International Symposium 2025 Book Project

Call for Contributions
Edited Volume

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Reading the Italian Ethnic Press in North America: Critical Approaches to Language, Education and Identity

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This edited volume stems from the international symposium The Italian Ethnic Press in North America: Expanding Scholarship on Language, Education and Identity (Seton Hall University, September 23, 2025) and is being prepared for submission to a leading University Press.

The volume brings together new research on Italian-language ethnic periodicals in North America, approaching the press as a key site through which migration, language, education and identity were articulated and negotiated. Italian-language newspapers functioned as durable institutions within migrant communities, shaping educational practices, cultural transmission and political discourse while mediating questions of race, labor, citizenship and belonging.

Rather than treating the ethnic press as a marginal or transitional phenomenon, the volume situates it within broader histories of Italian migration and racial formation, emphasizing local and regional contexts alongside transnational connections. Contributions grounded in original archival research are especially welcome, as are chapters that speak to larger debates within Italian migration studies, ethnic studies and the history of education and print culture.

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Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Italian-language newspapers as instruments of community formation and social cohesion
• Language, literacy and education in migrant communities
• The role of the ethnic press in shaping Italian and regional identities
• Racial positioning in the Italian ethnic press: whiteness, Blackness, anti-Italian violence and segregation
• Press responses to lynching, Jim Crow and regimes of racial exclusion
• Labor, citizenship and respectability in Italian-language periodicals
• Catholicism, moral discourse and religious institutions in the ethnic press
• Transnational circulations between Italy and North American migrant communities
• Methodological approaches to the study of the ethnic press, including archival recovery and digitization
• Digital humanities and public history approaches and projects engaging Italian-language newspapers
• Comparative perspectives on Italian-language periodicals within broader migration histories

Both focused case studies and contributions engaging broader historiographical or methodological questions are encouraged.

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Submission guidelines

Prospective contributors are invited to submit:

• a long abstract of up to 1,000 words outlining the proposed chapter’s argument, sources and methodology
• a 150-word biographical note

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Submissions should be sent to:

Matteo Brera (matteo.brera@unipd.it)

William J. Connell (william.connell@shu.edu)

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Deadline for abstracts: 01 Februrary 2026

Notification of acceptance: 28 February 2026

Deadline for Submission of Full Chapters: 30 June 2026

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This publication is developed within the framework of the MSCA-funded project A Darker Shade of Whiteness: The Italian Ethnic Press in Louisiana and the Making of Racial Awareness in the Gulf South (1877–1945).