Italian-Canadian identity in Udine

Solidifying Friulian connection with immigrants in upcoming conference

The international conference Oltre la storia: Au-delà de l'histoire (Beyond history - Contemporary Italian-Canadian Identity) will take place in Udine on May 20 to 22. The organizers are University of Udine's Centre of Canadian Culture, the Department of Germanic and Romance Languages and Literatures of the same university, and the Association of Italian Canadian Writers. The Canadian Embassy, the Délegation du Québec and the Committee for the Development of Humanistic and Linguistic Studies have pledged their collaboration.
Some 40 Italian-Canadian cultural operators and representatives of Canada's most prestigious universities will take part in the conference and its lectures, performances, and round tables.
To mention but a few: publisher Antonio D'Alfonso, authors Gianna Patriarca, Genny Gunn, Marco Micone, Mary Di Michele, Joseph Pivato, Caterina Edwards, Kenneth Scambray, our own Angela Baldassarre (who will intervene on "Italian-Canadian Image in Canadian Cinema"), Domenic Beneventi, Michael De Carli, Giovanni Costa, and Ralph Alfonso.
They will join a large number of university professors and researchers from the Udine university and from many more, including Rome, Trieste, Milan, Bologna, Padua, and Trento in Italy; and Paris, Antwerp, Ljubliana, Debrecen, and Szeged out of it.
They feel the fascination, some say, of the Italian-Canadian cultural identity. Judging from the premises of this conference, this phenomenon does not concern Canada and Italy alone. If so many academic institutions, from neither country, are studying it, then it has truly acquired international resonance.
Udine has been chosen as the ideal location for this conference for several reasons. First of all, the Centre of Canadian Culture is among Italy's most active; second, this region did away with the rhetoric about emigration, approaching it with a pragmatic approach.
Emigrating for centuries, Friulians managed to identify and exploit the resources hidden in their peregrinations. They overcame the purely emotional aspects, a constant in every Diaspora, to valorize the exchange of experiences, and the enrichment this entails.
This is how the "fogolars", which were created wherever Friulians went, became places of aggregation and conservation of their culture of origin, as well as a bridge with the Old Country.
It is not by chance that, through the fogolars, Ente Friuli nel Mondo has been keeping in touch those who left with those who stayed.
Here, the specific character of Friulian emigration to Canada was well understood: the Region supported it, and for the past 10 years (since the University of Udine created the Centre of Canadian Culture) analyzed it looking for signs of the future.
In summary, Canada is seen as an immense laboratory on the Italian as well as Friulian Diaspora: this is the concept being followed in the austere halls of Palazzo Antonini, the headquarters of the Friulian university.
We talked about this with Anna Pia De Luca and Alessandra Ferraro, who are busy organizing the conference on behalf of the Centre (directed by Professor Valerio Bruni).
Within the Centre, De Luca deals with Anglophone, Ferraro with Francophone Canada.
Anna Pia De Luca, however, has a special relationship with Canada, far beyond scientific study. "It's my youth," she says. "I lived for 23 years in Toronto, at Lawrence and Keele. I got a degree from UofT's St. Michael's College, where I left many friends whom I still keep in touch with. For instance, I remember young and elegant Prof. Gianrenzo Clivio, who made more than one girl's heart beat faster. I also remember with affection my classmates Domenico and Damiano Pietropaolo, Alberto Di Giovanni, Olga Pugliese, and Anthony Verna."
Her story is exemplary: her father Alfredo left Treppo Grande ("the town of Julian Fantino, whom I hold in great esteem") for Toronto just after WWII. In those years the city was growing fast, and he easily found a job in construction.
He didn't stop there, though: nowadays, people in Toronto and Windsor remember Alfredo De Luca and his son Enzo as the founders of Siena Foods and Colio Wines. Anna Pia arrived in Toronto at a few months of age, and returned to Italy at 23.
"Can you understand why I hold Canada in my heart and in my mind?" she asks.
The conference is subtitled "Contemporary Italian-Canadian Cultural Identity". Why did you choose to underscore "contemporary"?
"Being an Italian-Canadian myself, I interpret it like this: we know quite well what sort of cultural elaboration we've produced to date. Now we want to understand what we'll be doing tomorrow. That's why the main title of the conference is Beyond History. Let me explain with an example: Italian-Canadian literary production, up to a few years ago, revolved around immigration with all its emotional implications. However, mass emigration to Canada ended 30 years ago. That moment in history is over. Let's see and codify what we Italian-Canadians did after that, and not just in literature."
On this, you will find an ally in Antonio D'Alfonso. A few years ago, he told me in an interview that Italian-Canadian authors should "abandon the stereotypes of nostalgia, Mafia, and spaghetti. Those are trite clichés, which do not help us in identifying an Italian-Canadian culture." Do you agree?
"Of course I do. On the other hand, D'Alfonso and I, as well as other Italian-Canadian scholars, discussed this issue in depth. Nostalgia was for many years an unearned income for many authors, not only Italian-Canadians, who found rich pastures in the immigration genre. But as I said, ships have stopped filling up with immigrants 30 years ago. There are new realities to be dealt with. Let's see how Italian-Canadian writers fare; after all, in the literary landscape out of Italy they occupy a rather relevant spot."
Which new realities are those?
"Just think of multiculturalism, multiethnical cultures, or the identity of people moving from one continent to another. These topics are increasingly hot, not just in Canadian society but also in Italy and in Friuli. Multiculturalism, for instance, fostered great openness towards 'those who come from afar', i.e. people who do not recognize themselves in an Anglophone canon. That allowed many Italian-Canadian authors to overcome the marginalitization of their hybrid status and build a new identity, based precisely on their being hybrids, thus vindicating their contribution to society."
Filippo Salvatore once told me that Italians in Canada were a bridge that spanned 'the two solitudes', the Anglophone and the Francophone.
"That's true. Because second- and third-generation immigrants, most of all, do not feel victimized by history, but rather full-fledged protagonists in a country that they daily contribute to, modifying and enriching it with their work. Even more, let us go beyond the stereotypes for all the reasons we've said, but let's not underestimate the literature of emigration produced by Italian-Canadian authors. It presents an aspect that differentiates it from any other: by telling their experiences and the difficulties of integration in a country with both Anglophone and Francophone traditions, those authors dispelled the aura of myth surrounding the status of immigrant, embracing a transcultural and transnational identity. Very modern, don't you think?"
You're telling me that the literature of emigration produced by Italian-Canadians differs from any other produced elsewhere. Why did that happen in Canada?
"Because Canada is not one homogeneous space, but a set of different spaces, which entails views that induce people to go beyond the borders of their national origin and access other places, memories belonging to other peoples and other cultures. From this standpoint, there's no place like Canada. One of the fundamental themes of the conference will be Italian-Canadian identity and the implications of being Italian, or Friulian, in a multiethnic and multilingual place such as Canada."
Alessandra Ferraro explains the meaning of this conference. "This is the ideal continuation," she says, "of two other international conferences that the Centre of Canadian Culture organized in the past. The first was Cultural Palimpsests - Immigration's Contributions to Canadian Literature, held in Udine in May 1998, and the second was Italy and Canadian Culture. Nationalisms in the New Millennium, May 18-20 2000. The proceedings of those conferences, published by Forum, became an important reference for studies in this sector."
Is that the reason why you secured some prestigious collaborations?
"Yes, it is. It was not by chance that this year's conference saw an active role of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers, which celebrates its 10th biennial congress and 20th anniversary on this occasion. The Association's delegation will be led by Licia Canton."
How will the works proceed, technically?
"There will be a sort of comparison, as the conference will include both artists, intellectuals, and writers of Italian origin, who distinguished themselves in Canada, and scholars from major Canadian and European universities, who will analyze their works and the significance of Italian presence in contemporary Canadian society. There will be different modes of intervention: scientific works by historians, anthropologists, and literary critics, will be accompanied by readings and performances, movie and videoclip screenings, exhibitions of figurative artworks and books. There's even more."
What is that?
"Beyond its indisputable scientific value, the conference will offer its audience a chance to know a cultural production that is hard to access from Italy. It will also confirm the University of Udine's pivotal role in the development of Italian-Canadian studies. Considering an entire session will be devoted to Canadian artists of Friulian origin, it will also contribute to strengthen the links, already very solid, with Friulian communities in Canada."

Publication Date: 2004-02-15
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3651