Dr. D’Agostino addresses students and faculty in Getz Auditorium.

On Friday, April 4th, the Choate Italian-American Organization (CIAO) sponsored a lecture by renowned Italian-American author Raeleen D’Agostino, a best-selling author, professional speaker, former psychology professor, and Dolce Vita weekly columnist for the Italian language newspaper America Oggi. The guest speaker discussed the pervasiveness of negative stereotyping of Italians and Italian Americans and what the rest of society can do about it.

Dr. D’Agostino’s book Living la Dolce Vita: Bring the Passion, Laughter, and Serenity of Italy into Your Daily Life has been translated into many languages including Korean and Portuguese. Dr. D’Agostino has a PhD in educational psychology.

CIAO presidents Sharon DelVecchio ’09 and Victoria Vaccari ’09 were very excited to bring such an inspiring and successful author to Choate. DelVecchio said before the lecture, “We are very excited about it. We’re very lucky to have her coming this week at our school. It took a long time to track her down, but we’re very happy that she’s coming. Because she’s a motivational speaker, it should be a very fun, enthusiastic, and uplifting speech that she’s going to give us.”

Dr. D’Agostino lectured to an audience of about thirty students and faculty in a very enthusiastic fashion that kept the audience engaged until the end. She encouraged audience participation and numerous Choate students stepped up to the challenge.

Dr. D’Agostino spoke about the different stereotypes of Italians and Italian Americans that exist today and the different movies, shows, and commercials that use the stereotypes. She stressed the importance of recognizing these stereotypes and seeing the negative portrayal of Italians that they show.

“If we let it go, we become permissible to it. People become a little more desensitized to it. The bottom line when it comes to media is the dollar and if people buy products with stereotypical commercials they’re given what people expect to get: good business.” Dr. D’Agostino told the students.

She defined stereotypes as, “open generalizations based on something that we don’t have experience with.” She encouraged the students to speak up for themselves and their heritage. She talked to them about the different ways to do that such as writing letters, e-mails, and others. “Anytime you send that one letter, one e-mail, or one phone call, it makes the person that receives it a little more aware and makes it a little harder for that person to make that stereotype again,” she explained.

Dr. D’Agostino encouraged students to learn more about their heritage, how their culture still preserves its customs today, and to find their own identity instead of identifying with the negative or positive stereotypes. She stated, “Be proud of where you’re from.”

She closed with the statement, “You have to be the vessel that carries your proud heritage forward, and that makes you the shining example of being all you could be and validating that hard work that your ancestors had to go through to get you to where you are today and to give you the promise of your future.”

Dr. D’Agostino was very pleased with the students who attended and their enthusiasm for the subject. “I’m thrilled to be here. You’ve got a wonderful student body, very interested students, and they’re fun to speak to. It was my pleasure.”

“She [Dr. D’Agostino] is really passionate about what she thinks,” said Hanh Nguyen, one of the students who attended the lecture. “It [stereotyping] is a tough issue. It’s hard to resolve.”

“All it takes is one person to say, ‘you know, that’s not who we are.’ And that person usually has that in mind for a long time afterwards and don’t repeat it. Sometimes people just need a little bit of awareness,” Dr. D’Agostino said.

As the lecture attendees filed out of Getz, many thought about and discussed D’Agostino’s suggestions and observations about stereotypes and finding one’s true heritage. D’Agostino certainly attained her goal of the evening—opening Choate students’ minds and exposing them to cultural stereotypes.