Bronx Italian American History Initiative

Reviewer: Cristina Migliaccio

Review Date: March 19, 2025

Site Link: https://www.fordham.edu/academics/research/libraries-and-collections/bronx-italian-american-history-initiative/

Archive Link: https://archive.ph/9mTbD

Keywords: Migration, Oral History, Italian Diaspora, Community Narratives, Public History, Digital Humanities, Memory Studies, Bronx History, Urban Ethnography, Intergenerational Narratives

Data Sources:

• Oral Histories
  
• Video Interviews
  
• Archival Documents
  
• Family Photographs
  
• Transcribed Narratives
  
• Institutional Records
  
• Digital Portfolio

Processes:

• The archive is a public-facing oral history project documenting the experiences of Italian Americans in the Bronx through recorded interviews and digitized historical materials.
  
• Interview subjects include first-generation Italian immigrants, their descendants, and scholars specializing in Italian American studies.
  
• Oral histories are recorded, transcribed, and archived in a structured database accessible through Fordham University.
  
• Narratives are geolocated by borough neighborhoods, creating a spatial representation of Italian American settlement patterns.
  
• The project engages community members by encouraging families to contribute personal materials and participate in storytelling initiatives.
  
• Many interviews focus on working-class and labor experiences, reflecting the socio-economic contributions of Bronx Italians.
  
• The archive partners with scholars, educators, and the public to promote accessible scholarship on the Italian American experience.

Presentation:

The project is structured as an oral history archive with video interviews and transcribed narratives available through Fordham University’s digital repository. The homepage introduces the project’s goals, with clear navigation to interview collections, community contributions, and research findings. The site is well-organized but could benefit from a more interactive interface to enhance engagement.

Digital Tools Used:

• Content Management System (CMS): Fordham University’s digital collections platform
  
• Video Hosting: YouTube and Fordham’s internal media server
  
• Transcription Services: AI-assisted and human-edited transcripts
  
• Geospatial Mapping: Digital tools used to plot Italian American communities across Bronx neighborhoods
  
• Keyword Indexing: Enhancing searchability by tagging interviews with themes such as labor, education, and migration

Languages:

• English
  
• Some interviews include Italian dialects such as Neapolitan, reflecting linguistic heritage

Review

The Bronx Italian American History Initiative is a valuable digital humanities project preserving and analyzing the lived experiences of Bronx Italian Americans. As an interdisciplinary effort, it blends oral history, ethnography, and archival research to offer a rich, personal perspective on migration, community, and identity.

One of its greatest strengths is its focus on working-class narratives, providing insight into labor movements, economic struggles, and cultural preservation within the Bronx. Unlike broader Italian American archives, this project emphasizes urban migration and the distinct historical dynamics of Italian life in New York City.

The archive offers compelling intergenerational perspectives, showing how Italian American identity has evolved across different decades. However, there are some areas for improvement:

1. Searchability: While transcriptions are available, the site lacks a comprehensive keyword index that would help researchers locate relevant interviews more efficiently.
   
2. Interactivity: The archive would benefit from more interactive tools like this map from the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, which captures the layered history between Italian Americans and other racial and ethnic groups. This kind of feature not only highlights shared experiences but also sheds light on tensions that emerged—especially during the civil rights era—when neighborhood dynamics started to shift.
   The map tells a powerful story about how the urban landscape of New York changed over time and how those changes affected the people living there. It touches on white flight—how many white-skinned residents, including Italian Americans, left as racial tensions rose, leaving behind communities that became predominantly Black and Brown, often underfunded and politically marginalized.
   Decades later, many of these same neighborhoods became targets for gentrification, starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the 2000s—a shift that brought another wave of disruption and displacement.
   Adding more interactive tools like this—ones that extend the textured history between Italian Americans and other communities, and that show how changes to the city’s landscape shaped daily life—would really strengthen the archive. It would also open the door to stories that often go untold, like those of biracial individuals from that era, such as author and filmmaker Kym Ragusa, whose work explores growing up between cultures in these very neighborhoods.
   
3. Linguistic Diversity: While some interviews retain dialects, more efforts could be made to preserve and annotate regional Italian linguistic elements, which are central to identity formation.
   
4. Educational Modules: The project could expand by creating classroom-friendly resources, such as discussion guides and lesson plans for use in Italian American studies courses.

Overall, the Bronx Italian American History Initiative is a significant contribution to the field of digital humanities, migration studies, and public history. With further enhancements in searchability, interactivity, and public engagement, it has the potential to become a premier resource for understanding Italian American history in urban New York.

How are collaborative aspects reflected in the project, and are there elements that work particularly well?

The initiative fosters collaboration among academics, community elders, and students through an oral history approach that highlights diverse social and economic experiences. Its partnership with Fordham University—rooted in the Bronx and with deep ties to Italian-American students—adds credibility and academic structure. A standout feature is the photo crowdsourcing campaign, which invites the public to contribute personal photos and stories. This participatory element deepens the archive, making the history of Italian Americans in the Bronx more layered, inclusive, and community-driven.

Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?

• Social Media Engagement: The initiative could expand its audience by leveraging platforms like Instagram and TikTok to share short video clips of interviews, potentially reaching younger generations of Italian Americans.
  
• Community Submissions: Creating a “Submit Your Story” feature where Bronx residents can upload family photos, letters, and personal narratives to enrich the collection.
  
• Public History Exhibits: Partnering with local museums and cultural centers to create pop-up exhibitions featuring video testimonials and artifacts from the archive.
  
• Podcast Series: Developing a podcast that shares stories from the archive, making these narratives accessible to a wider audience through an audio format.