Who knew when I began my post-secondary schooling six years ago, that I would at some point figure out how to mesh my education with my love life? My love life, in almost every situation, as my girlfriend will disapprovingly tell you, consists of soccer, soccer, and more soccer. I'm a bit of a pig; monogamy isn't for me. La Liga, The Premiership, Serie A, B, C, D1, Primavera, MLS, Bundesliga, UEFA Champion's League, FIFA World Cup, Copa America.... Brampton Adult Soccer: I don't discriminate, I love them all. And this obsession with my favourite sport has naturally led me to want to learn more about its history and about the people that have interacted with it in the ways that I have.
So, after having read book after book about soccer, nationalism, identity, war, gender, race, etc., I wrote an 80-page Undergraduate Honours thesis last year on the development of the global game in England and the way it embodied modernity. Furthermore, I completed an essay about how Mussolini's Fascist regime utilized soccer to socialize Italians and consolidate his form of government. I later had the amazing opportunity to present this paper at an international academic conference on soccer, where I met some of the authors and journalists that I had cited in the same work I was presenting.
Now, time for the big project. I am a Graduate student at McMaster University and I am doing some of my own primary research. I want to write a thesis about Italian-Canadians throughout the 1970s and 80s, with particular focus on that famous, spontaneous celebration in 1982 when Italy won the World Cup. To do this, I'm going to need to speak to many people who were in and around Toronto at the time and can tell me about their memories. Even people who have relatives that fit into this category could be useful to my study. I would like the opportunity to speak with people over a coffee and have a very casual conversation with them about what they remember and how they felt. There are no expectations and no restrictions.
Can anyone out there help me out?
Please contact me at: lomonara@mcmaster.ca if you think you or someone you know could help out with this study. I will send you a more formal letter and more detailed information as a reply and then we can proceed with the study.
Thanks!
Riccardo Lo Monaco, B.A., B.Ed.,
Masters Candidate in History
Department of History
McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario
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