Paper Title
Location
Fisher 138
Start Date
12-4-2014 11:40 AM
End Date
12-4-2014 12:00 PM
Description
The paper will examine the role Teofilo Petriella played in splitting Italian communities through Marxist agitation. As a strike leader on Mesabi Iron Range and in Copper Country, Petriella traveled throughout the Great Lakes region. In each community he found supporters among the discontented miners, while also facing strong opposition from Catholic priests and middle class community leaders. By examining his activities in both regions, I will illustrate the connectivity of Italian communities around Lake Superior, while also addressing religious and class conflict amongst the populations.
Presenter Bio
Paul Lubotina is a symposium travel grant recipient, funded by The Friends of the Van Pelt Library.
Lubotina was born into a third generation iron mining family of Serbian and Finnish heritage on Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. His great-grandfather Mihailo Ljubotina migrated from the town of Brlog, near Zagreb in modern Croatia, while his other grandfather, Arno Pesola came from Ylipaakkola in Finnish Lapland. As a student at the University of Minnesota he was fascinated by European history, especially in the Baltic and Balkan regions. After studying the Finnish language for two years, he applied for admittance to the University of Helsinki and gained a seat in the Department of Political and Economic Studies. Additionally, Lubotina took Slavic Studies classes at the Renvall Institute, which has been renamed the Department of World Cultures. His work on Finnish diplomatic history led him to cultivate relationships with Vatican scholars, who helped him complete his master’s thesis on Finnish-American relations during the Second World War. These Jesuit scholars also supported his admittance to the graduate history program at Saint Louis University. While in Saint Louis, his focus on European history shifted slightly to examining the integration process of immigrants who came to the United States. In his doctoral dissertation, he wrote about the role conflict played in restructuring Nordic, Slavic, and Latin communities in Minnesota mining districts. Lubotina’s first teaching position was at Northern Michigan University where he expanded his dissertation to include immigrant populations throughout the Great Lakes region. Currently he teaches at Middle Tennessee State University where he has published articles on ethnicity, integration, immigrant labor organizations, and racism.
Teofilo Petriella : Marxist Revolutionary
Fisher 138
The paper will examine the role Teofilo Petriella played in splitting Italian communities through Marxist agitation. As a strike leader on Mesabi Iron Range and in Copper Country, Petriella traveled throughout the Great Lakes region. In each community he found supporters among the discontented miners, while also facing strong opposition from Catholic priests and middle class community leaders. By examining his activities in both regions, I will illustrate the connectivity of Italian communities around Lake Superior, while also addressing religious and class conflict amongst the populations.
