Jerome Krase | The American Italian Historical Association: A View From the Bridge | Polish American Studies, 65.1

The American Italian Historical Association: A View From the Bridge

by
Jerome Krase

INTRODUCTION

The setting for Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge (1955) is my own childhood Brooklyn neighborhood where "Italy represents homeland, origin and culture to the citizens of Red Hook. But, Italy represents different things to the main characters in the play. For example, Catherine associates Italy with mystery, romance and beauty. Rodolfo, on the other hand, is actually from Italy, and thinks it is a place with little opportunity, and a place that he feels justified in escaping from. All of the characters appreciate the benefits of living in the U.S., but still strongly hold to Italian traditions and identify it as home. Italy is the basis of the cultural traditions in Red Hook, and it serves as a touchstone to unite the community, with their own laws and customs."¹ Minus the high drama, and with the addition of the "American" ethnic hyphenation, the story of the American Italian Historical Association (AIHA) has several actual as well as symbolic similarities to the play.

Logo of the American Italian Historical Association

Frank Cavaioli and Joseph Velikonja² have provided what might best be called the "official" views from the bridge of the history of the AIHA. Their careful and detailed works provide the published groundwork for this and all subsequent studies of the AIHA. However, as are my own efforts at understanding the organization, their studies should not be treated as mere "historical facts" but also as contestable viewpoints on the multiple social and historical realities of the association. Of special interest to me, for example, has been how well women, and disciplines other than history, have been represented in the association over the decades. Another contentious issue has been the relationship between objective scholarship on Italian Americans and ethnic "interests" of Italian Americans. In this essay Cavaioli's and Velikonja's observations have been considered in regard to the changing membership of the association and related shifts in the gender of authors, topics, and disciplines represented in the published Proceedings of the AIHA.³ As might be expected with any scholarly association, the AIHA has changed considerably over the decades and sometimes in unexpected or surprising ways. For example, at first a totally indigenous collectivity, the annual meetings and its Proceedings in recent years witnessed a steady increase in participants from Italy, papers presented on Italy, and a focus on the Italian language. In one of the most recent Proceedings, which I am co-editing, there is even a section on poetry in both English and Italian. I joined the organization in 1975, and have served in a wide range of capacities from President to Newsletter Editor. The occasional reflections presented here are essentially my own "view from the bridge" that is informed by that, perhaps idiosyncratic, historical experience.

WHO/WHAT IS ITALIAN AMERICAN?

It is obvious that the subject matter for studies of Italian America is circumscribed by who or what is deemed to be Italian American. Unfortunately, there are multiple responses to this question and each answer results in a different intellectual pursuit. In pursuit of academic clarity, in 2004, the AIHA and the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) organized "A Summit on Italian American Studies at U.S. Universities" in Washington, DC. Rudolph Vecoli, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Minnesota, William J. Connell, La Motta Chair in Italian Studies, Seton Hall University, and I were invited to speak of "The Future of Italian American Studies." Among other things, both Vecoli and Connell noted how far the field had come since the establishment of the AIHA in 1966, and both welcomed, with caution, the expansion of the field from what today appears to be a rather narrow origin in historical studies. My academic focus was on the definition of "Italian American" as a researchable subject matter. For the broader field of Italian American Studies to be successful in the future, I also stressed that Italian American scholarship, as well as the ethnic interest groups that support it, must reflect the increasingly multicultural character of society. Both scholarly organizations and ethnic interest groups were urged to reach out to those who trace even a small portion of their roots to Italy and to vigorously engage other ethnically focused, but similarly interested, parties for collaborative efforts.

The discipline of Italian American Studies emerged during what Michael Novak termed the "Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics"⁴ and, as other "White Ethnic" activities, it was seen by many as a reaction to the rise of Black nationalism and pride. As a "working class style," Italian American ethnicity was defined in the social sciences as "defensive."⁵ Today some still argue that Italian Americans, as well as other European-Americans, do not constitute an "authentic" ethnic group at all. If these groups are covered at all in American textbooks the historical treatments are generally superficial and non-Anglo-Saxon whites serve essentially as good examples of the Melting Pot of assimilation. Yet, in both the 1990 and 2000 Census over 16 million people in the United States identified themselves as Italian American. There is no doubt among scholars that Italian Americans are well integrated into America's social structure but, it is argued, their cultural and social productions are still distinct enough to be a fruitful area of study. Other than by self-identification, how do we ascertain membership in the putative ethnic group and who should do the defining? "As other large American "ethnic" groups, Italian Americans do not comprise a monolithic, cohesive group but are members of disparate collectivities; that is, collections of social actors who share a varying number of socially relevant demographic attributes such as: national origins, cultural values, practices, language uses, and religion. In many cases Italian Americans have more in common with non-Italian Americans than with each other."⁶

The number of Italian Americans depends on how they are identified. A century ago they were simply people born in "Italy." At that time, Italian American Studies (had the field existed) was the study of the Italian-born and since nationality and race were virtually synonymous given the fusion of notions of nationality and race, especially in the nineteenth century, Italians were, as Jews, Slavs, and Irish, also seen as a "racial" group and were studied in that vein as well. By the 1940s, the Census Bureau had added the category of "Foreign Stock," or persons who had at least one foreign-born parent, to that of "Foreign-born" so the expanded "Italian American" category was easier to study. After World War II ethnic groups were seen more as cultural, as opposed to racial groups and in the 1980 Census a sample of the population was asked to identify themselves ethnically. In 1990 this sample survey was included in the full enumeration and as a larger sample in 2000. Ethnicity, as a research concept, had changed over the hundred years from a genetic to a symbolic term. From each of these definitions, different Italian American collectivities, as well as different Italian American Studies disciplines, emerged. If we were to look back across this span of time and definitions a large and diverse collection of works comprise "Italian American Studies."

In a sense, for Italian American Studies to survive as a viable discipline; as the number of Italian immigrants, and foreign-born Italians, had decreased, the definition of who is "Italian American" had to be expanded. There is a parallel issue in Italy today as it is also changing rapidly and struggles to reach its own consensus on who is, and is not, "Italian." As both collectivities become more diverse, outmoded, narrowly circumscribed, notions of italianità (Italianness) must also change or much of what Italian Americans and Italians do will fall outside that definition. Such concerns are warranted because we live in society, and a world, where despite occasional protestations to the contrary, ethnicity and ethnic identity matters. In the manifold areas of Ethnic Studies it matters even more.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN ITALIAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

In 1966, a group of historians, educators, sociologists, and other interested persons met in New York City and founded the American Italian Historical Association. Its first officers were Paul J. Asciolla, Henry J. Browne, John Cammett, Frank Cordasco, Leonard Covello, John Duff, John Faggi, Ernest Falbo, Luciano Iorizzo, Salvatore J. LaGumina, Arthur Mann, Isadore S. Meyer, Salvatore Mondello, Leonard Moss, Albert A. Nofi, Ernest Paolino, Peter M. Riccio, Andrew Rolle, and Louis Silveri, Silvano Tomasi, Rudolph J. Vecoli, and Vincent Velella.

The AIHA's first conference was held at the Casa Italiana of Columbia University in 1968, and since then they have been held in twenty other U.S. venues and once in Canada. At its inaugural meeting, President Rudolph Vecoli described the AIHA as the catalyst for "creative work" and that the "Proceedings were the first fruits of the labors of the AIHA in the vineyard of Italian-American history."⁷ As to the impetus for the study of the Italian American experience, Cavaioli noted Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan's Beyond the Melting Pot and Michael Novak's The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics.⁸ Cavaioli also felt that Richard Gambino's Blood of My Blood "captured the spirit of being Italian in American society by combining scholarly sources with his own ethnic experiences" and "helped to set the agenda for Italian Americans in the last quarter of the twentieth century."⁹ He also noted the contrary view of Richard D. Alba in Into the Twilight of Ethnicity that argued that Italian Americans were so structurally assimilated as to make them almost indistinguishable from dominant white Anglo Saxon Americans.¹⁰ Italian American ethnicity was relegated in this way to being merely a symbolic, nostalgic leisure activity.¹¹

Each fall, the association holds a multidisciplinary meeting where scores of registrants present papers, show films, mount exhibits, read prose and poetry, and display their wares at an Italian American Studies Book Fair. Selected papers from each conference have been published in its uninterrupted series of Proceedings, some of which already have important historical and documentary value. The occasional support of Italian American interest groups, universities, as well as Consulates and Cultural Institutes of Italy, has greatly enhanced many of these meetings and resulting publications. In 1994, the AIHA began a program to donate sets of Proceedings to libraries to ensure that researchers had easier access to this growing collection.

The association fosters the collection and preservation of printed materials, private and public papers, photographs, and oral history tapes. The location of its original office and current archive, is the Center for Migration Studies in Staten Island, New York. In 2007, the office of the AIHA was moved to the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at the City University of New York. An annual scholarship award is given to a graduate student in any discipline whose work focuses on the Italian American experience, and the Leonard Covello Award has been given in the past for the best written essay in Italian American Studies. Small subsidies for graduate students to travel to present at annual meetings are also granted each year. These are cash prizes drawn from the Association's Memorial Fund.

American Italian and multi-ethnic studies are also fostered through many international, national, regional, and local activities. Over the past three decades the AIHA has engaged in joint conferences and programs with such groups as the American Jewish Historical Society, Balch Institute of Philadelphia, Canadian Italian Historical Association, Casa Italiana of Columbia University, the Center for Migration Studies of New York, the Colorado Historical Society, the Multicultural Historical Association of Ontario, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, and the Polish American Historical Association. In the past, the Association also has had a varying number of local and regional chapters. The largest and most active at present are the Long Island Chapter established in 1976 and the Western Regional Chapter established in 1974.¹²

In addition to the proceedings, the AIHA has published a semi-annual Newsletter which now has an electronic version. The AIHA is represented on the Internet today in two important and distinctly different ways. The first is through its own website.¹³ The second is less direct. A few members of the association created the H-ITAM¹⁴ internet discussion network as part of the H-NET.¹⁵ H-NET is an international consortium of scholars and teachers that creates and coordinates Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. AIHA members serve as H-ITAM editors as well as members of its editorial board. As to more traditional print publications, the AIHA supports scholarly publications that focus on Italian America as annual contributing patrons of Italian Americana, VIA (Voices in Italian America) and The Italian American Review. The Newsletter, H-ITAM, and AIHA annual meetings provide platforms for these and other valuable publications, such as Altreitalie, Arba Sicula, Differentia, Forum Italicum, Fra Noi, and The Italian Journal.

Many association members serve in advisory capacities to Italian American civic, fraternal, community, and professional organizations from small, local community organizations to the Commission for Social Justice of the Order of Sons of Italy in America, and the National Italian American Foundation. It also maintains an information network with a Speakers Bureau and periodically publishes a Directory of Members listing each member's affiliations, expertise, and interests, which provides another resource for study.

The AIHA has encouraged the formation of other Italian American scholarly and academic groups, as well as Italian American interest sections in other professional organizations. By their participation in other academic and scholarly organizations, such as the American Sociological Association or the Modern Language Association, members informally serve as liaisons to other scholarly organizations. In addition to its members in Italy, the association maintains ties with Italian universities and research foundations such as the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation and the Italian Sociological Association.

LOOKING AT THE AIHA MEMBERSHIP: NUMBERS, GENDER AND DISCIPLINES OF MEMBERS

Data on membership and published proceedings is a useful source for understanding any scholarly organization. Unfortunately, accurate and consistent reports on membership are seldom available. Using various currently available sources such as newsletters and executive council minutes it can be said with some confidence that the largest membership in the American Italian Historical Association coincided with the 1986 annual meeting in Philadelphia when there were 600 members. It then decreased to 255 members in 2001 and since then it has averaged about 400. There have been many explanations for changes in the size of the AIHA membership rolls. The most salient is the size of the potential (Italian American) audience at the local level. The membership has always been also drawn from those states with sizable Italian American populations and conferences in cities in these states have the greatest positive impact on membership. The membership only indirectly increases due to the rise in interest in italianità caused by the conference. Highs and lows in membership seem to be accounted for by the success of annual meetings which in turn is related to the size of the available pool of Italian Americans in the venue. As might be expected, large urban centers on the East Coast have been most fruitful.

Two other factors which influence size of membership as well as efficiency and efficacy of AIHA are organizational and personal. Over the decades, the AIHA has had clerical and other support from the Center for Migration Studies on Staten Island, The Italian Cultural Center in Chicago Heights, or the Center for Italian American Studies at Brooklyn College. Although the association paid for many of the services the costs associated with running the organization such as mailing, contact, storage, etc., were lower than "market rates." Without paid staff and other assistance and relying purely on volunteers saves money but results in lost membership. Individuals also make a big difference. Although there are many others who can be cited, Dominic Candeloro has clearly had the greatest impression on the association. An historian, and AIHA President for two terms, he served in many capacities, the most recent of which was as a minimally compensated Executive Director (2001–07). For him, uncovering and disseminating the Italian American experience was a real vocation as he blurred the boundaries between Italy and America, as well as the academic, scholarly, and lay ethnic interest communities in the search for members and support. Many AIHA members come from outside academe and for some, this has been an area of contention even though the AIHA relies on support from the variously defined non-academic "community." This is especially the case when the status of the discipline is low in the academic community and where faculty lines, course offerings, departments, programs, and research funds are only sparingly, and often grudgingly, given to "ethnic studies."

Now we will look at the year 2001 and examine the gender and academic discipline of AIHA members to see how they might relate to the status of women in the AIHA and another, more divisive, issue; changing the name of the association. Then we will look how gender and disciplines are represented in the AIHA proceedings which were published up to that date. Of the 255 paid-up AIHA members in 2001, seventy-eight, or thirty-one percent, were female. This included individual women who were joint or family members. A list of all those who had paid dues over a period of 3–4 years yielded a total of 669 past and current members. In strong contrast to the female proportion of only thirty-one percent in the single year of 2001, of the 669 persons represented in the grand list of past and present AIHA members, 296 or forty-four percent were female. The association, although almost equally attractive to men and women over a period of four years did not maintain its higher female cumulative average. It is argued that the smaller than expected number of female members in 2001 was related to the fact that the overwhelming majority of editors as well as authors of articles in the AIHA proceedings until 2001 were male. The trend in more recent years, however, has been for women to be well represented as conference organizers, as editors and authors in the most important scholarly products, as well as the elected offices of the AIHA.

NOTES ON AIHA MEMBERS

In his "Who We Are: A Survey of the AIHA Members,"¹⁶ Joseph M. Conforti found that nearly half the AIHA members were over the age of sixty years old, and almost three-quarters were over the age of fifty. He acknowledged, however, that since 1995 younger people were increasingly attending the annual meetings. He also found that there had been a shift in academic disciplines—from history and the social sciences to the fields of literature and communications. Almost three-quarters of the membership surveyed were "professionals" and more than three-quarters lived in the northeast quadrant of the United States, while very few members resided in the cities of the Sunbelt states. Conforti's analysis also showed that AIHA members were far more invested in the retention of Italian ethnicity than Italian Americans in the general population. Further demonstrating their ethnic commitment, nearly all AIHA members also belonged to other Italian American organizations.

CONFERENCES AND PROCEEDINGS

According to Cavaioli, the most important functions of the association have been its annual conferences and resulting proceedings.¹⁷ The idea that they "speak for" the association and its values has been echoed by many. In 1990, Joseph Velikonja examined whether AIHA had achieved its "intended goals." Velikonja described himself as "'an external observer' who lived on the west, not the east, coast, and who was neither an Italian nor a historian. The cumulative 3,100 pages of the AIHA Proceedings contained the contributions of 200 authors and read "like a Who's Who in American Italian Studies: an indisputable document of achievement."¹⁸ In a footnote he continued, "195 authors contributed 251 articles and commentaries; 40 authors are represented by more than one item. The most frequent contributors were all past AIHA presidents: Richard Juliani (5 titles), Rudolph Vecoli (4), Salvatore LaGumina (4) and Jerry Krase (4)."¹⁹ After the thirty-first volume the output had more than doubled to 7,100 pages by 572 authors, not including front matters.

There was a wide range of central topics for the volumes: political life, novels, crime, power and class, family and communities, generations and professions, relations with Jews and Irish and relations between Italy and the U.S. He cautioned, however, that "for an historical association, history (emphasis mine) is the primary concern."²⁰ Other gaps included post-World War II immigrants, relations between the different immigrant groups, languages of Italians at different immigrations, and (as a geographer) maps and analyzes of the distribution of Italian Americans. He especially called for more comparative analyses now and then, such as between Italians and non-Italians, or between the U.S. and Canada. He continued, "The bulk of past studies has been narrative and historically descriptive. While it remains important to tell and tell again the story, the research frontier ought to move forward toward analysis: an assessment of historical processes in light of contemporary analytic approaches.... We have a long way ahead."²¹ However, the scholarly value of the AIHA Proceedings was not recognized by all. Cavaioli complained that: "Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis up to this time (1995) was written by George E. Pozzetta (1942–1994) who had been president of the AIHA from 1979 to 1980. In Pozzeta's Journal of American Ethnic History article on Italian American Historiography, Cavaioli noted: "Yet for some inexplicable reason there is not one mention of the work of the American Italian Historical Association."²²

THE NAME CHANGE ISSUE

Proposals for changing the name of the AIHA became a persistent and divisive issue in the 1990s. In 1992, Donna R. Gabaccia recognized that since 1977, a "fundamental transformation" had taken place in the Association reflected in "increased initiatives in cultural studies, literary criticism, feminism, post-modern theories, and gender studies."²³ The issue became so highly charged and potentially divisive that in 1997 the executive council sought a resolution. Cavaioli, himself a former president of AIHA, argued for retaining the original name with a subheading reflecting its interdisciplinary nature. The president at the time, Fred Gardaphe, believed that because the Association's identity had already been altered, the name should be changed to reflect the disciplines of current and future members. Other newer, and younger, members in the humanities also felt that a new name would better reflect the evolution of the field. Many also thought the term "history" was too narrow and even that the term "American Italian" was not an accurate representation of persons of Italian ancestry.²⁴ Suggested names at the time were: Association for the Study of Italian Americans, National Italian American Studies Association, Organization of Italian American Studies, and American Italian Historical and Humanities Association. Salvatore J. LaGumina, an AIHA founder as well as a former president, strongly opposed the change. He noted that the Association as other organizations such as the Norwegian Historical Association and the American Jewish Historical Association used the term "history" as an umbrella, not an exclusive, term. He also argued that the name change would in result lead to a loss of identity, confusion, and discontinuity for both the national organization and local chapters.

At the May 16, 1997, AIHA Executive Council meeting a motion to change the name of the AIHA to the "Italian American Studies Association" was approved by a vote of 15 to 3. At the November Executive Council meeting further discussion took place noting the need for a constitutional change and reincorporation in New York State if the name were changed. The Council then voted 13 to 2 in favor of the change. A ballot on the question, with summary arguments for and against, was sent to the membership later in the year. The results of the poll were 75 for the name change and 109 opposed. The American Italian Historical Association name was retained. It should be noted that in 1997 there were approximately 372 members, which means that less than half of the membership voted.

WOMEN AND THE AIHA: THE OFFICIAL VIEW

In 1987, Velikonja wrote that "The organization and the scholarly work of the Association placed women in the position of deserved prominence before it become fashionable. One third of our regular members are women; fifty women authors are represented in the proceedings. The Italian immigrant woman in North America was the subject of the tenth annual conference in Toronto, evident in the volume of proceedings, edited by Betty Boyd Caroli, Robert Harney and Lydio Tomasi."²⁵ Ten years later, Cavaioli also gave special attention to the place of women in the history of the AIHA:

There were neither women participants nor women officers and Executive Council members in the first conference, but this would change, as the feminist movement of the 1960s had linked gender studies with the rise of the new ethnicity and Italian American studies. A new group of scholars probed the past from the "bottom up" in the context of social history, interdisciplinary studies, and literature. It was at this time that women began to play leadership roles in the association. In those early years, Betty Boyd Caroli and Jean Scarpaci each served as vice president, and each would have assumed the presidency if it had not been for other professional commitments that compelled them to resign. Later, in 1997, Elizabeth Messina was elected vice president and served for two terms. She assumed an influential role in the formation of the Strategic Planning Committee that helped to redirect the association to new beginnings. Their scholarship, and that of other women, has added to the canon of Italian American studies. Accordingly, the conference on the Italian immigrant woman, held in Toronto, 1977, marked a dramatic advance in ethnic studies.²⁶

AIHA President Luciano J. Iorizzo stated that Toronto meeting enhanced Italian American scholarship and wrote in the preface to the proceedings that "The story of Italian women in North America is worth pursuing."²⁷ The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America was 386 pages in length and organized into five parts: I. Women in the Old World, II. Early Years in North America, III. Italian American Women: Generations, Roles, and Attitudes, IV. Women, Kinship, and Networks of Ethnicity, and V. Images of Italian Women in the Arts. As might be expected, women dominated this conference and more than twice as many women (17) than men (8) had their papers published in the resulting volume.

Cavaioli noted that in 1990, women made up a third of the AIHA membership, and the work of more than fifty women was published in the proceedings. Nine women had also chaired conferences and edited Proceedings:

By 1994, of the 25 Executive Council members, nine were women; and of the five officers, two were women. In 2000, two women were among the five officers of the Association. By the time of the millennium, the Italian American Women's Collective was active in promoting creative, intellectual, cultural, and political projects. Formed in 1998, this group, whose members were an essential part of the AIHA, was founded by Edvige Giunta and Elizabeth G. Messina to support and legitimize intellectual and creative endeavors by and about Italian American women. Further, from 1968 to 1996, an examination of the conferences and published proceedings revealed that eleven women served as chairpersons or co-chairpersons and that 168 contributed articles to these conferences.²⁸

At the 25th AIHA annual conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1992, Gabaccia identified an important trend in Italian American women's studies. In compiling a bibliography on immigrant women studies, she discovered that much already had been written, concluding, "It is not uncharted territory." Approximately 100 books and articles on Italian American women's lives had been published up to 1988, but yet little was known about this scholarship.²⁹

A LOOK AT THE AIHA PROCEEDINGS

In addition to the work of Pozzetta,³⁰ other studies that analysed the AIHA Proceedings were discussed by Velikonja in at least two places.³¹ In 1987, Velikonja wrote about his earlier assessment that, "The regional inventories demonstrate significant coverage of the eastern United States, especially the state and communities in New York, Connecticut and Rhode island with less comprehensive portrayal of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania" should be modified by stressing the lack of studies of Massachusetts communities except for Boston, lack of an adequate survey of Connecticut, and a total absence of upper New England states and communities of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The past ten years have seen significant expansion of regional and local studies of communities in the states of New York and Pennsylvania, but the field is far from being exhausted."³²

In a related vein, Remigio Ugo Pane, a long-time member of the AIHA Executive Council, surveyed doctoral dissertations and demonstrated how little research was conducted on the Italian American experience.³³

Pane recorded 251 dissertations from 1908, when the first was completed, to 1977, the last year of his survey. Up to 1920, there were only three dissertations completed; in the 1920s there were eight; the 1940s had twenty-three; the 1950s had thirty-four; the 1960's had sixty-five; and from 1970 to 1977 a total of ninety-seven were completed. There were nineteen academic departments represented, ranging from anthropology to folklore to history to sociology to urban planning, history recording the highest number with seventy-three, sociology second with forty-three, and education with forty.³⁴

My own analysis of the published Proceedings of the American Italian Historical Association was an exploration of the most concrete scholarly productivity of the association and its members as members of the AIHA. The conference papers of some of the most important Italian American Studies scholars have not been published in the Proceedings. Many presenters do not honor the association by offering their work for inclusion in the published proceedings. Editors and editorial committees for AIHA Proceedings also have employed a wide range of "reviewing" processes. The most frequent reason given for non-inclusion is that there is a wider range of acceptance for the meetings than for the subsequently published proceedings. Some excellent papers might not be included simply because they are off topic while others are rejected for editorial or quality reasons.

The number of published papers, and the size of the AIHA volume itself, varies considerably from year to year. This is due in part to the topic and location of the meeting as well as the decisions of the editors to be more or less inclusive. Frequently the number of papers is dependent on the funding available for the publication. In recent decades the annual meeting committee has been instructed that the association, based on membership and other funds, can afford to pay only a limited amount of money for the publication. Therefore, those who organize the meeting have an additional burden of partially financing the proceedings and they vary in the success in this regard.

There are several different ways by which one gains authorship and is therefore "represented" in the AIHA Proceedings. Articles are the most obvious, but the publications include a variety of front matters, for example acknowledgements, prefaces, introductions, a well as presidents' messages. In a few proceedings, members have also published short poems. With a list, by author, of all the various contributions to the proceedings, I sought to make some sociological sense out of the data. I examined the gender of the authors and editors, and the disciplines represented to see the relative proportions of men and women publishing and how the disciplines were represented over time. The disciplinary categories most easily recognized were history, sociology, anthropology, folklore, literature, literary criticism, cultural studies, entertainment, theater, music, performing arts, media, political science, film, psychology, health, science, and poetry. In order to create categories large enough for the analysis it was necessary to combine some of them following what seemed to me to be a rather simple logic based on similarity of discipline or topic.

FINDINGS: DISCIPLINE AND GENDER REPRESENTATION

The discipline of History was the largest category and included biographies of various sorts. Psychology, Health, and Political Science were combined with Sociology, Anthropology, and Folkore for the category Social Science. Literature included later categories of Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies. Music, Theater, and Entertainment were combined for the category Performing Arts. Some small categories stood alone until they were combined for the production of more meaningful charts. Where it is considered necessary, an adjustment was made so that the representation of either the discipline or the gender was not exaggerated. The data indicated both the number and proportion of articles by general discipline as well as by gender over the span of 32 volumes of the AIHA Proceedings. There were four Categories: (1) History Authors by Gender; (2) Social Science other than History Authors by Gender; (3) Social Science and History Authors by Gender; and (4) Other than Social Science and History Authors by Gender. They indicate both changes in representation in the proceedings of various disciplines as well as related participation by women.

The data showed that, until 2001, the representation of women authors in the AIHA Proceedings was uneven but clearly increasing both in number and proportion since about the 19th Volume in 1990. It also strongly indicated that at about the same point, the number and proportion of history, and social science authors was decreasing. As women are a much greater proportion of "Other than Social Science and History Authors" (47 percent), and less so in "Social Science other than History Authors" (32 percent), and least in "History Authors" (30 percent), it appears that the two variables were directly related. Since volume 19, women authors were 41 percent of the total and before volume 19 they were 27 percent of the total. Special attention should also be paid to the fact that of the 64 female authors prior to Volume 19, twenty are found in a single volume, number 10: The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America!

Before volume 19, non-social science authors were 12 percent of the total, and after volume 19 they were 27 percent. It would appear on the surface that the association was unable to capitalize on the increasing participation of women and all of those in disciplines other than History and Social Science. Of the 57 Editors of Volumes 1 through 32, 45 (79 percent) were male and 12 (21 percent) were female. The first, and only, sole female editor was Jean A. Scarpaci of volume 7, The Interaction of Italians and Jews in America. In contrast there have been fourteen male sole editors of AIHA Proceedings. In a related vein, the first multi-edited volume was number 10, The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America. Ironically, it had one female editor, Betty Boyd Caroli, and two male co-editors. Since this 1978 publication, most of the proceedings (16 of 22) have had two or more coeditors. The year 1980 must have been critical for the association, as since Volume 22 there have been nine female editors, as opposed to only three for the first twenty-one volumes. The greatest number of female editors is found for Volumes 24 through 29 when each publication had at least one female editor. There were a total of seven female editors during its period. Perhaps accounting for Betty Boyd Caroli's and Jean Scarpaci's pioneering roles as editors was the fact that each had also served as AIHA vice president and, according to LaGumina: "Each would have assumed the presidency if it had not been for other professional commitments that compelled them to resign."³⁵ It should be noted that some years later another AIHA female vice president ran for election to president and lost.

SUMMARY AND FINAL VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

This essay has focused almost exclusively on the "views" of the American Italian Historical Association as seen in official histories, membership records, and in its published Proceedings. In this summary, I will add some more of my own observations as to how the gender and disciplines of members, as well as other important issues impact on the past, present and future of the organization. A critical, continuing issue, revolves around the value of the scholarship of the AIHA. Cavaioli's complaint that Pozzetta's 1989 critique of historical studies of Italian America had no mention of any work of the Association is most instructive as well as a glaring omission.³⁶ By the year 1989 the AIHA had already published 22 volumes of its Proceedings, one of which (Volume 11) was edited by Pozzetta himself so it could hardly be an inadvertent oversight. Over the years I have seen that the field of Italian American Studies is seldom recognized by those outside the field. As an editor of five AIHA Proceedings, two Italian American Studies journals, as well as a manuscript reviewer for several academic presses, I have noted that AIHA Proceedings are seldom cited in the writings I evaluate. Even more troublesome, this pattern has often been followed by AIHA members and others who themselves have been published in the Proceedings.

As to the official claims about what the Proceedings say about the (inter)disciplinarity and other "characteristics" of the association, it is again necessary to quote extensively from Cavaioli:

Former president LaGumina has pointed out that the AIHA was "designed not to be an exclusive organization and partial and agreeable only to professional historians and academics." He has reminded its members that with the exception of Vecoli (an historian) three of the other earliest organizers (Covello, S. M.. Tomasi, and Cordasco) were not historians. The members were expected to commit themselves to researching and studying the "totality of the Italian American experience or to support the same." Each was expected to play a meaningful role.³⁷

It remains for other researchers to test whether these noble aims and goals of the American Italian Historical Association continue to be as central to its officers and members in the twenty-first as they were in the twentieth century.

The gender and discipline gap at the AIHA seemed to have closed in 2007. This coincided with a radical restructuring of the association that had become unwieldy over the decades and was saddled with a large Executive Council. Three of the five newly elected officers were women: President Mary Jo Bona, Vice President Josephine Gattuso Hendin, and Treasurer Dawn Esposito. None of the officers of the American Italian Historical Association, male or female, are historians. Four of the eleven new members of the reduced Executive Council are female and none of them are historians. Only three of the seven male members of the Council are historians.

As to the objective scholarship versus subjective ethnic interests of the AIHA, LaGumina had written historically that: "We were also determined that this should not be a political or anti-defamatory organization. We worked at being a democratic body open to various suggestions acting upon the collective will of the majority as reflected in the executive council and larger membership.³⁸ As has frequently been emphasized by the best known Italian American historians, Rudy Vecoli, Cavaioli also claimed that the AIHA both rejected elitism and insular, biased filiopietism that frequently passed as ethnic history. The organization had also maintained its independence from political or politically motivated groups. In this regard he quoted former president Jerry Krase that the "AHIA must not become an ethnic advocacy group."³⁹ In any case, because of its efforts on behalf of the Italian American community Italian and Italian American Studies are better represented in academe, as demonstrated by the increasing number of programs and chairs in Italian and Italian American Studies; most recently at Seton Hall University, The City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Stonybrook.

Apropos of scholarly independence, I must note that the well-known Italian American Institute at The City University of New York was the result of considerable political efforts and was in fact named after John D. Calandra in 1987. State Senator Calandra was the leader of the New York State Legislature's Italian American Caucus that was crucial to its original establishment in 1979 as "The Italian American Institute to Foster Higher Education." A major aspect of the Institute's mandate was to increase the number of Italian American high school students continuing on to college. In final regard to this issue of scholarly independence from politics, is the Alphonse M. D'Amato Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies that was funded and established in the spring of 2006 with the Center for Italian Studies at Stony Brook University (State University of New York). The chair's endowment was gathered primarily from the Italian American community which makes up about 28 percent of the Long Island's population. Alphonse M. D'Amato was the first Italian American United States Senator from New York State.⁴⁰

In this essay I have studiously refrained from characterizing any of the views of others, official or not, as personal ones. I do not think it proper to impute motive to statements or actions or to violate the sanctity of organizational confidences. In general, however, I must say that my own "View from the Bridge" that the issues of gender, discipline, and scholarship versus advocacy have not been impersonal and dispassionate. Over the decades individuals and collectivities have debated and argued over these and other "hot" issues which have greatly affected the successes and failures of the AIHA. From my perch, I can say that without proper representation and greater openness to both women and disciplines other than History, not only the AIHA, but Italian American Studies itself, could not have survived and prospered.

Apropos of the changed membership and leaders of the AIHA, this situation might seem to support the call for an immediate name change. However, I believe a more serious, perhaps central, challenge is maintaining and, indeed, increasing the membership base of the Association. Greater effort to capture the growing numbers of people interested in a more widely defined Italian American Studies. In that effort, "Italy" must be included as a part of that definition of the subject matter and source of membership. Increasing membership among scholars, as opposed to the general public, is also connected to increasing respect for the scholarly products of the association. My suggestion here is that the AIHA recognize that there are conflicting audiences for its wares and clearly label each of them so that they are not confused. A start on this might be different categories of membership and participation in the association so as not to confuse roles.

Finally, in order to expand and prosper there is, so to speak, an organizational "rub." It is obvious that the AIHA with its increasingly strong and ultimately dependent ties to ethnic interest groups is, as in the past, in danger of becoming a cross between an ethnic organization and a professional one. In my opinion this is not a greater peril for the AIHA than for any other scholarly organization with an ethnic, racial, religious, gender or other "social" focus. In the regard of the related danger of "political influence" on research, I must remind that the paragons of academic virtue such as the American Historical Association as well as the American Sociological Association both maintain essentially lobbying offices in Washington, D.C. and are dependent on government and non-governmental agencies and foundations for support. They are also frequently embroiled in subjective non-scholarly issues. For organizations such as the American Italian Historical Association becoming an ethnic advocacy group is less of a problem than not being advocated by the ethnic group.

NOTES

¹ As quoted in "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_View_from_the_Bridge," 2007.

² See Frank J. Cavaioli, "The American Italian Historical Association: Twenty Years Later 1966–1986," in Richard N. Juliani and Philip V. Cannistraro, eds., Italian Americans: The Search for a Usable Past (NY: American Italian Historical Association, 1989), 287–298; Frank J. Cavaioli, "The American Italian Historical Association at the Millennium," American Italian Historical Association, nd.; Joseph Velikonja, "The Scholarship of the AIHA: Past Achievements and Future Perspectives." in Dominic Candeloro, Fred Gardaphe, and Paolo A. Giordano, eds., Italian Ethnics: Their Languages, Literature and Lives (Staten Island: American Italian Historical Association, 1990), 109–24; Joseph Velikonja, "Italian Americans in the East and West: Regional Coverage in Italian American Studies, 1975–1983," in Lidio Tomasi, ed., Italian Americans. New Perspectives in Italian Immigration and Ethnicity (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1985), 142–172, 419–421; Joseph Velikonja, "Places, Communities and Regions in the American Italian American Studies—Territorial Coverage," in Jerome Krase and William Egelman, eds., The Melting Pot and Beyond: Italians in the Year 2000 (Staten Island, NY: American Italian Historical Association, 1987), 37–60.

³ Jerome Krase, "Reflections on the American Italian Historical Association: Seen from its Proceedings," in Steven J. Belluscio, ed., Constructing a Bibliography, AIHA: 1968–2003 (Boca Raton, FL: Bordighera, 2004).

⁴ Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (New York: MacMillan, 1972).

⁵ Herbert Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity in America," in Norman Yetman, ed., Majority and Minority (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1991), 430–443.

⁶ Jerome Krase. "Italian American Urban Landscapes: Images of Social and Cultural Capital," Italian Americana, Vol. XXII, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), 31.

⁷ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 14.

⁸ See Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge: MIT PRess, 2nd edition, 1970); Novak, Unmeltable Ethnics.

⁹ See Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974).

¹⁰ See Richard D. Alba, Italian Americans, Into the Twilight of Ethnicity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985).

¹¹ For a discussion of structural versus cultural assimilation and Italian Americans, see Krase, "Urban Landscapes," 3.

¹² For further information, see http://www.aiha-wrc.org/.

¹³ See http://www.aihaweb.org/.

¹⁴ See http://www.h-net.org/~itam/.

¹⁵ See http://www.h-net.org/.

¹⁶ Joseph M. Conforti, "Who We Are: An Exploratory Survey of AIHA Members," in Jerome Krase, Philip V. Cannistraro, and Joseph V. Scelsa, eds., Italian American Politics: Local, Global/Cultural, Personal (Chicago Heights: American Italian Historical Association, 2005), 245–55.

¹⁷ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 11.

¹⁸ Velikonja, "Scholarship of the AIHA," 112.

¹⁹ Velikonja, "Scholarship of the AIHA," 120.

²⁰ Velikonja, "Scholarship of the AIHA," 116.

²¹ Velikonja, "Scholarship of the AIHA," 119.

²² Cavaioli, "Millennium," 21.

²³ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 19.

²⁴ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 19–20.

²⁵ Velikonja, "Scholarship of the AIHA," 112.

²⁶ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 14.

²⁷ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 15.

²⁸ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 15.

²⁹ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 15.

³⁰ George E. Pozzetta, "Immigrants and Ethnics: The State of Italian-American Historiography," Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 9 (Fall 1989), 66–95.

³¹ See Velikonja, "Italian Americans in the East and West" and "Places, Communities and Regions."

³² First quotation from Velikonja, "Italian Americans in the East and West," 147; second from Velikonja "Places, Communities and Regions," 47.

³³ See Remigio Ugo Pane, "Seventy Years of American University Studies on the Italian Americans: A Bibliography of 251 Doctoral Dissertations Accepted from 1908 to 1977," Italian Americana, Vol. 4 (Spring/Summer 1978), 244–273.

³⁴ Cavaioli, "Millennium," 4.

³⁵ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 15.

³⁶ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 21.

³⁷ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 21.

³⁸ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 21.

³⁹ As quoted in Cavaioli, "Millennium," 21.

⁴⁰ "Annual Report, Stony Brook University, Stare University if New York, College of Arts and Sciences, 2005–2006," 17.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.