Responding to long-standing issues of racism, lack of diversity, and colonial knowledge production in the corporate university space, the Yale Diversity & Italian Studies Working Group was founded by Serena Bassi and Federica Parodi in the Spring of 2020 amid renewed conversations about systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd.
The group strives to continue this work by showcasing Italian Studies scholarship which complicates the modern fiction that Italy is a monocultural and homogeneous nation-state.
To do this, the series aims to broaden the scope of our studies beyond Italy’s borders, adopting a transnational approach that necessarily dismantles the canonical, white, and ethnocentric Italian Studies curriculum. The working group invites speakers from various fields, both within and beyond academia, to speak to broad questions of diversity relating to their research.
Initially, the working group met online, alternating between a speaker series and reading group meetings on diversifying Italian Studies. From Fall 2021 to Spring 2022, we worked jointly with the UC Berkeley Italian Migration Studies Working Group, hosting hybrid events. As of Fall 2021, our speaker series is back in person.
Our efforts are generously supported by the Yale Dean’s Fund, the Yale Center for Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration (RITM), and the Yale European Studies Council. Our events have attracted the attention of the field at Yale and beyond.
Past guests
Spring 2025
- David Aliano ( University of Mount Saint Vincent)
Fall 2024
- Grazia Ting Deng (Brandeis University), Chinese Espresso: A Convivial Story from Italy
- Avery McGraw (University of Connecticut), Trans Italy: Medical Discourse and Queer Activism in the Postwar Republic
Spring 2024
- Ubah Cristina Ali Farah (novelist, organized with the Yale Mediterranean Series)
- Catherine Bloomer (Brandeis University), Sordi e muti e loro simili: A Critical Disability Studies Approach to Dante
Fall 2023
Chiara Benetollo (The Petey Greene Program), “Who Gets to the Top? Alpinism, Body Politics, and the National Construction of the Italian National State”
Spring 2023
Gian Maria Annovi (USC Dornsife), “A Gathering of Others: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Identity Politics”
Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins), “Beyond the Wine-Dark Sea”
Fall 2022 (with UC Berkeley Italian Migration Studies Working Group)
Gaoheng Zhang (University of British Columbia), “Dogmeat, Chop Suey, and “Mozzarella Gialla”: Communicating Chinese Migrant Alimentary Stereotypes in Italian Popular Culture”
Camilla Hawthorne (UC Santa Cruz), “Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean”
Spring 2022 (with UC Berkeley Italian Migration Studies Working Group)
Emily Wilbourne (Queens College/CUNY), “Race, Musicians, and Meaning in Seventeenth Century Florence”
Lala Hu (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), “Sino-Italian Identities: The Documentation of Crisis and Social Participation through Writing”
Spring 2021
Pier Mattia Tommasino (Columbia University), “Port Voices, Courtly Texts: the Letters of Livorno’s Imam Bulghaith Al-Darawi (1664-1667)”
Angelica Pesarini (NYU Florence), “From Black Lives Matters to Black Italia. How to Rethink Knowledge Production in Italian Studies”