Food and Foodways in Italian & Italian American Media & Literature (Panel / In-Person)


Special Session
Italian / Film and Media Studies

Irene Hatzopoulos (University of California - Riverside)
iren@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Food inside and outside of Italy has long served as a locus for the construction of identity, either in the way it can represent belonging to or exclusion from a particular group. It is also a strong evocative trigger, forcing the individual or community to remember a distant memory or to recall a painful one.
Food inside and outside of Italy has long served as a locus for the construction of identity, either in the way it can represent belonging to or exclusion from a particular group. It is also a strong evocative trigger, forcing the individual or community to remember a distant memory or to recall a painful one.

In this vein, we invite presentations exploring PAMLA's 2025 theme of "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion" as represented through food in Italian and Italian American media and literature.

Topics can include:
•food of migration/migrants food memories in diaspora communities
•food traditions and their evolutions food and community
•food and isolation
•foodways and how they determine belonging