Miscellanea - Rubrica d'attualita`

Chicago, 1/15/2002

(The announcement is followed by Professor Lawton's
biography and his acceptance message.)

Dear List

Very soon Ben Lawton will assume the duties of the H-Itam editor. I am very pleased to turn over the H-Itam mouse to Ben. His interests and his experiences and his contacts in the field of Italian American and Italian studies are enormous. His bio appears below.

This change will free me, as executive director of the American Italian Historical Association, to spend more time on Association business—by the way, annual dues for the year 2002 were payable on January 1! I will continue to annoy you with frequent messages through the H-Itam listserv urging you to become more active, to buy or sell our books, attend our conferences, recruit new members, submit material to the newsletter, and money to the memorial fund. Ben brings a different perspective to H-itam and that is great. I am in awe of the quality and quantity of material that has passed through the listserv and is on file in our searchable H-Itam web site http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~itam/ Bookmark it! And while you're at it, bookmark the AIHA web site http://www.mobilito.com/aiha. My more formal thoughts on H-itam are in an Altre Italie article accessible from the AIHA page. Editing H-Itam has been a valuable experience for me and a gratifying one because I have been in contact with so many good and interesting people like you.

Arrivederci,
Dominic Candeloro

Ben Lawton’s Biography

Ben Lawton was born in the United States and raised in and near the valli valdesi of Northwestern Piedmont, home of his ancestors -- according to family legend -- and where his sister, an Italian citizen, still lives. He attended Italian schools from the scuola elementare through the liceo classico. At 18, he came to the United States with $50 pinned in his pants pocket. He earned his living washing dishes and doing stoop labor until he joined the U.S. military. He learned conversational American in Basic Training. Upon his completion of his military service, he attended college thanks to the G.I. Bill. He received his B.A. in Italian from the University of California at Santa Barbara (Phi Beta Kappa, Outstanding Graduating Senior), and his M.A. and his Ph.D. in Italian from UCLA (Outstanding Teaching Assistant--university-wide). While at UCLA he started the first Italian cinema course taught in the U.S. He also began to write about Italian and Italian/American cinema in publications ranging from the ItaloAmericano di Los Angeles to Italian Americana.

He is Chair of the Interdisciplinary Italian Studies Program and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Film Studies Program. He is author/editor of Literary And Sociopolitical Trends in Italian Cinema (CIS, UCLA, 1975), the first textbook published in the United States specifically for Italian cinema courses. His translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Heretical Empiricism (Indiana University Press, 1988) was selected by Choice as "Outstanding Academic Book" for that year. Among his various teaching awards, he won Purdue’s 1977-78 AMOCO Foundation [university-wide] Outstanding Teacher Award and was honored by being selected as a Founding Fellow of the Purdue University Teaching Academy in 1997. He was visiting professor at Indiana University in 1987 and at Dartmouth College from January to June 2000. He usually spends his summers teaching for the Purdue University Studies Abroad Program in Florence, Italy, which he co-founded.

His over 30 essays and book chapters have appeared in, inter alia, Italian Quarterly, Italianistica, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Italian Americana, Film Criticism, Italian Journal, Differentia, Voices in Italian Americana, Abroad in America: Visitors to the New Nation, 1776-1914 (Smithsonian Institution, 1976), Dictionary of Italian Literature,. (Greenwood Press, 1979), Patterns of Italian Cinema, (SUNY, 1980), From the Margin, (Purdue UP, 1990), Forma e Parola (Bulzoni, 1992), Politics and Ideology in Italian Cinema (Indiana University: WEST, 1994), Giuseppe De Santis and Postwar Italian Cinema (Toronto UP, 1996), Cinema Voices: Francesco Rosi, (Flick Books, Greenwood Press, and Praeger, 1996). His widely cited essays (most recently in the MLA guide to the Decameron, have been anthologized in, among others, The Decameron, (Norton, 1977), Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism, (Oxford University Press, 1978), Twice-Told Tales: Modern European Filmmakers and the Art of Adaptation, (Ungar, 1981), Italian-American Heritage (SUNY: State Education Department, 1990), Critical Essays on Federico Fellini, (G.G. Hall/Macmillan, 1992), etc.

A popular lecturer, he has spoken at more than 90 conferences, universities and art institutes in the United States and abroad, Professor Lawton was also one of the co-founders of the Purdue University Film Conferences and co-founder and co-editor of the Film Studies Annual (1976-1982), and co-founder of Purdue University Conference on Romance Languages, Literatures, and Film and co-editor of the Romance Languages Annual (1989-present). He also co-founded the Italian Cultural Studies conference (1999) and is co-editor of Italian Cultural Studies. He serves as consultant on Italian film for various publishing houses in the United States and abroad.

His work in progress, in addition to various essays and book chapters on Italian and ItalianAmerican cinema, includes the translation of Giuseppe Giacosa’s
Impressioni d’America, monographs on Pasolini's last films, and on the perception of America by Italian American filmmakers.

Professor Lawton, a Vietnam era veteran, veteran of the Gulf War, and graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS, is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve. Among his awards and decorations are the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Army Commendation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal with One Oak Leaf Cluster, the Southwest Asia Service Medal with Three Bronze Service Stars, the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Meritorious Unit Citation, the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia), the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait), the Special Forces Tab, The Rigger Badge, and the Parachutist Badge.

When not otherwise professionally occupied, Professor Lawton spends his time reading, watching movies, exploring the delights of parabolic skis, windsurfing, and studying the theory and praxis of comparative martial arts.

Carissimi amici,

Dominic Candeloro has been a friend and a correspondent for a long time. Over 20 years ago he invited me to come to the University of Illinois at Chicago-Circle and speak about Coppola's THE GODFATHER to his Italian American students. Recently, out of the clear blue sky I received a message from him in which he told me that the H-ITAM Advisory Board had nominated me to be the next H-ITAM editor. Dominic then asked me if I would be willing to assume those responsibilities. I wrote him immediately and told him that I was truly flattered, honored, thrilled, and petrified, but that I would be delighted to serve--if he would help me, particularly at the beginning. With his customary courtesy, he assured me that he would hold my hand during the transition. As I went through the H-Net training, I was very grateful for that promise. I had realized that the job was daunting; I simply had not realized how complex and demanding it is. I trust you will be patient with me as I learn the gobbledygook that furnishes a cornucopia of information, while being, still to often, the bane of our existence.

Plans and projects:

For now, I plan to continue in the tradition set by previous editors. H-ITAM is a scholarly listserv. As such it welcomes essays, book reviews, film reviews, TV show reviews, news reviews, etc.

I am told by reliable sources that a positive review in H-ITAM can have a dramatic impact on the sales of books of Italian/American interest. I would suspect that negative reviews have a similar impact. Incidentally, as someone once wrote, the best answer to a review you disagree with is a second review. Hard copy book reviews take months to appear, when they don't take years. H-ITAM/H-NET book reviews appear immediately and-quite frankly, the probably have more readers. Furthermore, in my experience, journal editors will publish your reviews so long as you state that the "more extended version" of the review will appear in their journal—they appreciate the plug.

Speaking of Italian/American journals, recently H-ITAM published the contents of the latest issue of Voices in Italian Americana (VIA). I would love to publish regular reviews/synopses of the journals. I would also urge anyone interested in Italian American intellectual and artistic life to subscribe to these journals. You will find them listed in the AIHA homepage (see below).

Electronic publishing is as much the wave of the future in academia as Gutenberg's press was. A very large part of future research will take place online. Our university is subscribing to more and more electronic journals and to fewer and fewer paper ones.

For more thoughts on this subject, see, at the bottom of this page, the H-NOT post entitled: "ESSAY ON SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING GENERATES DEBATE"

While H-ITAM is not an activist organization as such, it can and should report the endeavors of activists. If you wish to become involved in activist endeavors directly, there are any number of organizations you might join or to whom you might send your posts. Among the more active, I regularly read Manny Alfano's ONE VOICE, Francesca L'Orfano's LADOLCEVITA, and Richard Annotico's RAA REPORT. While H-NET's bylaws preclude H-ITAM's direct involvement in partisan activities, I would welcome regular reports on the activities of these organizations. What they do is an ongoing part of Italian American history and a manifestation of Italian American culture.

There are also many, many web sites that should be of interest to Italian Americans and to those who are interested in things Italian American. Among these, first and foremost, of course, I recommend the American Italian Historical Association homepage (AIHA) http://www.mobilito.com/aiha/ This wonderful website, hosted in cooperation with Dominic Tassone's Mobìlito, the Wireless Portal for Italian Americans, and graced by the artwork of Robert Cimbalo, will link you directly or indirectly to virtually everything Italian American, and much that is Italian.

If your family, friends, and colleagues want to join AIHA and H-ITAM, they will find the directions here.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested, I would love to publish reviews of all the Italian American sites, starting with Franco Giannotti's amazing Italy at St. Louis and Justin Cristaldi's fascinating Sicilian Culture. Again, check AIHA's and Mobìlito's homepage for links to further sites.

Given its connections with AIHA, H-ITAM is obviously very interested in Italian/American history and culture. H-ITAM should serve as a forum also for sharing information about Italian American and Italian customs, cuisine, traditions, etc. Unlike strictly academic listservs, H-ITAM also serves as a means of communication between and among all kinds of Italian American and Italian organizations and between Italian American and Italian individuals.

H-ITAM also wants to serve as an outlet for information from the Italian/American and Italian academic organizations in the United States and Canada. Finally, for now, given its genealogy, H-ITAM welcomes news from Italy that might be of interest to our readers.

A presto.

Ben Lawton
H-ITAM Editor