Nancy C. Carnevale

Nancy C. Carnevale, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, will speak on the early twentieth century stage performer, Eduardo Migliaccio, aka Farfariello, who performed songs written in what some have called “Italglish,” a mixture of standard Italian, various dialects, English, and Italianized English. Through Farfariello’s lyrics-which represent perhaps the only significant body of writing in this Italian immigrant idiom-we can gain an understanding of the experience of life in America for the Italian immigrants who flocked to his performances. Her analysis of these lyrics reveals the centrality and the complexity of language in the immigrant imagination and experience.