Dr. Ryan Calabretta-Sajder is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he teaches courses in Italian, Italian American, Film, Jewish, and Gender Studies.  He is the author of Divergenze in celluloide: colore, migrazione e identità sessuale nei film gay di Ferzan Ozpetek (Celluloid Divergences: Color, Migration, and Sexual Identity in the Gay Series of Ferzan Ozpetek) with Mimesis editore and Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2017). His research interests include the integration of gender, class, and migration in both Italian and Italian American literature and cinema.  He has recently been awarded one of four Fulbright Awards for the Foundation of the South to conduct research and teach at the University of Calabria, Arcavacata for the Spring of 2017, where he taught a course entitled “Queering Gay Italian Americana.”  Currently, he is working on two, authored book-length projects, one exploring the Italian-American gay author, Robert Ferro, who died of AIDS complications in 1988 and the second on the Algerian-Italian author, Amara Lakhous.

Calabretta-Sajder is the Director of Communication for the American Association of Teachers of Italian, the President of Gamma Kappa Alpha, the National Italian Honors Society, and an Executive Committee member of the Italian American Studies Association.

As member of IASA’s Executive Council (2016-Present), Calabretta-Sajder has served on the Scholarship Committee, Conference Committee, Constitution Committee, and is currently chairing the Elections Committee.  In June 2017, he chaired the “Theorizing the Italian Diaspora” Symposium committee, which boasted an attendance of over 60 colleagues from five countries, hosting both workshops and traditional sessions, and two keynotes presentations. He is also working on the proposal to relaunch the IASA journal.

If elected Vice President, he will be working hard to

• expand membership and cross-pollinate membership from similar academic organizations (in particular American Association of Teachers of Italian, Modern Language Association, Society of Cinema and Media Studies)
• build a more international ‘face’ of the organization through conferences/symposiums both nationally and internationally
• introduce graduate students to the organization

Francesco Chianese is currently Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches Italian-American culture to both undergraduate and graduate students. He took part to the last three Italian American Studies Association Annual Conferences held at the California State University, Long Beach (2016), at the Washington D. C. Marriott Hotel (2017) and at University of Illinois, Chicago (2018). He also delivered papers on Italian-American culture at the Theorizing Italian Diaspora Studies Symposium, University of Calabria (2016) and Diaspore Italiane: A Symposium on Three Continents, Australia, United States, Italy, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, New York (2018). He holds a MA in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature from the University of Naples Federico II and a PhD in Comparative Literature (Italian and US American Literature) from the University of Naples L’Orientale. He carried out his PhD research at the University of Bristol and was the recipient of an EAAS travel grant and a DAAD research grant to research at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität, Berlin (2014; 2015); and of a Frank J. Guarini Foundation Fellowship to participate to the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer School, University of Calabria and John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (2017). Recently, he has published a book on Pier Paolo Pasolini (2018) and wrote on Italian-American culture for Italia transculturale: Il sincretismo come modello universale italofono (Cesati, 2018), Harbors, Flows, and Migrations: The USA in/and the World (Cambridge Scolars, 2017), Scrivere tra le lingue (Aracne, 2017).

I am a relative newcomer to the Italian American Studies Association, which I joined three years ago.  I have presented papers at IASA conferences in Washington, D.C. and at California State University, Long Beach.  I am not Italian American nor am I Italian.  I believe that it is imperative for the survival of the field of Italian American studies that we encourage those from all ethnic backgrounds to investigate the intersections between Italy and America.

My research focuses primarily on the cinematic exchange between Italy and America.  My book, The Transatlantic Gaze:  Italian Cinema, American Film (SUNY Press, 2014), investigates the profound influence of Italian auteurs on American filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Brian De Palma, and others.  I have published articles on the director Nicola Cirasola whose Focaccia Blues demonstrates the connection between Italy and America in food and film and on the representation of Italian American women in comedies such as Moonstruck, Married to the Mob, and My Cousin Vinny. My other publications examine the reception of Alfredo Panzini’s work in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century as well as the underlying significance for Italian Studies of Ruth Draper’s hysterical 1925 monologue entitled “The Italian Lesson.”

At Fairfield University, I teach undergraduate courses on the Italian American Experience and Italian American cinema, and a graduate seminar in American Studies entitled “Visions of Italy and America in Film.”  In the spring of 2019, I will hold the Tiro a Segno Fellowship in Italian American studies at New York University where I will teach two courses:  an undergraduate seminar on Italian-American cinema and a graduate seminar on the continuing influence of Italian cinema on American filmmaking.

For the past twenty years or so, I regularly lecture and present films at BACIO (Bridgeport Area Cultural Italian Organization), an organization founded to preserve and celebrate Italian-American culture.

Thank you for considering me as a candidate for the Executive Council of the Italian American Studies Association.

Joey Nicoletti teaches creative writing at SUNY Buffalo State College. He is the author of the poetry collections, Thundersnow (Grandma Moses Press 2017), Reverse Graffiti (Bordighera Press 2015), and Cannoli Gangster (Turning Point, 2012), which was selected as a finalist for the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize. Nicoletti is also the author of five chapbooks, including Capicola Slang, which is forthcoming from NightBallet Press in 2019. His Pushcart Prize-nominated poems, nonfiction essays, book reviews, and articles have appeared in Annali d’italianistica, The Rumpus, Gradiva, Voices in Italian Americana, Aethlon, Ovunque Siamo, Italian Americana, and Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, among other journals, magazines, and anthologies. A former poetry editor of Sou’wester, Nicoletti is a graduate of The University of Iowa, New Mexico State University, and the Sarah Lawrence College M.F.A. program.

Nicoletti served on the IASA Executive Council from 2013-2015 and has been involved with IASA since 2011. In addition to his previous experience on the Executive Council, where he served on the Conference Committee for the Toronto and Washington DC meetings, Nicoletti has been a featured reader, presenter, and chair of panels in the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018 conference meetings. His primary IASA objectives are to increase its membership and the organization’s presence in the academic and creative landscapes. In particular, he believes that by increasing IASA’s visibility among scholars and writers, members will honor and develop the mission of those who started the organization.

Laura E. Ruberto teaches film and cultural studies in the Humanities Program at Berkeley City College. Her research focuses on Italian and Italian American film, material culture, and cultural theories of transnational migrations. An IASA (AIHA) member since 1998, Laura hopes to further develop IASA’s interdisciplinary strengths, connect with other academic organizations, improve online communication, continue to internationalize the association, work to represent newer members, encourage lapsed members to re-join, and find new ways to reach out to those members who do not live in the northeast. She is also interested in fostering the development of IASA as an academic organization that recognizes the changing cultural dynamics of the 21^st century, especially with respect to Italian ethnicity and issues of intersectionality.

Laura’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Faculty Research grant to Italy and an NEH summer grant. She is co-editor of the book series Critical Studies in Italian America for Fordham University Press and serves on the Editorial Board of the Italian American Review. Laura’s publications include Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women’s Work in Italy and the U.S. (2007); the co-edited New Italian Migrations to the United States. Vol. 1: Politics and History since 1945 and Vol. 2: Art and Culture since 1945 (2017), Italian Americans and Television (2016), and Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema (2007); and the translation of Gianna Manzini’s Threshold/Sulla soglia (2016) and Leonilde Frieri Ruberto’s Such Is Life, Ma la vita e’ fatta cosi: A Memoir (2010).

I am a Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. My training is as an American Studies-trained U.S. cultural historian with specializations in jazz and popular music, race and ethnicity, Italian American culture, food, sports, and cultural criticism. My most recent book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge, was published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press. My earlier book, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006), won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture.  I have been a member of IASA/AIHA since 2001 and just completed a term on the Executive Council during which I served on the Membership and Chicago conference subcommittees and (with Maria Protti) drafted the organization’s policy on conference site selection. In addition, I have served on the editorial board of Italian American Review since 2009; and have published essays in the journals Italian Americana and Voices in Italian Americans and in the books The Routledge History of Italian Americans, Personal Effects: Essays on Memory, Culture, and Women in the Work of Louise DeSalvo, Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities, Frank Sinatra: History, Politics, and Italian American Culture, and Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America.

Robert Oppedisano is a freelance editor and publishing consultant who spent 30 years in academic and scholarly publishing as a marketing director and director at Macmillan and the university presses of Chicago,  Columbia, Oxford, and Fordham.  He was responsible for the acquisition of books in Italian and Italian American studies by such authors as Ilaria Serra, Franco Cassano, Joanna Clapps Herman, Carol Bonomo Albright, and Francesco Durante, whose magisterial Italoamericana he secured for publication by Fordham University Press. Since retirement in 2008, he has edited works by Simone Cinotto, Joanna Clapps Herman, and numerous other authors.  As an EC member, he was responsible for writing, creating and producing  the first membership brochure, for committee work on by-laws, conference origamming,  and new officer position descriptions, and for launching the IASA Annual--crafting the original publishing contract and completing peer reviews of the original contents. He is also Book Review Editor at the Italian American Review, where he assigns and edits as many as six reviews per issue. He has also presented papers at two Calandra Institute annual conferences. He looks forward as an EC member to contributing his editorial and publishing expertise to the Annual, and to other marketing/communications efforts, and to expanding his work on the conference program committee.

Alan Gravano is the Writing Center Director at Rocky Mountain University in Provo, Utah. As President of the Italian American Studies Association (IASA), he has worked to promote and expand the organization’s scope and presence. Dr. Gravano has served as President of IASA for the last four years and asks the membership to consider voting for him for one more term, so he can facilitate the transition of the new officer positions such as the vice-president of operations and the vice-president of communications and marketing.   

During his tenure, Dr. Gravano oversaw and was intricately involved in the organization of the IASA conferences in New Orleans, Washington DC, Long Beach, California, and Chicago and a symposium in Calabria, Italy. He believes that expanding the membership and visibility of IASA is vital to the organization. In order to attract and maintain members, Dr. Gravano recognizes the need for tiered membership rates. To that end, the 49^th annual conference in Long Beach was the first to offer reduced rates for graduate students, and in the future he wants to include an adjunct faculty rate. Furthermore, the DC conference had the first Graduate Student Meet and Greet, and Chicago continued this tradition as well as an event for New Members. Recently, he negotiated a guaranteed IASA panel at the annual conference for the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). In addition, he, along with Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, organized an MLA Working Group titled “Italian Americans on Screen” that was accepted by MLA for the Chicago 2019 convention. The 2019 Working Group represents the first of two required special sessions in order for IASA to apply for Allied Organization Status. Dr. Gravano’s goal is to submit another working group for the MLA annual meeting in Seattle for 2020.

Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen is a professor of English at State College of Florida. She earned her doctorate in Literature and Criticism with her dissertation on “Inter-Colonialism: On-screen Representations of Italian-Americans” from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded the journal, Florida English, and is co-editor. She has published works on Poe, Pound, and Lupino as well as various topics on Italian Americana.  She has been a member of IASA since 2009.

Since 2017 she has unofficially assisted the organization by reorganizing the platform, Submittable that is used by the Association to manage conference submissions as well as journal submissions. She assisted the Chicago conference committee with logistics pertaining to submissions and speaker biographies. She co-edited the Selected Essays from the Calabria Symposium and in doing so, she was able to introduce to the organization a printing option that allows for a quicker turnaround of special issue journal-based projects. Ruffner Grieneisen would tighten communications within the organization and annual conferences. In addition, she would make the news worthy information regarding our members as well as other relevant events more accessible to all who are interested in what is current in Italian American Studies in the US and abroad. Finally, she would market our organization in a way that invites new scholars to join our discussions at our annual conferences and other IASA related venues.

Colleen Ryan is Professor of Italian at Indiana University, where she teaches courses on 20^th and 21^st century literature and film, with focuses on gender, sexuality, Italian American, and Italian diaspora studies. Ryan’s courses, both in her Department and the Honors College, explore a range of subjects related to ethnic identity, ethnic humor, the migrant experience, intergenerational and inter-race relations, and Italian-American women’s voices, Italian-American theater, and Italian-American masculinity.

A member of IASA for three years, Ryan has assisted with graduate student meet-and-greets, served on an ad-hoc committee to revise the bylaws, and has helped review and edit association documents over the years. Since she joined IASA, Ryan has been actively engaged in the annual conferences both in the U. S. and abroad. She presented research at the Calandra Institute’s annual symposium in 2018 and partook in the Calandra Institute’s Italian Diaspora Studies School in summer 2017. In January she will be part of the Italian Americans on Screen working group at the MLA.

As Secretary of the Italian American Studies Association, Ryan remarks, “I would carry out all responsibilities as outlined in our bylaws, lending careful attention to the creation and dissemination of official documents, maintaining accurate and secure records of all meetings and Association decisions, and facilitating communications with the Executive Council and broader membership as needed. As part of the EC, I would bring both energy and commitment to all goal-setting and goal-achieving initiatives, as delineated in our mission. Furthermore, building on my extensive experience on the Executive Councils of both the American Association of Teachers of Italian (Vice President 2014-2017) and the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators (President, 2014-1016) I would continue to give emphasis to the recruitment, integration, and mentorship of graduate students working on Italian American and Italian Diaspora Studies from a broad range of disciplines.

Dr. Donna Chirico is Professor of Psychology and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at York College/CUNY. Her field research in India studying moral and spiritual development constitutes the foundation for her ongoing research program exploring the nature of imagination as it relates to aspects of psychological development. One implication is the role of the imaginative process in educational attainment among Americans of Italian heritage. The objective of this work is to understand the function of transcendent imagination in personal development, attainment of valued goals and general well-being.   

In a secondary project, matters of personal identity formation are being explored to achieve an understanding of how ethnic identity contributes to the psychological development of the self. She has published numerous papers on these topics and is a much sought-after speaker on these matters vital to the Italian American community. Dr. Chirico is also an expert in the application of statistical analysis in sports who explores the use of statistical paradigms in sports betting and choices made by fantasy sports league participants.

Dr. Chirico currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Italian American Studies Association, is Chair of the Italian American Faculty Staff Advisory Council of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, serves on the Board of the National Organization of Italian American Women, and is president of the American arm of the Italian Language Inter-Cultural Alliance. Here are just two of the goals she has in mind as IASA Treasurer:

1.     Evaluate the investments and resources of IASA to determine how best to provide future financial stability, and,

2.     Increase the revenues if IASA by seeking collaborative partnership for its endeavors such as conferences and symposia.

Dr. Jessica Leonora Whitehead holds a PhD from York University and works as a postdoctoral fellow at Ryerson University. Her dissertation, Cinema-Going on the Margins: The Mascioli Film Circuit of Northeastern Ontario was funded by a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and was defended in February 2018. This work explored the regional movie theatre chain built by the Italian labour agent Leo Mascioli, who was sent to an internment camp during the Second World War and was nominated for both York University’s Dissertation Award and the Barbara Godard Dissertation Award. Her current postdoctoral project called “Hidden Circuits of Canadian Cinema,” funded by a Ryerson RBC Immigration and Diversity grant, explores the histories of immigrant film exhibition and distribution in Canada. She has published articles in the journals Transformative Works and Cultures, Italian Canadiana, The Canadian Journal of Film Studies and chapters in the books Cinema Outside the City: Rural Cinema-going from a Global Perspective and Mapping Movie Magazines. Her research has also been featured on the CBC’s radio show Up North and in The Timmins Daily Press.

Dr. Whitehead’s motivation for becoming a member of the IASA Executive Council is to help increase collaboration between Canadian and American scholars researching Italian communities in North America. She would also like to help with upcoming IASA conferences and support future conferences in Canada. She has conference organizing experience, and co-organized the Circuits of Cinema conference in June 2017. She is also co-editing the conference proceedings in the journal Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis/Journal for Media History. These experiences will be an asset to IASA Executive Council, and she envisions working closely with other council members to organize upcoming conferences as well as effectively managing communications for the organization and publishing IASA’s new journal.

Experience/IASA involvement/Collaborations

• Italy based adjunct professor of English language, linguistics, culture at the Università di Bologna working between the Department for Interpreters and Translators (DIT), Department of Political Science and Sociology.
• PhD candidate in completing research status (CRS), University College London, UK. Department of Italian, Centre for Translation Studies (dissertation on Italian American culture entitled Ephemerality and Diaspora: The Memes of Production in Italian American Culture).
• Teaching: Linguistics, Semiotics, Memetics, Cultural/Humor Studies with a focus on contemporary issues in the United States, U.S./Italian American culture. Past and current courses on Italian Americans in mass media, literature, and Diaspora studies.
• Presented IA based research at numerous conferences/symposiums in Europe and North America including five IASA conferences. 2014 IASA Memorial Fellowship Award recipient.
• Recipient of Fellowship for the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute/Università della Calabria Diaspora Studies program (2015).
• Scientific committee, The Taboo Conference Series. Biannual transdisciplinary conference focusing on all aspects of taboo.
• Collaborator with Project Censored (Critical Media Literacy). PC is a media watchdog organization, which utilizes a student centric methodology for producing grassroots journalism and civic engagement.

Projected contributions

If re-elected I will continue to:

• Work to promote IASA as an international organization and raise awareness of research being done in IA studies in Italy and Europe.
• Outreach to lesser known Italian American philanthropic organization such as but not limited to the Wolves’ Club of the Mahoning Valley in Youngstown, Ohio.
• Liaison in the development of the IASA 2020 Pittsburgh conference in conjunction with the Heinz History Center and the University of Pittsburgh.

My research interests include Italian visual culture, race and representation, Black European studies, postcolonial studies and digital feminist studies. My book, Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa - Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema (Bloomsbury/Continuum Press, 2012) examines the representation of mixed-race subjects of Italian and African descent in the Italian cinema, arguing that the changing cultural representations of mixed-race identity reveal shifts in the country's conceptual paradigms of race and nation. My work has been published in  From Terrone to Extracomunitario: New Manifestations of Racism in Contemporary Italian Cinema: Shifting Demographics and Changing Images in a Multi-Cultural Globalized Society (Troubador Press, 2010) and Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

I have presented at La Sapienza, the University of Rome; the University of Bologna, Italy; Queen Mary, University of London; the Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY; the American Association for Italian Studies annual conference; the Italian American Studies Association symposium; the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference; the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center at Indiana University; and Brown University.

My research has focused upon the African Diaspora in Italy and I would look forward to contributing to the IASA’s engaged discussions on the future of Italian American/Italian Diaspora Studies, especially in light of field’s engagement with critical theories of racial identity formation and Italian postcolonial studies.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Dr. Giuseppe Sorrentino is Coordinator of the Italian Program at Wagner College and collaborates with other institutions in New York (College of Staten Island and Baruch) as Adjunct Professor. Born and raised in the province of Naples, Italy, Giuseppe Sorrentino obtained his Doctorate in American Studies from the University of Rome “Roma Tre” and came to the US as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in 2009. He teaches courses on a variety of topics ranging from Italian language and Comparative Literature to American History and Italian Cinema. His research mainly focuses on Post-modern American Literature, Italian-American Literature and Cinema, Mass media and Identity. Dr. Sorrentino also collaborates with various cultural organizations in the New York area, such as Casa Belvedere, the National Organization of Italian American Women, and the Coccia Foundation, lecturing on Italian Culture and Cinema. Dr. Sorrentino presented papers at international conferences in the US and in Italy, among them IASA, Canadian Society for Italian Studies, University of Toronto Graduate Conference, and Association Française d’Etude Americaine. In the field of Italian-American studies, he particularly focuses on the Italian-American poets of the Beat generation, on the inter-connections between Italian and Italian-American culture in cinema and literature, and on the question of national identity among Italians abroad. At Wagner College, Sorrentino curates a series of lectures where Italian American poets and writers come to discuss their work. This series has hosted Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Mark Chiusano and Maria Giura.

Rosetta Giuliani Caponetto is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Auburn University. Her areas of academic interests include Italy’s colonialism in East Africa; studies on nostalgia; Italian American diaspora; food movements and activism; philanthropy studies. She is currently researching a book-length project on Italian-American farming traditions in the Southern states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A preliminary study on this topic is her article “From Garden to Table. Cultivating Southern Hospitality through Italian American Gardening Traditions” that will appear in Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association (Fall 2021). She has served on the EC for one term (2017-2019). She is also one of seven faculty advocates for a multidisciplinary outreach, research, and teaching initiative called Fostering Communities in the Kitchen and Garden, which aims to provide foster youths who transition to independent living with cooking skills, nutrition education, horticultural training, and digital narrative journalism techniques. She is a faculty affiliate of African American and Africana Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Sustainability Studies in her home institution. 

Lina Insana is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches post-Unification Italian culture; Holocaust literature and film; Italian Fascism and resistance; Italian American screen studies; and translation studies. Insana’s current work—in teaching, research, mentored research, and experiential learning—aims to put Italian and Italian Diaspora studies in direct dialogue. Her long-term project on expressions of italianità in North American Italian “colonies” in the interwar period is a case in point; the 2017 Italian American Review article on interwar ethnic advertising in Pittsburgh ('Italians of Pittsburgh: Don’t Be Selfish!’”) is a part of this larger project, as is a collective research project on Pittsburgh’s Columbus monument. Insana is the co-convener of the Italian Diaspora Archive Resource Map working group, hosted by Pitt’s World History Center, and co-host of the next in-person IASA conference. Her work in Italian American Studies also extends to children’s literature (“Strega Nona’s Ethnic Alchemy”) and teaching, as well as to several undergraduate projects that engage students in transnationally-oriented archival research and translation. She is the author of Arduous Tasks: Primo Levi, Translation, and the Transmission of Holocaust Testimony (MLA Scaglione Manuscript Prize, 2007; AAIS 20th c. Prize, 2009), as well as various studies on Italian Shoah post-memory. Her current book in progress is a geocritical cultural history of Sicily (Charting the Island: Sicilian Position and Belonging from Unification to the European Union), which traces the different forms of belonging Sicily’s cultural production has shaped for it over time, including diasporic forms.

My name is Giannina Lucantoni. Currently I am a full-time high school English teacher in my hometown, Niagara Falls, New York. In addition to a B.A. in English I hold advanced degrees in Secondary Education, Education Administration and English Literature. In 2018 I completed a graduate thesis titled Beyond Christ in Concrete: Exploring Assimilation, Identity and Manual Labor in Pietro di Donato’s This Woman and Three Circles of Light. Currently I am a doctoral candidate in the American Studies department at SUNY Buffalo. My doctoral dissertation, like my thesis, focuses on the works of Pietro di Donato. 

I joined IASA in Spring of 2019 shortly before presenting at the IASA International Symposium held at Roma Tre University in June 2019. While the global pandemic prevented me from attending the Italian Diaspora Summer Seminar through the Calandra Italian American Institute, I do plan to attend in June 2022.  Most recently, I hosted a IASA webinar in September 2021. The talk, titled, “For Father and Many Other Things,” discussed the poetry of Dr. Matthew Diomede with commentary and reading from the poet. I will virtually present at the upcoming IASA conference in November. 

John R. Mitrano (B.A., Northwestern University; M.A. and Ph.D., Boston College) has been a Lifetime Member of IASA for approximately 20 years. He is currently Professor of Sociology at Central Connecticut State University, where he has taught courses on the Italian-American experience and led study abroad programs to Italy. His current research centers on ethnic identity formation among college-aged Italian-American students and the role that cultural heritage programs play in that process. Over the past 25 years, he has published several articles in AIHA/IASA's "Proceedings" in the areas of ethnic identity formation and ethno-marketing, served as a reviewer for the Italian American Review, and previously was a member of the Executive Council and the Elections subcommittee in the early 2000s. If elected to the Executive Council today, he would like to serve the organization in the development of novel recruitment strategies to attract new members; further develop, catalog, and publicize academic I-A resources; and partner with other I-A organizations in ways that will contribute to the long-term vitality of IASA--while maintaining our unique identity. We may be a relatively small professional organization, but our body of work in academia has been enormous. He would welcome the opportunity to develop, nurture, and further publicize past, present, and future contributions from our members. Thank you for your consideration of my candidacy.

Phillip Sipiora is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of South Florida and has been a member of the Italian Club of Tampa for many years, having served on the Board of Directors for nearly a decade. His service at the Italian Club includes participating in numerous  fundraising and cultural events as well as serving as a judge for the annual Nelson Italiano Scholarship Award ($5,000), which is for high achieving local high school students. He has presented Italian Cinema (films plus lectures) at the Italian Club. He has written multiple articles for L’Unione Italiana, which is the Italian Club’s cultural magazine focusing on Italian and Italian-American culture. Some of his articles are derived from his years of teaching Italian Cinema in Italy for Florida State University and The University of South Florida and he has taught Italian Cinema and Italian-American Cinema for the past 30 years at USF. He gave a presentation on Martin Scorsese (“Mean Streets and Cultural Codes”) at an IASA Webinar Conference on August 7, 2020. In August of 1921, his edited book was published: Ida Lupino, Filmmaker (Bloomsbury Academic). He is currently working on an edited book on the neglected works of Martin Scorsese. If elected to the EC, he would contribute according to his experience in Italian-American culture, academic research, and teaching interests.

Dr. Donna Chirico is Professor of Psychology at York College/CUNY and holds the position of Resident Faculty at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. Her field research in India studying moral and spiritual development constitutes the foundation for her ongoing research program exploring the nature of imagination as it relates to aspects of psychological development. One implication is the role of the imaginative process in educational attainment among Americans of Italian heritage. The objective of this work is to understand the function of transcendent imagination in personal development, attainment of valued goals and general well-being. In a second major project, matters of personal identity formation are being explored to achieve an understanding of how ethnic identity contributes to the psychological development of the self. She has published numerous papers on these topics and is a sought-after speaker on these matters vital to the Italian American community. Dr. Chirico is also an expert in the application of statistical analysis in sports where she explores the use of statistical paradigms in sports betting and choices made by fantasy sports league participants.

Dr. Chirico is the Chair its Italian American Faculty Staff Advisory Council to John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, is Treasurer on the Executive Committee of IASA, serves as Secretary on the Board of the National Organization of Italian American Women, and is president of the American arm of the Italian Language Inter-Cultural Alliance. Here are just two of the goals she has in mind as IASA Treasurer:

1. Evaluate the investments and resources of IASA to determine how best to provide future financial stability, and,

2. Increase the revenues of IASA by seeking collaborative partnership for its endeavors such as conferences and symposia.

Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen is Professor of English and Chair of the Language and Literature Department at State College of Florida. She earned her doctorate in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation on “Inter-Colonialism: On-screen Representations of Italian-Americans.” She has published on Poe, Pound, and Lupino and various topics on Italian Americana. She has been a member of IASA since 2009 and has consistently attended IASA conferences presenting her work.

In 2017 she unofficially assisted the organization by reorganizing the platform, Submittable, used by the Association to manage conference and journal submissions. She supported the Chicago conference committee with logistics pertaining to submissions and speaker biographies. She co-edited Theorizing the Italian Diaspora, selected essays from the Calabria Symposium and worked with the publisher in printing and mailing the volume to members.

In 2018 Ruffner Grieneisen joined the IASA team as VP of Communications and Marketing and took on the Webmaster job. Ruffner Grieneisen has worked diligently in keeping the website up to date while accomplishing a variety of additional goals as VP of CAM:
 

• Grew membership to 200 paying members when our membership took a hit at 141 in 2020 due to Covid. 

• Started a Webinar Series to maintain a connection with members during Covid. (We are on our 21st of 24 Webinars in the series.) 

• Streamlined our web page and is liaison between the University of Illinois Press and IASA for membership and journal upkeep. 

• Administered our conference submission system and obtained a credit card reader from our PayPal associates to take on-the-spot payments for conference registration, membership, and book sales in the US and Italy. 

As the next IASA President, she would like to complete three main goals while continuing to promote and grow the organization by reaching out to programs that house Italian and Italian American Studies at their institutions: She would like to continue her goal of capturing interviews with all living past IASA presidents for our archives; she would like to launch a series of Italian American Author Pamphlets for professors and students use who reside in America and in Italy; and she would like to write a grant that would provide funding to build a digital concordance archival system for our proceedings, webinars, interviews, photos, and keynote speeches.

Joanne L. DeTore, Ph.D. has been a member of IASA since 2010 and was a member of the EC from 2012-2018 and then again from 2020-2021. During her tenure on the EC, she grew an online presence for IASA from 75 followers to over 1,000 followers on FB, in addition to creating much more of a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. She also encouraged the use of  Submittable for conference submissions to streamline the process. She has served on several conference committees to select papers and group sessions, served as a session chair, helped with logistics at conferences, and served on the membership and fundraising committees. 

An Associate Professor of Humanities and Communication and Interim Associate Chair at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, she created the first Italian American film course. Her creative and scholarly work focuses on her Italian American heritage has been published in Voices in Italian Americana, Italian Americana, Review Americana: A Literary Journal, and in the books, Anti-Italianism: Essays on Prejudice; Fractured Feminisms: Rhetoric, Context, and Contestation; Joy, Interrupted and Sweet Lemons: Writing with a Sicilian Accent. She is working on a full-length book of poetry exploring her IA heritage. 
 

A successful grant writer, DeTore has brought in over $700,000 in grants as a PI or Co-PI, and will be using her grant-writing skills to help with fundraising. DeTore also teaches her university’s public relations courses & is working on a graduate certificate from Harvard University in Museum Studies, fields that can assist IASA in its promotion and marketing. In addition, DeTore is a certified diversity trainer and a national award-winning Diversity and Inclusion Director who can assist IASA in their diversity efforts as well.
 

DeTore would like to assist in growing IASA membership, especially among younger scholars by promoting IASA at other conferences like the Popular Culture Conference, for instance.   She feels it is critical to foster Italian American scholarship as well as creative work that explores the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender expression, and sexuality in the Italian diaspora.

I received an M.A. at Bryn Mawr College in Classical Studies and an M.A. in Art History, as well as a museum curator certificate, from Rutgers University.  For the past twenty years I have been an adjunct lecturer in the Classics department at Brooklyn College, CUNY, teaching classes in literature, culture, gender studies and history as well as Greek and Latin roots in the English language.  During conferences at both IASA and the Calandra Institute, I have given papers including, “Tattoos: Italians and Italianita”, “Sports as a Vehicle for Acculturation and Civic Identity” and “The Male Gaze: Portraits of Women in Renaissance Italy.” 

Although JoAnn Delmonico Luhrs does not teach Italian language or culture, she has over the years been an avid researcher in a variety of fields in Italian American culture, including history, sports, and art to name a few.  Being a member of the John D. Calandra Institute over the past many years has afforded her the opportunity to give presentations in a variety of subjects and to be a member in the audience to many others. Additionally, she attended the program at the University of Calabria in 2017 to study the Italian Diaspora and, as a result, wrote a memoir of my family’s own immigration to America from Calabria. While there, she was introduced to members of IASA since a conference was going on. She found the conference and papers so interesting that they impelled me to decide there and then to join IASA as a member. Now, whenever time allows from my own teaching, I attend conferences at both the Calandra and IASA and she has to say she has not missed a program since then. She has been lucky enough to be able to give presentations at many of the conferences myself. If she were given the opportunity to work on the board of the Italian American Studies Association, she could be an asset to continuing the great work that IASA does and the scholarship it perpetuates through conferences.

Lisa Paolucci is an assistant professor of Education at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. She recently received her Ph.D. in English Education from Columbia University, where she completed research on Italian American teachers in New York City public schools and their pathways to teaching. She is currently researching preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about race and ethnicity with a focus on Italian American undergraduate students. She previously served on the Executive Council of the Italian American Studies Association from 2015-2016, and is a previous Board Member of the Italian American Writers Association. Formerly, Dr. Paolucci taught high school English in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Her poems have been published in Ovunque Siamo, #me too, anch'io (2020), and Literary Vegan.  

Particularly relevant to the role of Vice President of Communications and Marketing is her extensive administrative experience. As the former Program Coordinator of the Education Department at St. Francis College, she has successfully navigated various databases and digital resources, thus demonstrating her familiarity with learning new systems. In addition, she served as the primary liaison between students, faculty, administration, the public, and the Department, and can therefore demonstrate a level of comfort and success at communicating with various parties on behalf of an organization.

Colleen Ryan is professor of Italian at Indiana University, where she teaches a range of courses in contemporary Italian film, literature, and theater studies as well as Italian American and Italian diaspora studies and foreign language pedagogy. She also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies of Italian and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer for her department. Since joining the association in 2015, she has been actively partaking in all of IASA’s national and international conferences, presenting on research panels and round tables on curriculum development and teaching. For the last three years she has served as IASA’s secretary and has learned a great deal about the association’s history, membership, executive team, the current future vision, and the social and intellectual responsibilities. She very much enjoys the work and being part of the leadership team that fosters IASA’s keenly interdisciplinary profile and top-notch professionalism. In her view, IASA plays a pivotal role in the shaping of ethnicity focused humanities scholarship and education, and it would be an honor and pleasure for her to both continue and expand her role within the Association’s leadership team. She is committed to the punctual and accurate reporting of all association business to the membership and to collaborating with IASA’s  officers and membership to foster clear and effective Communication.

Michela Valmori is a scholar of Italian American studies, serving as an Italian-as-an-L2 instructor at the University of Bologna. In 2017/2018, Michela was a Fulbright Visiting Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame, where she taught a cross-listed course on the Culture of Italian American emigration, and where she completed the writing of her family memoir, Rosa, the untold story of an Italian American immigrant and her hidden secrets. Apart from many publications both in the field of Italian American studies and Italian L2 teaching methodologies, Michela is a co-founder of “Strade Dorate, Osservatorio di Letteratura e Cultura Italoamericana” (https://www.stradedorate.org/), an educational project born in September 2020, aiming for the diffusion, in Italy, of the culture and literary production of the Italian American immigration. Nowadays, her area of interest and expertise has come to include the literary investigation of the patterns of gender violence within the immigrant Italian American communities at the beginning of 1900.

Serving also a teacher of languages and literatures in a local high school, as a potential IASA EC
member, Michela would be glad to develop interdisciplinary projects to diffuse the still-neglected patterns of the Italian American diasporic experience, addressing the juvenile public of teenagers and young adults. She firmly believes that educating the youngest generations is key to a brighter future. Michela is a lively professional, synergically dedicated to the methodologies of language teaching and the thorough research of all the factors that render the Italian American universe so unique and fascinating.