Currently, there is very little archival information available here in San Diego and at the San Diego Historical Society on Italian-Americans during the World War II era. Kimber Quinney, a lecturer in the History Department. at Cal State San Marcos, has begun to build her own archives--by soliciting oral histories of Italian Americans who lived in San Diego during WWII.

Her project has led to a larger project in conjunction with the American Italian Historical Association to build a website of digital archives of Italian-Americans in California (she is working on the San Diego area). As she was working on that, she made contact with a number of Italian-American organizations in San Diego, and in May explained her research at the House of Italy in Balboa Park to try to get the word out and to solicit documents, photographs and oral histories.

Through that talk that she met Tom Cesarini. Tom is a graduate student at USD in the leadership program, and a long-time resident of San Diego. Thanks in large part to his training at USD, he has devoted the last three years of his life to establishing and developing the Convivio Society (www.conviviosociety.org), a non-profit organization aimed at preserving the culture and history of Italians in San Diego.

So, now Tom and Kimber have joined forces. Kimber is working on the academic side of creating historical archives about Italian Americans and Tom is pleased to see his vision become reality.

The long-term goal of the Convivio Society is eventually to have an Italian arts and culture institute in San Diego, where relevant archives will be physically housed. This is down the road a bit, but Tom has already applied for leasing space in the new Naval Training Center (NTC) Promenade (check it out at www.ntcfoundation.org ) and there's a very good possibility that Convivio will get the space. A short term goal is to build a *digital* document and photographic archive. They have contacted a number of Italian-American organizations in San Diego to tell them about the society and the archive project, but they also believe it would be helpful to have a relationship, however loosely defined, with the university community.

Kimber Quinney’s contact information is:

Kimber M. Quinney, Ph.D.
History Department
California State University, San Marcos
333 So. Twin Oaks Valley Road
San Marcos, CA 92096
kquinney@csusm.edu

Voicemail: 760-750-8178