Amy Bernardy was born inFlorence, the daughter of an Irish-American diplomat and an Italian mother. She was educated atl'Istituto di Studi Superiore in Florence, graduating in 1901 with a thesis on the history of Turkish-Venetian relations. Her academic mentor wasPasquale Villari; he was president of theDante Alighieri Society, and she was the society's vice president.
Bernardy was a lecturer on Italian subjects atSmith College in Massachusetts from 1903 to 1910.[1][2] While in America, she wrote for American and Italian newspapers and magazines.[3] She was commissioned by the Italian government to report on the effects of emigration on Italian-born women and their children in North America,[4][5] including a visit toEllis Island,[6] and studies of regional differences[7] and of "Little Italy" neighborhoods in American and Canadian cities.[8][9][10] She presented her findings at a conference on Italian ethnography in 1910.[11] She also studied Italian expatriate communities in Turkey[12] and in the West Indies. She returned to the United States from 1917 to 1920, to work at the Italian embassy in Washington, D.C., duringWorld War I.[13]
Bernardy spoke against women's suffrage and for protections for workers' families, on a lecture tour of the United States in 1910.[14] She taught at theUniversity of Florence in the 1930s,[15] and toured in Canada as a speaker on Italian social issues and expatriates, especially on education, in 1934.[16][17] On that tour, she defended the policies of Italy's fascist government,[15] and dismissed criticisms against it as being based on 'fables'.[18]
