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Entertaining ethnicity: identity, place, and the Italian festival in Vancouver and trail, British Columbia, 1945-2001

Resource type
Thesis type
(Thesis) M.A.
Date created
2007
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
This thesis examines the postwar history of Italians in Vancouver and Trail, British Columbia through the lens of festivals. It argues that ethnic identities have been constructed at the local level within what is often considered to be a single ethnic group—Italian Canadians—and that these identities were both cultivated and expressed at cultural events. Italian ethnicity in Vancouver and Trail was influenced by a set of variables: the time of arrival, size, regional diversity, and spatial concentration of the Italian population; the role of governments in funding material and cultural projects; rural and nostalgic forms of Italian culture versus those of high culture; Italian participation in the labour market; and relations with the local non-Italian population. These variables combined in locally distinct ways and at Italian festivals took the form of two different historical conversations about what it meant to be Italian in Vancouver and Trail.
Document
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Copyright is held by the author.
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The author has not granted permission for the file to be printed nor for the text to be copied and pasted. If you would like a printable copy of this thesis, please contact summit-permissions@sfu.ca.
Scholarly level
Language
English
Member of collection
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etd3309.pdf 1.82 MB

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