Remembering the Past, Inventing the Future Italian American Artists and Writers between Nostalgia and Dream

This book originates from the international conference organized by the Centro Universitario di Studi Italoamericani e Canadesi (CUSIAC) at the University of Molise held on June 6-7, 2024. Conceived as one of the Center's most significant initiatives, the conference gathered scholars from Italy and North America, fostering exchanges across disciplines and perspectives.

What began as an encounter of voices has here taken shape in a collection of essays that not only seeks to preserve that dialogic energy but also to expand it into a broader scholarly conversation. The volume reflects this spirit of exchange even in its linguistic form: some contributions are in Italian, others in English. This deliberate choice foregrounds the bilingual -

indeed, italoamericano - character of the field. Such coexistence of idioms mirrors the very condition of diaspora, where memory and imagination are perpetually mediated across linguistic thresholds.