The Institute is currently hosting the exhibition Edward E. Boccia: Postwar American Expressionist, curated by Rosa Berland. The show will be on view until February 21, 2025, and the gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. Free and open to the public. Click here to see the full catalog of the exhibited works.

Using a decolonizing food-studies approach and unexplored Ethiopian and Italian sources, Cinotto describes the meanings of different foods for different people at various points along the imperial food chain. Exploring the subjectivities, agencies, and emotions of Ethiopians and Italians, Gastrofascism and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2024) goes beyond simple colonizer/colonized binaries and offers a nuanced picture of lived, multisensorial experiences. Light refreshments will be served.  

The Italian Language Inter Cultural Alliance (ILICA) commemorated its twentieth anniversary this weekend with a panel discussion on AI, held at Tribeca 360 in lower Manhattan. Free and open to the public, the conference portion of the event featured representatives from the US and Italy who specialize in a range of endeavors, from academia to medicine to technology and high finance. They gathered to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in their respective fields. The panel consisted of Mr. Francesco Rulli (CEO Querlo), Pierluigi Di Tomassi, Esq. (Di Tomassi Law Firm), Prof. Dean Anthony J. Tamburri (John D. Calandra Italian American Institute), Prof. Dr. Antonio Giordano (Oncologist, Pathologist, Researcher & Environmentalist), and Mr. Alfred (Ted) Douglass IV (The Douglass Group- Merrill Lynch Allentown, PA). The panel was moderated by Dr. Donna Chirico, president emerita of ILICA. After the panel and discussion, Vincenzo Marra, chairman and founder of ILICA, played host to assembled guests for a lavish dinner including musical accompaniment by Matteo Fedeli and Antonio Scaioli.

At the annual conference of the Italian American Studies Association in Boca Raton, Florida, this past weekend, Calandra's dean, Anthony Tamburri, was presented with the IASA's 2024 Distinguished Service Award. "The most important feature of Anthony's sense of the word service is one that comprehends all," said IASA's former president Alan Gravano. "Anthony serves his colleagues because he enjoys the success of others as his own. He loves to provide ways for others to succeed. He creates venues and means for others to shine. ... You could not find one person in our field who has not been helped or motivated to become a better scholar by Anthony Tamburri." Gravano, along with Dr. Ilaria Serra, presented the award. Congratulations to Dean Tamburri.

On Thursday, October 10, a slew of Italian dignitaries gathered at the Calandra Institute to toast a roots-travel initiative by Italea. From the Italea website: Italea is the program to promote roots tourism, launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation within the NRRP project and financed by NextGenerationEU. The project aims to attract Italians abroad and Italian descendants intending to discover the places and traditions of their origins, providing a set of services to facilitate travel in Italy, thanks also to the widespread organization of 20 groups, one in each Italian region, who will take care of informing, welcoming and assisting travelers from their roots. Italea is a project dedicated both to those who already know their Italian origins and want to organize a trip to discover and rediscover the places, customs and culture of their ancestors, and to those who need to identify them, and who will be able to make use of a network of reliable genealogists. The name Italea derives from “talea," a practice by which a plant is allowed to propagate. By cutting a part of it and replanting it, it can be given new life, making new roots grow: just as happens with migrations. This program represents gratitude to the “mother plant” for its flowering in the world. Photograph of Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri and Cons. Amb. Giovanni Maria de Vita courtesy of Catalina Santamaria