11/02/2020
Congratulations to my students!
Brock University and University College students collaborate on Archival Research of Italian-Canadian Immigration and Culture, receiving nomination for Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement
Carmela Colella, Coordinator of the Italian Studies Program in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MLLC) has nominated a group of students from Brock University and University College for the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement and Young Leaders Award for 2020 for their commitment to complete their research on cultural heritage and to share their work in the archives with the community at Archival Research of Italian-Canadian Immigration and Culture. Students demonstrated leadership at local in-class conferences (2019, 2020) and a national conference, hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University, where they joined their professor, Teresa Russo, at ICAP2019 for a panel presentation of archival material. They demonstrated creativity in the way they incorporated archival research to identify and promote cultural heritage including oral traditions, expressions, language, art and music, social practices and traditions as well as highlight industrial projects in Ontario, such as the Welland Canal in Niagara and the Italian Fallen Workers.
Some students in this group nomination (E. Colantoni, S. Greco, S. Gri, C. Russo) created new archives as they interviewed and documented the immigration stories of members from the Italian community in the Niagara and Toronto areas. F. McLean discovered a new document of an Italian Fallen Worker in Toronto by examining a 100-year-old coroner's record newly released in January 2020 at Archives of Ontario (1913-1920, RG 22-5897-0-2), and Saini demonstrates how chemical emissions and environmental racism against the Aamjiwnaag First Nations group living in Sarnia today is parallel to how the Italian workers were treated in the area in 1937. C. Delfino shares the origins of opera with recorded sound from Edoardo Ferrari-Fontana in 1915, while J. Rossi highlights the contributions of Donald Ziraldo to the wine industry in Canada and his legacy which includes founding the Vintner’s Quality Alliance (VQA) and the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) at Brock University for the scientific study and practical skills in oenology and viticulture.
The students used effective archival practices under the supervision of Russo, following the archival research and methods of Robert Harney, Gabriele Scardellato, Paola Breda and Marino Toppan and working with archivist David Sharron at Brock University. Sharron assists the Brock University students yearly by inviting the Italian Canadian Studies class to the Archives and Special Collections in the library at Brock University and has welcomed students from University College’s Italian Canadian Studies Program to use the archives for their Niagara focused projects.
The students inspired the Italian Canadian Archives Project (ICAP) to incorporate their academic poster projects as "community poster projects" for members of ICAP to document local archival materials. The Director of Italian Canadian Narrative Showcase (ICNS) at Guelph University, Sandra Parmegiani, saw these projects displayed at Brock University during the national ICAP conference in October 2019 and invited the students to create their own space on the ICNS website to exhibit their academic posters with essays. This is the same conference Colella viewed the academic posters for this nomination.
Parmegiani & Russo co-founded Archival Research of Italian-Canadian Immigration and Culture after the conference hosted at Brock University to showcase those projects and future projects. Students have further shown leadership by engaging in an editing process after their course ended in order to share their work with the public. The students at Brock University continue their projects in ITAL/CANA2P98; this year students are researching the topic of sports industry in anticipation of the Summer Canada Games to Niagara in 2022.
Students in the nomination include Elizabeth Colantoni; Sam Caravaggio; Christina Ioanna Coutsougeras; CristianDelfino; Stefania Di Leo; Lucia Di Pietro; Natasha Fares; Samantha Greco; Sebastian Gri;Fiona McLean; Daniella Pace; Joseph Rossi; Carmen Russo; Garima Saini; Faye Varanesi; and Mackenzie Velocci.
