Originally founded under the name “Diversity & Italian Studies” in 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, this group was created as a space to reflect critically on longstanding inequities and exclusions in the university setting and within the field of Italian Studies itself. Recognizing that Italian Studies too often imagines Italy as an homogeneous national place or cultural phenomenon, we host an annual speaker series which proposes to interrogate what exactly it is that we, who work in the field, research; how we research it, and how we teach it. As a group, we have sought to bring to campus speakers whose work (creative or scholarly) contributes to decentering the hegemonic white, cisgender, able-bodied, male gaze in Italian Studies.
Initially meeting online, the group alternated between a speaker series and a reading group on new approaches to Italian Studies. From Fall 2021 to Spring 2022, we collaborated with the UC Berkeley Italian Migration Studies Working Group to host hybrid events. Since Fall 2021, our main events have returned to in-person gatherings at Yale.
Our work has historically been supported by the Yale Dean’s Fund, the Yale Center for Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration (RITM), and the Yale European Studies Council, among other organizations. Other(ed) Italies events have attracted attention both within Yale and beyond. While our working group centers Italy, our speakers’ research and creative production is in conversation with numerous fields. Past speakers’ research can be placed within fields that vary widely–from Classics to Sociology, from Diaspora & Transnational Studies to Film & Media Studies. Historically, the events we have organized have attracted a highly interdisciplinary audience. Our events have been attended by students, faculty, and staff from not only the Italian Studies department, but also from numerous other departments and programs at Yale such as Comparative Literature; Spanish & Portuguese; French; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS); American Studies; Early Modern Studies; and Medieval Studies.
Following recent political shifts, we felt a renewed urgency to carry on this work at a time when the institutions that produce knowledge in the United States face significant challenges. As a group, we are committed to thinking collectively about how our field can respond to these pressures. The group’s new name, “Other(ed) Italies,” reflects its growth and its commitment to sustaining a space where Italian Studies can be rethought in relation to wider contexts and future directions.