As part of the 2025 Italian American Studies Association (IASA) Annual Conference, Dr. Matteo Brera (Università degli Studi di Padova / Seton Hall University), Dr. Sara Galli (Dickinson College), and Mattia Ragazzoni (University of Toronto) will present on a panel entitled “Teaching Italian Across Borders: Transnational Strategies, Print Culture, and Identity Formation.”
Chaired by Professor Franco Pierno (University of Toronto / Accademia della Crusca), the session explores the historical and cultural dynamics of Italian language instruction in North America, from early grammar books to 20th-century ethno-cultural activism.
Dr. Brera’s paper focuses on the work of Dr. Frank Loria, president of the Dante Alighieri Society of New Orleans in the 1930s, and his campaign to preserve and promote the Italian language in the American South. Drawing on Italian-language newspapers such as La Voce Coloniale, Brera examines how the ethnic press served not only as a tool for literacy and cultural pride but also as a medium through which Italian Americans navigated their racial status in a segregated society. The study situates Loria’s linguistic activism within the broader context of Fascist Italy’s cultural diplomacy and the fraught racial hierarchies of New Orleans, where Italians were often considered “not quite white.” Using archival materials from Tulane University and the University of New Orleans, Brera reveals how language instruction and print culture became vital mechanisms for both community empowerment and the formation of transnational identity.
Dr. Sara Galli’s presentation turns to the Norris Collection housed at Dickinson College, which preserves rare 17th-century volumes dedicated to teaching Italian. Originating from the personal library of Mary Norris Dickinson, these multilingual texts—written in Latin, English, and French—illustrate early European approaches to Italian as a second language. Galli contrasts the pedagogical philosophies embedded in works like Mulerius’s Linguae Italicae Compendiosa Institutio and Paravicino’s Les Premiers Rudimens, drawing attention to their grammatical and practical orientations. Her research not only situates these texts within a broader transatlantic educational context but also positions them as foundational to the institution’s longer history of Italian language instruction. The talk concludes by connecting these early pedagogies to modern, inclusive and culturally responsive approaches to teaching Italian in the diaspora.
Mattia Ragazzoni’s paper analyzes 19th-century Italian grammar books published in the United States and Canada to trace the development of linguistic norms and metalinguistic frameworks in the diaspora. Dr. Galli presents findings from the Norris Collection at Dickinson College, highlighting early-modern multilingual instructional texts for Italians and their place within a European pedagogical network.
Together, their work highlights the cultural and political significance of Italian language education in North America, offering new perspectives on migration, identity, and race through the lens of pedagogy and print.
Learn more about the Italian American Studies Association and the upcoming 2025 Conference.
University of Toronto / Accademia della Crusca
100 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1J4 Canada
Franco Pierno is Full Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Toronto (affiliated with Trinity College), where he is also responsible for the “Canada” section of the Osservatorio degli italianismi nel Mondo of the Accademia della Crusca. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Basel, Bordeaux, Dresden, and Turin, as well as at the Center for Dialectology of Italian-speaking Switzerland. His research focuses primarily on the relationship between language and religion (particularly the Reformation of the sixteenth century) and on the linguistic aspects of the early Italian migration to North America.
Università degli Studi di Padova / Seton Hall University
Walsh Library 354, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ, 07079 USA
Matteo Brera specializes in transnational exchanges between Italy and North America (specifically Canada and the US South), with a focus on the ethno-cultural press and its role in shaping transcultural identities. His Marie Skłodowska-Curie project, A Darker Shade of Whiteness, examines the Italian ethnic press in Louisiana (1877–1945) and its contribution to racial awareness in the Gulf South, addressing an overlooked aspect of race relations, racism, and the construction of racial discourse in the U.S. South.
Dickinson College
28N College St, Carlisle, PA 17013 USA
Sara Galli received her Master’s degree in Modern Philology in 2013 and a master's in “Italian Language Education for Foreigners” from the University of Genoa. After obtaining her doctoral degree at the University of Toronto with research on Dante Alighieri’s didactic project, she has been an International Visiting Scholar at Dickinson College, where she teaches Italian language courses. Her research focuses on inclusivity in the Italian language and the didactics of the Italian language and culture.
University of Toronto
Mattia Ragazzoni is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian Linguistics at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the presence and the production of teaching materials, and Italian language instruction in immigrant communities in North America between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1940s. His research interests include the history of the Italian language and 19th-century lexicography. He collaborates with Osservatorio degli Italianismi nel Mondo for the “Canada” section and with the Geografia e Storia delle Grammatiche dell’Italiano project. He is the managing editor of the journal Italian Canadiana.
