April 23-25, 2020. JOHN D. CALANDRA ITALIAN AMERICAN INSTITUTE, Queens College, City University of New York, 25 West 43rd Street, 17th floor (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan, NY. Borders can be concrete parameters, and they can also be metaphorical markers. Either way, the border as a political, economic, cultural, and personal site, one to be policed, extended, breached, opened, celebrated, and/or erased, has long been of interest to those concerned with Italy. The areas of scholarly inquiry are as infinite as the varied Italian and Italianate borders themselves. 

Irredentism and colonialism were policies the newly created nation-state officially promoted and enacted as a means to augment the scope of its boundaries. Italian immigrants, in turn, extended the boundaries of their respective villages and towns through transnational networks and diasporic realms. In the twenty-first century a global economy, digital communications, and migrants and refugees arriving to Italy, among others matters, have brought renewed attention to the question of political borders.