This is a reminder that the April 15 deadline is approaching for this Call for Papers.

I invite you to submit abstracts for the following edited volume.

*Shifting and Shaping a National Identity: A Study of literature written in
Italian by and about migrants in Italy. **(Edited volume)*

* *

The study of migration in Italy and other countries is a field of
knowledge that daily puzzles and disturbs us as we witness the social
upheaval that results from the encounter between immigrants and the
“native” population that frequently resist their presence.

Perhaps nothing is more symptomatic of the need for a new exploration of
the so-called migration literature in Italy than the fact that the term
itself is strongly debated and frequently found to be inaccurate,
insufficient, and incapable of reflecting the current reality in many ways.
Indeed, the national debate that rages in various forums on a daily basis
clearly indicates that a reevaluation of the reciprocal impact between the
native and imported cultures and the ways it manifests itself in all
aspects of the socio-political reality is of urgent concern.

In addition to these background issues that should inform a study of
Italian “migrant” literature, we would like to further probe the many ways
in which the migrant culture can illuminate the relationship from both
directions: the strategies deployed by the migrant to achieve inclusion,
and those deployed by the destination culture to exclude the newly
arrived.

Some of the crucial issues and questions that can be addressed are:

1. The nature of narratives of the migrant experience written by
second generation authors.

2. Consider native Italian authors who narrate the migration
experience. Does their lack of authentic first-hand experience disqualify
them?

3. Articulate some of the points of divergence and convergence between
internal and external immigration.

4. Origin and hybridity. Problematizing the (false ?) dichotomy of
“native vs. immigrant.

5. Consider the geo-political implications of “deterritorializing”
language for any migrant literature.

6. Migrant women writers: the double jeopardy of identity. Since women
are the carriers and transmitters of culture, what are some of the ways
that they function as the nexus between the original culture
and the destination culture?

7. The poetics/esthetics of migrant literature. In light of Deleuze
and Guattari’s pronouncement that any minor literature begins by expressing
itself but does not conceptualize, can migrant literature therefore be
considered “literature” or is it merely a form of expression that falls
short of literary standards?

8. Attempt to theorize “transmigration” as the current and future
operational model of global paths of migration and the expression of
problematized identities through multi-lingual narrative in a destination
culture.

Proposed abstracts need not be limited to these topics.

*Please submit a 500 word abstract to Grace Russo Bullaro at
[log in to unmask]