Redirecting Ethnic Singularity

Winner: Vasiliki Karagiannaki Prize for the Best Edited Volume in Modern Greek Studies

Promotes the understanding of Italian Americans and Greek Americans through the study of their interactions and juxtapositions.

Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation contributes to U.S. ethnic and immigration studies by bringing into conversation scholars working in the fields of Italian American and Greek American studies in the United States, Europe, and Australia. The work moves beyond the “single group” approach—an approach that privileges the study of ethnic singularity––to explore instead two ethnic groups in relation to each other in the broader context of the United States. The chapters bring into focus transcultural interfaces and inquire comparatively about similarities and differences in cultural representations associated with these two groups.

This co-edited volume contributes to the fields of transcultural and comparative studies. The book is multi-disciplinary. It features scholarship from the perspectives of architecture, ethnomusicology, education, history, cultural and literary studies, and film studies, as well as whiteness studies. It examines the production of ethnicity in the context of American political culture as well as that of popular culture, including visual representations (documentary, film, TV series) and “low brow” crime fiction. It includes analysis of literature. It involves comparative work on religious architecture, transoceanic circulation of racialized categories, translocal interconnections in the formation of pan-Mediterranean identities, and the making of the immigrant past in documentaries from Italian and Greek filmmakers. This volume is the first of its kind in initiating a multidisciplinary transcultural and comparative study across European Americans.

Yiorgos Anagnostou is Professor and the Director of the Modern Greek Program at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America.Kalogeras Yiorgos D. :

Yiorgos D. Kalogeras is Professor Emeritus of American ethnic and minority literature. He taught until his retirement (2018) at the Department of English Aristotle at University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books.Patrona Theodora :

Theodora Patrona is affiliated with the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece, as Special Teaching Fellow (EDIP). She is the author of Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature.Arapoglou Eleftheria :

Eleftheria Arapoglou has been teaching in the American Studies department at UC Davis since 2012. Before that she taught at Aristotle University and Anatolia College in Greece. She has received several fellowships and scholarships from the Fulbright Program, the Friends of the Princeton University Library, and the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, among others. She has coedited six volumes and has contributed as an assistant editor to two special issues of the journal GRAMMA. Her monograph A Bridge over the Balkans: Demetra Vaka Brown and the Tradition of “Women’s Orients” was published by Gorgias Press in 2011, while her most recent publications are Mobile Narratives: Travel, Migration, and Transculturation (Routledge, 2013) and Racial and Ethnic Identities in the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).Balodimas-Bartolomei Angelyn :

Angelyn Balodimas-Bartolomei is a professor in the School of Education at North Park University–Chicago and coordinator of the ESL/Bilingual Teachers Endorsement and MALLC programs. In both Greece and America, she earned degrees in Greek studies and social work; Greek pedagogy; linguistics/ESL; and comparative international education and policy studies. Having received numerous grants, Angie has performed extensive studies on Greek Americans and Italian Americans, southern Italian Griki, Greek Romaniote Jews, and the endangered Colognoro dialect of Tuscany. She has also examined Holocaust education in Greece, anti-Mafia education, Italian images in foreign language textbooks, and Italian American statue makers. Her latest work focuses on the Greek communities of Europe.Cocola Jim :

Jim Cocola is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the author of Places in the Making: A Cultural Geography of American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2016). A past chair of the Modern Language Association’s Forum on Italian American Language, Literature, and Culture, he has published related work in journals including Italian Americana, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and VIA: Voices in Italian Americana.de Lucia Francesca :

Francesca de Lucia taught at Minzu University in Beijing from 2016 to 2020 and previously worked as associate professor at Zhejiang Normal University of China in Jinhua. Her book Italian American Cultural Fictions: From Diaspora to Globalization was published by Peter Lang in 2017. Her research focuses on ethnicity and American identity in literature, with a particular concentration on the work of Italian American and Chinese American authors.Gabaccia Donna R. :

Donna R. Gabaccia is professor of history emerita at the University of Toronto. She previously served as director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of many books and articles on class, gender, and ethnicity in American immigration history, on migration in global history, and on Italian emigration around the world. She is a past president of the Social Science History Association and writes often about interdisciplinarity in migration studies. She is a descendant of Italian migrants and the first person in her family to obtain a higher education.Gardaphe Fred :

Fred Gardaphe is distinguished professor of English and Italian/American studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. He is a Fulbright fellow (University of Salerno, 2011) and past president of the Italian American Studies Association (formerly AIHA), MELUS, and the Working Class Studies Association. His books include Italian Signs, American Streets (Duke University Press, 1996), From Wiseguys to Wise Men (Routledge, 2006), The Art of Reading Italian Americana (Bordighera, 2011), and Read ’Em and Reap (Bordighera, 2017). He is cofounder and coeditor of VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, editor of the Italian American Culture Series of SUNY Press, and associate editor of the Fra Noi.Kourelis Kostis :

Kostis Kourelis is an architectural historian who specializes in the archaeology of the Mediterranean and how it shapes modern notions of identity, space, and aesthetics. His recent fieldwork focuses on the archaeology of labor, housing, and modern immigration. He directs archaeological surveys of deserted villages and refugee camps in Greece, as well as ethnic slums, temporary housing, and internment camps in the United States. He is associate professor of art history at Franklin & Marshall College.League Panayotis :

Panayotis League is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Florida State University and director of the Center for Music of the Americas. His research has appeared in Ethnomusicology, the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Journal of Greek Media and Culture, and The Harvard Review of Latin America. His monograph Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora was published in 2021.Luconi Stefano :

Stefano Luconi teaches US history at the University of Padua in Italy. His research interests focus on immigration to the United States, with specific attention to Italian Americans’ voting behavior and transformation of ethnic identity. His publications include From Paesani to White Ethnics: The Italian Experience in Philadelphia (SUNY Press, 2001) and The Italian-American Vote in Providence, Rhode Island, 1916–1948 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004). His most recent book is L’anima nera degli Stati Uniti: Quattrocento anni di presenza afro-americana (CLEUP, 2020).Markodimitrakis Michail C. :

Michail C. Markodimitrakis is an associate liaison expert for the UNHCR in Greece. His ethnographic field research focuses on host countries, policies on migration, and the experiences of displaced populations in host communities, along with representations of ethnicity, nationality, and racism in digital media and archives. He has published book chapters and articles on popular culture, with an ongoing interest in intermedial representations of the Other, abject fear, horror, and embodiments of evil. He has taught modules on academic research and writing, ethnic studies, Anglophone literature, and Greek/English for speakers of other languages.Piperoglou Andonis :

Andonis Piperoglou is an adjunct research fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. He is a cultural historian who examines the interrelationship between migration, race, and ethnicity across settler-colonial worlds and is interested in bringing Mediterranean and Pacific histories into conversation. He has published widely in various scholarly outputs, including the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, the Journal of Australian Studies, History Australia, Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, Australian Historical Studies, and the Australian Journal of Politics and History. He currently serves on the Executive of the International Australian Studies Association and was recently awarded an Australian National University Herbert and Valmae Freilich Early Career Research Grant. Andonis is also a cofounder of the Australian Migration History Network, Australia’s chief national body for migration history.Soumakis Fevronia K. :

Fevronia K. Soumakis taught in the history and education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, until 2019. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the European Languages and Literatures Department at Queens College, City University of New York. Her academic research interests include the history of education, immigration and ethnicity, and religion and education. She has recently completed a coedited volume titled Educating Greek Americans: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Pathways (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and was past Program Chair for Division F, History and Historiography, of the American Educational Research Association.Zangari Sostene Massimo :

Sostene Massimo Zangari specializes in US ethnic writing between the wars. He has published articles on Herman Melville, Richard Wright, Michael Gold, and John Fante. He has coauthored two studies on American culture and literature, Americana: Storie e culture degli Stati Uniti dalla A alla Z (Il Saggiatore, 2012), and Guida alla letteratura degli Stati Uniti (Odoya, 2014).Anagnostou Yiorgos :

Yiorgos Anagnostou is Professor and the Director of the Modern Greek Program at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America.Kalogeras Yiorgos D. :

Yiorgos D. Kalogeras is Professor Emeritus of American ethnic and minority literature. He taught until his retirement (2018) at the Department of English Aristotle at University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books.Patrona Theodora :

Theodora Patrona is affiliated with the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece, as Special Teaching Fellow (EDIP). She is the author of Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature.Yiorgos Anagnostou (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Yiorgos Anagnostou is Professor and the Director of the Modern Greek Program at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America.

Yiorgos D. Kalogeras (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Yiorgos D. Kalogeras is Professor Emeritus of American ethnic and minority literature. He taught until his retirement (2018) at the Department of English Aristotle at University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books.

Theodora Patrona (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Theodora Patrona is affiliated with the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece, as Special Teaching Fellow (EDIP). She is the author of Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature.

[These] works provide a deeper understanding of the definition of white and nonwhite and show an appreciation for the losses of those who immigrated to the United States.

Redirecting Ethnic Singularity makes an important contribution to burning questions of American Identity. It is the first to study the parallel and sometimes intersecting experiences of Greek and Italian Americans, who were racialized others when they first immigrated to the US and non-melting ethnics in the eyes of Anglophone Northern European Americans. Each article gives attention to some common aspect of the two groups’ entry into white colonial settler culture in North America with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality. To view these two groups’ histories comparatively is to bring out unexpected features of identity formation in the US.---Artemis Leontis, C. P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan

A major contribution to ethnic studies, this book offers a much needed comparative (transnational) approach to the investigation of Italian and Greek American ethnic groups with ties across several countries. It challenges the academy’s feckless characterization of these groups as ‘white,’ European, and superficially ethnic. The contributors point out the continuing vitality of Greek and Italian American cultures and most importantly, locate their affinities in a shared Mediterranean culture of origin. The book provides a rightfully dynamic view of how ethnic subjects today actually project and symbolically deploy their identitarian negotiations in a variety of media.---William Boelhower, author of Atlantic Studies, Prospects and Challenges and Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, Revised and Enlarged Edition.