Maria Truglio grew up in an Italian American family on Long Island, New York. All these years later, she's using her academic background as the opportunity to explore the lives of women who share her heritage.
Truglio, professor of Italian and of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State, recently received funding from the College of the Liberal Arts' Center for Humanities and Information (CHI) to conduct an oral history project documenting the experiences of Italian American women who live in Centre County. The project is part of the broader CHI-funded "Centre County's History Otherwise: Narrating and Mapping Brazilian, Hispanic, and Italian Women's Stories" oral history, led by Judith Sierra-Rivera, assistant professor of Spanish and of Latina/o studies.
"Because so much historical information exists only in people's memories and not in the written record, this study preserves firsthand accounts of events through recorded and transcribed interviews," Truglio said. "And because I think very generally women's stories are less often told, we wanted to create a space to get those voices a place to be heard."
Over the course of the academic year, Truglio said she hopes to interview a dozen or so women of Italian American lineage. She's also documenting photos and other cherished family memorabilia that along with the interviews - available in print, audio and video - will be preserved on a website accessible to students and faculty, as well as the public.
To help her carry out the project, Truglio is collaborating with Jennifer Isasi, director of the Digital Liberal Arts Research Initiative and assistant professor of digital scholarship, and student intern Alexis Wilson, an Italian major and Paterno Fellow.
Truglio said the idea for the project percolated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when human connection was hard to come by and she and other faculty members were thinking of ways to "build bridges and stronger links with the local community."
"I was thinking about these two courses I teach - 'Italian 131,' which is the gen-ed intro to Italian American culture, and 'Italian 485,' the upper-level seminar on Italian American culture," Truglio said. "The courses talk about some places in Pennsylvania with big Italian American populations, like Rosetto and Jessup - these are places some of my students come from. We also have Italian Americans from right here in Centre County. So, I thought, why not hear their stories and integrate their life experiences and perspectives into our understanding of Italian American history and culture?"
