Please Visit www.italianamericanstudies.net or send inquiries to Alan Gravano, president, at: alan.gravano@outlook.com
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3RD, 2015.
Please email an abstract of your individual presentation or panel of no more than 500 words, include requests for audiovisual equipment, and brief biographies of participants, by June 3rd 2015, to Alan Gravano, President, at: alan.gravano@outlook.com.
We encourage the submission of organized panels (of no more than three presenters who will read their papers, not including the chair and the respondent), and creative writers and artists panels of three or more presenters. The conference committee encourages organized panels that are interdisciplinary and inter-genre. All presentations are to last no longer than twenty minutes, including audio and visual illustrations that accompany presentations.
An individual can participate in no more than two panels in any capacity.
Prospective presenters may expect to be advised of their acceptance or otherwise by July of 2015.
All presenters, respondents, and discussants must be members in good standing of the Italian American Studies Association by September 15th, 2015.
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