After a successful Fall 2024 semester teaching about the Italian capital, Rome (ITAL 156), and Italian Culture in a European and global context, including the mafia (ITAL 406) Professor Ciro Incoronato is gearing up to teach the Italian program's minority general education course ITAL 250 'Minority Identities in Film and Culture: The Italian American and African American Experience'. 

A specialist of Italian film and media, he and his students will explore the complex relation between Italian Americans and African Americans in the 19th and 20th century. Were Italian Americans white? What is whiteness? How does identity politics define the relation between minority groups? They will looking at the construction of whiteness among Italian American and at the representation of their relation with African Americans in literature, movies and social studies.