Joan Weibel-Orlando, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USC and a 3rd generation Tuscan-American, will read from and discuss her recently published book "La Famiglia Senza Frontiere" (The Family Without Borders).

In 1906 Dante Piacenti and Agata Stefanacci, the author's maternal grandparents, left their Apennine mountain village in Tuscany and emigrated to America. For nearly a century, the American Piacenti (largely because of the efforts of "Nonna Agata," her sisters and daughters) sustained bonds with their family members in Tuscany.

Sharing vintage family photos (dating from 1910 to 2004), portions of life history interviews and personal memories, Dr. W-O will describe the creative processes by which a sense of family is sustained across time and space, a coherent, though negotiated historical narrative was created, and an engendered theory of agency evolved from the author's heuristic process of self discovery, doing family ethnography and assuming and maintaining an ethnic group identity.

Copies of "La Famiglia Senza Frontiere" will be available for purchase and to be signed.

"Un rinfresco toscano" (light Tuscan refreshments) will be served.