Betsy Mathias, who is planning a move to Charlottesville VA from Sea Cliff NY, has been occupied with conferences in the interim. She organized a panel, "The Power of Images in Modern Italy" for the annual conference of the 'Mediterranean Studies Association" held in Lisbon at the "Luso-American Development Foundation "from May 27-30,1998. The participants were Betsy, our own Moyra Byrne and Richard Raspa, and Robert Davis of Ohio State. Betsy and Moyra also organized a panel, "Images and Transitions in 19th and 20th Century Italy" for the 14th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Williamsburg VA in July, with Laura Operti from Italy and Edith Tumer as discussant.

Steve Siporin spoke on "Jewish Italian Folklore: The Way the Venetian Ghetto is Remembered." for "The Italian Jewish Experience," a symposium at the Center for Italian Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook, October 24-25, 1998. The symposium included a photographic exhibit ("The Roman Ghetto and Other Views of the Eternal City") and 7 panels, and Steve notes that interest in Italian Jewry is flowering: see the conference announcement below.

Joan Saverino is the local scholar for the "Raising Our Sites: Community Histories of Pennsylvania" project at the Germantown Historical Society. The project will document Italian immigration and settlement to northwest Philadelphia (primarily Germantown and Chestnut Hill). It is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the first phase of a three phase plan has been funded. The ultimate goal is that the documentation will result in a permanent exhibit that interprets the history and cultural experiences of the diverse ethnic populations represented in northwest Philadelphia.

Luisa Del Giudice recently served as curator for "Essential Salento: A Festival of Salentine Culture," and our readers should find the press release of interest:

Event: ESSENTIAL SALENTO: Festival of Salentine Culture
Date: October 18 - 23, 1998
Location: ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA

UCLA/ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM
Contacts: Alberto Pranzo, Producer (310) 443-3250, Ext. 102

Luisa Del Giudice, Curator (310) 474-1408

Festival of Salentine Culture: Tarantulism, Music, and More come to Los Angeles this October

The Salento, one of the "last frontiers" on the far southeastern tip of the Italian heel, represents a Mediterranean landscape of haunting beauty and a traditional culture still largely unknown to Italians and to the world. Essential Salento, a festival of Salentine culture, brings select "essences" of the region in images, flavors, and especially sounds, to Los Angeles this October.

The program features the US premiere of Aramire, an ensemble of traditional Salentine music, in the concert "Spider's Bite" (Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, Sunday, October 18, 2:00 p.m.), focussing on the pizzica tarantata, the ritual music of centuriesold Tarantismo (the cure for the tarantula's bite). Also featured will be the award-winning film by Edoardo Winspeare, "Pizzicata," a story of a young peasant girl "bitten' as a response to the tragic climax of a love conflict, when she must choose between an Italian American WWII pilot shot down over the Salento, and the fiance to whom she has been betrothed. (Italian Cultural Institute, 1023 Hilgard Ave., Westwood, October 18, 5:30 p.m.; Oct. 19, 21, 7:00 p.m.). Another program highlight includes the photographic exhibit by Fernando Bevilacqua, which captures the ancient stones, the sea, and twisted olive trees, as well as the human landscape, of the Salento.

Tarantismo was a form of music-therapy practiced especially by young peasant women in southern Apulia who had been "bitten" by a venomous spider (the "tarantola"), presumably while working in the fields. To cure one afflicted by the spider's mythic bite required the music of tambourine, harmonica, and fiddle, in the accelerating rhythms of the pizzica tarantata. After several days, the suffering tarantata was "cured"--or at least relieved of the need to dance--until "rebitten," usually at one-year intervals. In the chapel near the Baroque church of Galatina, dedicated to St. Paul, patron saint of tarantulism, the tarantate assembled each year to dance, pay homage, and be released from the spider's web and the saint's curse. Such healing rituals, once found throughout the South, and perhaps a distant legacy of ancient Greek orgiastic cults, seemed to have lasted longest in southern Apulia and may yet be alive. The pizzica is currently undergoing a vast revival throughout the Salento, southern Italy, and is capturing the attention of international audiences. This irresistible "new sound" (for Los Angeles audiences, at least) is sure to capture the attention of World Music aficionados.

Essential Salento, produced by Alberto Pranzo and curated by UCLA professor of folklore, Luisa Del Giudice, is co-sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Province of Lecce, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and UCLA /Armand Hammer Museum. This program will inaugurate a three-year collaboration between the Province of Lecce and the city of Los Angeles, culminating in an international and interdisciplinary conference: Performing Ecstasies: Music, Dance, and Ritual in the Mediterranean, at UCLA in the year 2000.

Luisa Del Giudice
Italian Oral History Project
Department of Italian
212 Royce Hall, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

tel: (310) 474-1408 fax: (310) 474-3188 email: luisadg@ucla.edu

MEMBER PUBLICATION/PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES

Cristina Bacchilega has coedited with Danielle Roemer a special issue of Marvels and Tales on "Angela Carter and the Literary Marchen." Cristina adds that as review editor of Marvels & Tales, she welcomes input from the Italian Section of AFS regarding new books, exhibits, performances, tapes etc. focusing on the Italian and Italian-American folk/fairy tale. If you are interested in reviewing such material or simply in getting the word out that these works should be reviewed, please contact Cristina at . The journal, by the way, also publishes texts and translations of folk/fairy tales: Donald Haase, the editor, can be contacted for that.

NEW BOOK

Martino Marazzi, Little America: Gli Stati Uniti e gli scrittori italiani del Novecento. Publisher: Marcos y Marcos - via Settala 78, 20124 Milano, Italy -ph. 02/2951-7420. 1997.

The U.S. as seen through the eyes of Italian writers and intellectuals, from fascism to contemporary pundits. Love and hate, critical insight and laughable stupidity by the Italian elites throughout a century where emigration, the ideology of anti-Americanism, the appeal of the Sixties counterculture, and the skeptical perspectives of the present have contributed to changing radically the meaning of the American dream.

FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES The Most Ancient of Minorities: History and Culture of the Jews of Italy" (An intemational and interdisciplinary conference devoted to exploring the many facets of Jewish life in Italy, from antiquity to the twentieth century). To be held at the Hofstra Cultural Center at Hofstra University, April 15-17,1999.

Two Souths: Towards an Agenda for Comparative Study of the American South and the Italian Mezzogiomo l999 Commonwealth Fund Conference, 29-30 January 1999

The Department of History at University College London invites interested scholars to attend the 1999 Commonwealth Fund Conference. Organized around the theme, "Two Souths: Towards an Agenda for Comparative Study of the American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno, the conference will take place in London on 29-30 January. Professor Peter Kolchin of the University of Delaware will deliver the keynote address.

A complete program is attached below. Additional information, including registration materials and a position paper, can be found at the conference web site, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/future.htm

Questions about the conference or about logistical matters should be directed to Rick Halpern, Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK Email: ucrahex@ucl.ac.uk

Session One: Constructions of the South

CHAIR: Robert Lumley (UCL)

Catherine Clinton (Wofford College, South Carolina), "Remembrance of Things Imagined: Southern Reconstructions from 1865-1936"

Susanna Delfino (Universita di Genova), "reconstructing Economies, Constructing Ideas of Southern Backwardness in Italy and the United States"

John Dickie (UCL), "The Image of the South in Post-Unification Italy"

COMMENT: Maurizio Vaudagna (Universita di BaA) COMMENT: Robert Cook (Sheffield)

KEYNOTE:

Peter Kolchin (University of Delaware), "The American South in Comparative Perspective"

COMMENT: Piero Bevilacqua (IMES)

Session Two: Elites
CHAIR: William Dusinberre (Warwick)

Marta Petrusewicz (Hunter College), "Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century Italian South"

Kenneth S. Greenberg (Suffolk University, Boston), "Honor and Sectional Conflict in Antebellum America"

COMMENT: Giovanni Montroni (Universita di Napoli) COMMENT: Richard Follett (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Session Three: Migration
CHAIR: Charles Stewart (UCL)

Donna Gabaccia (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), "Two Great Migrations: The American and Italian Souths in Comparative Perspective"

Hilary Partridge (University of Manchester), "Southem Migrants and the Transformation of Shop Floor Culture at Fiat, 1945-60"

Heather Thompson (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), "Southern Migrants and Shop Floor Culture in Detroit's Automobile Plants, 1940-65"

COMMENT: James Grossman (Newberry Library) COMMENT: Ferdinando Fasce (Universita di Genova)

Session Four: Race, Class, and Nation
CHAIR: Harvard Sitkoff (New Hampshire/Dublin)

Jonathan D. Wells (Michigan), "Rethinking Class and Race in the Antebellum South"

Enrico Dal Lago (UCL), "From Radicalism to Nationalism: Northern 'Liberators' and Southem Labourers in the United States and Italy, 1830-1860"

David Blight (Amherst), "Did the South Win the Struggle Over the Memory of the Civil War and Emancipation?"

COMMENT: Nancy MacLean (Northwestern University) COMMENT: Carl Levy (Goldsmiths College)

Session Five: Rural Workers and Agrarian Transformation
CHAIR: Daniel Letwin (Penn State)

Lucy Riall (Birkbeck College), "Land Reform and Land Ownership in Southem Italy, 1817-1862"

Steven Hahn (University of California, San Diego), "The Politics of Rural Laborers in the Postbellum American South"
COMMENT: Jeremy Krikler (Essex)
COMMENT: Alex Lichtenstein (Florida International)

CHAIR: J. William Harris (New Hampshire)
Stephanie McCurry (University of California, San Diego), "The Difference It Makes?: Feminist Approaches to Southem History"
Giovanna Fiume (Universita di Palermo), "Making Women Visible in the History of the Mezzogiomo"
COMMENT: Louise Tilly (New School for Social Research)
COMMENT: Valeria Gennaro Lerda (Universita di Genova)

FINAL ROUNDTABLE:

CHAIR: Don Doyle (Vanderbilt University)
PARTICIPANTS: Bruce Levine (University of California, Santa Cruz) Salvatore Lupo (IMES), Franco Benigno, (IMES) Bertram Wyatt-Brown (Florida)

SYLLABUS SHARING Peter Dorato asks whether anyone is teaching a continuing education Italian culture class similar to his own (announcement below). He may be reached at peter@eece.unm.edu. This newsletter shares an Italian FoLklore syllabus from Steve Siporin: please send your own for our collective enrichment.

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ISAFS
Dorothy Noyes
Department of English
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Columbus OH 43210-1370