The American school system precariously bridged the two separate worlds in which the Italian immigrant child existed, that of his ethnic community and of the dominant society. The failure of Italian Americans to participate fully in all levels of academia will diminish expectations in higher education and in the society as a whole. (CJ)

Proposes a model of ethnic behavior that describes group behavior as constrained by the following aspects of social structure: demographic opportunity, economic opportunity, and cultural heritage. Tests the model by comparing the single ancestry rates of the following ethnic groups: Italian, Polish, Slovak, and Hungarian. (Author/BJV)

Describes the high Italian speech variety commonly used by Italian Americans, based on a study of 39 Italian Americans that included interviews and questionnaires. Dialectal characteristics, convergence with English, and language maintenance and language shift in the Italian-American community are discussed. (CB)

The literature of Polish, Greek and Italian American women has been largely neglected in the American literary tradition. Through an analysis of female characters in a number of white ethnic autobiographical novels, this paper stresses the importance of an awareness of women's struggles which coincide with immigration history. It also points out…