Italian Migration, Trade, and Consumption between Italy, the U.S., and Argentina, 1880-1940

FAIN: FT-60900-13

Elizabeth Ann Zanoni
Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA 23529-0001)

The central argument of my book, Gendering Nations of Consumers: Italian Migration, Trade, and Consumption between Italy, the U.S., and Argentina, 1880-1940, is that the formation of Italian migrants' consumer habits and identities in the United States and Argentina was gendered and transnational, connected to products and ideas about masculinity and femininity circulating in the Atlantic economy. I use a transnational perspective to challenge scholarship that views migration and trade as bounded within the confines of a single nation. Focusing on trade as well as migration allows me to treat Italy, the U.S., and Argentina as interconnected, rather than separate, histories. Furthermore, while many economic histories have written ethnic women out of the dominant narrative of global capitalism, I show that women and gender intersected with meanings about nationality and ethnicity to organize linkages between trade and migration.

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