What are the meanings of belonging and cultural identity at a time of resurgent white nationalism, large-scale transnational migration, and the increasingly convulsive dynamics of nation and imperium? We address this question in a screening and robust critical discussion of scenes from a documentary film-in-progress called BLACKITALIAN. A collaboration between cultural geographer Camilla Hawthorne, ethnomusicologist Christina Zanfagna, cultural historian John Gennari, and filmmaker Michael Whalen, BLACKITALIAN interweaves “story walks,” interviews, and media representations to explore cross-racial contact zones of music, foodways, and other forms of expressive culture in the cities of New York, New Orleans, and Milan. What emerges is a dynamic story about the ways social outsiders move to the inside and create new forms of culture and belonging, challenging us to confront our differences and understand our entwined histories.

Camilla Hawthorne is Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The bilingual, dual citizen daughter of a Black American father and an Italian mother, Hawthorne has studied the politics of race, citizenship, and Blackness in Italy and the wider Mediterranean region for over a decade. She is the author of the monograph Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press 2022; published in Italian as Razza e cittadinanza. Frontiere contese e contestate nel Mediterraneo nero, Astarte Edizioni 2023) and co-editor of The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023). She also serves as program director and faculty member with the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2020, Hawthorne was named one of the Corriere della Sera (Italy’s largest national newspaper) Women of the Year for her contributions to the study of the Black diaspora in Italy

Michael Whalen is the Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury New Endowed Professor at Santa Clara University. A member of the Director’s Guild of America since 1996, Whalen has extensive experience writing one-hour documentaries focusing on humanities scholarship for A&E (a dozen episodes of “Ancient Mysteries” and “Biography”) and the Discovery Channel/TLC (six episodes of “Super Structures”). He has also produced documentaries for The Discovery Channel, NBC, MTV, and The Learning Channel (TLC). As an independent filmmaker, Whalen regularly explores themes of identity and culture with his documentaries. Another First Step (1994, Cine Golden Eagle Award) tells the story of an Irish American father trying to care for his autistic deaf and mute son in the 1950s and 60s. FRESH women (2007, Worldfest Gold Medal) profiles four 40-year-old women leaving the corporate world to launch careers in art. A Christmas in Tent City (2008, multiple Best Short Film awards) recounts the experience of a Mexican immigrant child living in a migrant worker camp. A Question of Habit (PBS, 2011) uncovers how popular culture (think Sister Mary Margarita cocktail napkins and nun porn) has erased the real history of American nuns. The Farmer & The Chef (Australian Public Television, 2014) takes the audience behind the scenes of a working relationship between a world class chef and farmer, and Gringos at the Gate (2012, ESPN) explores US/Mexican relations and national identity through the intense rivalry of the two nations’ soccer teams.

Christina Zanfagna is an Associate Professor of Music and Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. An ethnomusicologist and bicoastal Italian-American who grew up on hip hop and basketball, her research explores the intersections of Black popular music, race, and urban space. She is the author of Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels (University of California Press, 2017), an ethnographic monograph that examines the everyday lives of former gangsta rappers turned gospel rappers in Los Angeles. Zanfagna’s writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Journal of Popular Music Studies, Black Music Research Journal, Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music and Sound Studies, Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop, Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture, and Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, as well as journalistic publications such as The Beat, fRoots, and Stranger’s Guide. She has written on topics ranging from hip hop’s religious history to digital DJing practices, “krump” street dancing in South L.A., the globalization of flamenco, Harlem’s musical and religious diasporas, and the soundscapes of American gentrification. She is also a flamenco dancer, regularly performing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

John Gennari is Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. He is an American Studies-trained U.S. cultural historian with specializations in jazz and popular music, race and ethnicity, Italian American culture, food, sports, and cultural criticism. He is the author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017. His earlier book, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006), was awarded the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture. Gennari has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES

THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.