Curriculum, Archives, and the Digital Turn: The Italian American Experience and the Transnational Approach to Community-Based Learning
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 2024
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Abstract
This article documents an experience of integration of archives into the Italian curriculum that offers substantiating evidence for the establishment of a transnational curricular space at the intersection of Italian Studies and Italian Diaspora Studies. In detailing the growing prevalence of archival undergraduate research at Santa Clara University during the Covid-19 pandemic, I respond to a call for increased interdisciplinarity within US-based Italian programs through a distinct Italian model of Community-Based Learning that leverages relationships with virtual and “bricks & mortar” archives of the Italian diasporic experience. The documented experience reveals the versatility of this framework, highlighting multiple pathways of implementation that encompass both curricular and co-curricular dimensions. Three pivotal areas of intersection emerge: the role of students as mediators operating within an asynchronous dynamic between diasporic and ethnic communities; the integration of language learning and linguistic mediation; the utilization of digital platforms to amplify the reach of students’ narratives to wider audiences. At its core, the proposed framework is driven to a commitment to fostering productive dialogues for social change within Transnational Italian Studies.
Recommended Citation
Ferraro, E. (2024). Curriculum, Archives, and the Digital Turn: The Italian American Experience and the Transnational Approach to Community-Based Learning. Italian American Review, 14(2), 164–185. https://doi.org/10.5406/26902451.14.2.03
