Mining the Diaspora: How to Use the Library & Archives

Discover how archives and special collections can enrich your learning experience with the Italian American Program.
This hands-on workshop will highlight the various ways primary sources can be utilized outside the library, in the classroom, and in digital spaces for learners of all ages. Learn how to build a LibGuide and how to incorporate archives experiences into coursework.

Presenters include:

Lina Insana, Associate Professor of Italian, University of Pittsburgh
Melissa E. Marinaro, Director, Italian American Program, Senator John Heinz History Center
Leslie Poljak, Outreach and Engagement Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Rachel Kranson, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Pittsburgh

This workshop is offered in conjunction with the Italian American Studies Association and the University of Pittsburgh.

Presenters

Lina Insana, Associate Professor of Italian, University of Pittsburgh
Professor Insana’s research and teaching focuses on modern and contemporary Italian cultural production. Most of her work on Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi is concerned with textual mediation, translation, and adaptation; newer research—on Sicilian cultural belonging and manifestations of italianità in the American interwar period (1919-1939)—seeks to interrogate formations of transnational identity at the margins of conventionally-accepted definitions of Italianness.

She is also engaged in a third book-length project that explores expressions of italianità in North American Italian “colonies” between the first and second World Wars through institutions and cultural icons that helped immigrant communities to negotiate complex and often competing civic identities. Her work in Italian American Studies also extends to research on children’s literature (“Strega Nona’s Ethnic Alchemy,” MELUS 31.2) and teaching (“Italian America on Screen”). With Melissa E. Marinaro (Heinz History Center) and Nancy Caronia (WVU), she is the co-convener of the Italian Diaspora Archive Resource Map project, facilitated through a World History Center Working Group.

Rachel Kranson, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Professor Kranson is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of “Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America” (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and co-editor of “A Jewish Feminine Mystique: Jewish Women in Postwar America” (Rutgers University Press, 2010). Her current research focuses on American Jews and the politics of abortion.

Melissa E. Marinaro, Director, Italian American Program, Senator John Heinz History Center
Marinaro is the Director of the Italian American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center where she oversees the Italian American artifact and archival collection and manages the program’s community and educational outreach and public programs. Since joining the History Center’s staff in January of 2013, Marinaro has cultivated significant artifact and archival collections related to post-war Italian immigration to Western Pennsylvania, the Passionists’ first monastery in North America, Italian folk-revival troupe I Campagnoli, former Vice Consul of Italy in Pittsburgh, Joseph D’Andrea, and local Italian American foodways businesses. Her research interests include post-war Italian immigration, Italian American identity and culture, and oral history and storytelling as a research device. Marinaro is currently the Exhibition Review Editor for the journal the Italian American Review. She authored the book “Highlights of the Italian American Collection: Western Pennsylvania Stories” and regularly contributes to Western Pennsylvania History Magazine.

Leslie Poljak, Outreach and Engagement Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Leslie Poljak is the Outreach and Engagement Librarian at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. She is the liaison librarian to Pitt’s Department of French and Italian, College of General Studies, and Honors College. As a liaison librarian, she guides faculty and students through library resources to support classroom learning and research. Her outreach focus incudes activities supporting student belonging at the library and information literacy. She is an active member of the Association of College and Research Library’s Instruction and University Libraries Sections.