Italian-American Foodways: Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Italian American Review Italian and Italian-American food has a long history in the homes, markets, and restaurants of the United States. For many immigrants, the hunger and food shortages associated with la miseria (literally, "misery") were a primary motivation for emigration, and thus the foodways these immigrants and their descendants brought to and developed in the United States were not only a means for maintaining ethnic identity and culture, but also a marker of success and assimilation. In addition, given that these foodways emerged as the United States' first notable "ethnic cuisine," they have long functioned as a primary representation of that ethnicity to American society at large -- a context, then, in which Italian-American identity and culture were expressed, encountered, negotiated, and re-formed over time.

This special issue will build on existing scholarship in the fields of history, anthropology, and folklore and folklife studies, and it welcomes contributions from those working in the area of food studies.This special issue will investigate a range of historical and contemporary topics related to Italian-American foodways, with the goal of broadening the scope of scholarly discussion and exploring innovative approaches to research. To this end, all submissions should demonstrate knowledge of previous scholarship and identify theoretical perspectives. Suggested themes include, but are not limited to:

Representations of Italian-American foodways in popular culture
Critical studies of Italian-American culinary literature (cookbooks, memoirs, etc.)
Regional variations in Italian-American foodways
Relations between Italian and Italian-American foodways
Mass-marketing and "branding" Italian-American foodways
Histories of Italian-American restaurants, food merchants, and food producers
The evolution of Italian-American foodways
The chef as Italian-American icon
Foodways, assimilation, and national identity
Foodways and class, gender, and/or sexual identity
Relations between Italian-American foodways and other ethnic American foodways
Italian-American food establishments (restaurants, markets, etc.), ethnic neighborhoods, and the urban landscape
Italian-American foodways and the politics of food
Comparative discussion with other communities within the United States or with parts of the Italian diaspora.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: May 1, 2013
Abstracts for scholarly papers (up to 500 words) and a brief curriculum vitae should be emailed to guest editors, Rocco Marinaccio ([email protected]) and Peter Naccarato ([email protected]), to whom other inquiries may also be directed. Requests to submit full papers will be sent by July 1. Final article submissions will be subject to review by the editors and external reviewers selected by the Italian American Review.

The Italian American Review (IAR), a bi-annual, peer-reviewed journal of Queens College's John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, publishes scholarly articles about the history and culture of Italian Americans, as well as other aspects of the Italian diaspora Journal guidelines can be found at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/calandra/information-contributors.