York U. Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies Lecture Series Narrating the Self To Examine How Italians Recount The Past, Define The Present, View The Future Through History And Fiction

TORONTO, January 11, 2000 -- How Italian Canadians recount their past is the central theme in a lecture series entitled Narrating the Self: Italian Canadians Between History and Myth. The series, which is sponsored by York University's Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies, runs from January through March 2000, and will allow the audience to engage in lively and informative discussion with prominent and emerging voices in the North American Italian community including: Nino Ricci; Bruno Ramirez; Isabella Colalillo Katz; Joe Fiorito; Peter Carravetta; and Charlie (Calogero) Chiarelli.

"The Mariano A. Elia Lecture Series has been a tradition at York University for the last 16 years, and is the Chair's way of bringing issues of significance to the Italian Canadian community and to stimulate interest and discussion," said Chair program director and York U. Italian Studies Prof. Elio Costa. "This year's participants come from very different backgrounds and experiences. Some are generations removed from their roots. Yet each has achieved a level of distinction in his/her field of activity through a living identity with the histories, stories and mythologies which define them, but also help us to understand who and what we are today."

The following lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Alberto Di Giovanni Library, Columbus Centre, 901 Lawrence Avenue West, Toronto (at Dufferin Street, south-west corner) except Cu'fu which will be held in the Columbus Centre Rotunda:

Bruno Ramirez: Italian Immigration to Canada: Between History and Fiction, Wed., Jan. 12
Ramirez, a renowned screenwriter and a professor of American history at the UniversitÈ de MontrÈal, will draw upon his own experience (as both a historian and a screenwriter) and assess the re-telling of the Italian immigration experience to Canada by combining history, literature and theatre. Excerpts from the films CaffÈ Italia, MontrÈal, and La Sarrazine will be shown as illustrations. Ramirez is author of several books on labour and migration history which have been published in Canada, the US, Italy and Venezuela. He has served on the editorial boards of The Canadian Historical Review, Labour/Le Travail, Altreitalie, and The Journal of American Ethnic History, and is currently international contributing editor of The Journal of American History.

Isabella Colalillo Katz: The Creative Self: Culture, Gender and Writing, Wed., Jan. 26
Katz, a writer, poet and storyteller will examine how she uses personal creativity to explore the evolving self and how she reconstructs memory, and gender and cultural experience to define herself as a woman and a writer. Born in Italy, Katz has worked in the media, education and the arts and is completing her PhD in Education at OISE. Katz's most recent book of poetry and prose is Tasting Fire (1999, Guernica Editions).

Nino Ricci: Remaking the Self Through Fiction, Wed., Feb. 9
Ricci, a York alumnus (BA ë81) and writer-in-residence under the auspices of the Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies at York, will discuss the genesis of his career as a novelist and his relationship to his Italian heritage. Ricci has achieved critical acclaim and received numerous awards for his work, including the 1990 Governor General Award for fiction for Lives of the Saints, the first instalment in his trilogy of novels, which continued with In a Glass House (1994, McClelland & Stewart), and Where Has She Gone (1999, McClelland & Stewart). Born in Leamington, Ontario to parents from the Molise region of Italy, Ricci, taught English and literature at a secondary school in Nigeria, with CUSO, and has travelled extensively throughout Africa and Europe. He served as a director of PEN Canada (1990-96) and as its President (1995-96). Ricci is currently working on a novel about ancient Rome (due out early 2001).

Joe Fiorito: Who are we if not out stories?, Wed., Feb. 23
Fiorito, will read from his latest book The Closer We Are to Dying (1999, McClelland & Stewart), a family memoir which recounts the last 20 days in his father's life and intertwines them with the Fiorito family tales, beginning with the story of a great-uncle who killed a man in Italy and fled with family members to the Ontario bush. Fiorito rejected these stories during his youth as the mere babble of his father, with whom he shared a strained relationship, but later reconciled with his father and grew to cherish the stories that recounted his family's past. Fiorito has worked with the CBC in Regina and in Inqaluit. He has published two books to great acclaim: Comfort Me With Apples, a selection of his weekly food columns for Montreal's Hour magazine, and Tango on the Main, a selection of columns he wrote on life in Montreal for The Gazette. He now lives in Toronto and writes a weekly column on life in the city for the National Post.

Peter Carravetta: Myth, History and Silence in Italian American Fiction, Wed., March 8
Carravetta will examine the complex relationship between myth and history, time and silence, identity and belonging in the works of selected authors (most notably Pietro Di Donato, Mario Puzo, Gay Talese, and Helen Barolini). Carravetta, a professor of Italian and Comparative literature at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has written extensively on hermeneutics, postmodernism, poetics, and literary theory. He is currently finishing a book on Italian interpretation theory, and doing research on Italian and French colonialism in Africa.

Charlie (Calogero) Chiarelli: Cu'fu (Who did it?) - Stories of a Sicilian Family in Narration and Song, Wed., March 15
Chiarelli, the Sicilian-Canadian actor, blues harpist, storyteller, librettist and playwright will perform from his one-man biographical comedy Cu' fu (Sicilian for Who Did It?) about growing up in a Sicilian neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario. Cu' fu, which has played to enthusiastic audiences and rave reviews in Toronto(Artword Theatre), Hamilton and Kingston, hilariously dishes up a slice of Sicilian-Canadian life: the importance of family friends and neighbourhood; when do you pull the plug on the life support system?; and marijuana, figs and zucchini, all growing side by side in the downtown Hamilton garden of an immigrant Sicilian family.

Now in its 16th year, York University's Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian Canadian Studies promotes knowledge of the Italian-Canadian experience and its contribution to the development of Canada through teaching, research and public forums.

The lecture series is free and open to the public.

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For more information, please contact:

Silvana De Bona
Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 88721
sstifani@yorku.ca

Prof. Elio Costa
Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 66924
ecosta@yorku.ca

Ken Turriff
Media Relations Officer
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
kturriff@yorku.ca
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