![]() While reading them, I felt as though I was sitting around the table, in the basement kitchen of course, where such scholarly friends are allowed to eat and drink but who would never qualify as “company.” As was the face-to-face interactions during the FIAC conference itself, the collection is, taken together but not as whole, a noisy celebration of melodious cacophony. What brings these all too thinly disguised subjects together that cleverly masquerade as merely about Italian America and Italian Americans but which are actually boundless? After careful reading, it appears to me that their strongest commonality is the love of the subject, and in many cases, each other’s work. ![]() Most difficult for me was crafting this introduction to what is a most eclectic collection of essays by many of my old, and a few new, friends, and colleagues. Peter Carravetta, D’Amato Chair in Italian and Italian American Status at Stony Brook University did the heavy lifting in organizing the event, and I was honored with the intellectually challenging task of organizing and lightly editing its proceedings. The First Annual Forum in Italian American Criticism at which internationally renowned scholars were invited to comment on “The Status of Interpretation in Italian American Studies” was by all accounts a resounding success.
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