Memories of Belonging ― Descendants of Italian Migrants to the United States 1884-present

Wirth uses oral history to understand memories of migration, everyday life, and ethnicity. She combines cultural history with methods inspired by structuralist social sciences and qualitative research, placing her work within the fields of immigration history, transnational history and ethnic (whiteness) studies, as well as women's history and gender studies, among others. She illuminates three generations of Italians who migrated from southern Italy in 1913 to Worcester, Massachusetts. As a descendant herself of the Soloperto family, Wirth's research examines how individual memories of migration, everyday life, and Italian-ness are constructed and how individual memories correspond to the collective memories. Seven chapters are: oral history methodology and networks of memory; transnational migration networks; memories of everyday life I; memories of everyday life II; memories of Italian-ness; memories of Elvira and Giovanni Soloperto; memories of the American dream. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Christa Wirth has taught at Harvard University and is currently teaching in the History Department at the University of Zurich. She has published articles on migration, including "Memory and Migration, Research" inThe Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Volume IV, Immanuel Ness (ed.) (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 2158-2164).