Regional context is of critical importance in understanding processes of migration. As well, gender analysis complicates group migration experiences. Dr. McKibben’s talk will focus both on the economic and social environment of California and on the role of women in families that made for a migration experience for Sicilians that counters the usual narratives of Italian migration in the Eastern and Midwestern United State in the twentieth century. Unlike the East and Midwest, Sicilians in California created ethnic communities that were persistent, replenished over time with new migrations, especially in the post-1965 era.

Carol Lynn McKibben began teaching courses in public history at Stanford in 2006. She received her Ph.D. in American History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. Her book, Beyond Cannery Row: Sicilian Women, Immigration, and Community in Monterey, California, 1915-1999 (University of Illinois Press, February, 2006) examines the migration and settlement of Sicilian fishing people to the Monterey Peninsula, with an emphasis on women’s roles in the process. She taught history and policy studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies from 1992-2001, and is currently Public Historian for the City of Seaside, California and the Director of the Seaside History Project. She is the author of Seaside (forthcoming, Arcadia Press, April, 2009), and completing work on the narrative history of Seaside, which focuses on race relations and the influence of the military (Fort Ord) on the city, The Making of a Multi-Cultural Military Town, Seaside, California, 1890-2006.
This lecture is presented by Italian Studies, the Language Program, and Italian Program at UC Santa Cruz.