CUNY was privileged to host Francesco "Kento" Carlo at two events this past week, culminating in his presentation and panel discussion at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute Queens College on December 11. The Italian rapper talked about the influence of local Mafia branch 'Ndrangheta in Calabrian life throughout history, about being a political rapper, and about the critical importance of rap and music in general in making connections between people when the world is in dire trouble. He also gave the audience a sample of some new lines he'd recently written and answered questions from Dr. Joseph Sciorra and Dean Anthony J. Tamburri, as well as from members of the audience. Kento was in town to celebrate the publication of his new book Resistenza Rap, published by Bordighera Press. (Click here to see some music videos of Kento.)

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Italics: Television for the Italian American Experience aired Tuesday, November 13, with a new episode on the Elena Ferrante Phenomenon. Here in the United States, Ferrante is best known for her New York Times best-selling Neapolitan Quartet of Novels, about two friends growing up in postwar Italy. One of the nation’s most beloved novelists today, Elena Ferrante has garnered great praise both in Italy and in the United States. To discuss this unprecedented cultural event with us are Giancarlo Lombardi, professor and executive officer of the Department of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Rebecca Falkoff, professor of Italian at New York University. Both guests have significant publications on Elena Ferrante. (Taped: 10/16/2018) Click here to watch the episode.  

If you read or understand Italian, you can get a sense of the tenor of last week's exciting conference Diaspore Italiane: "Transnationalism & Questions of Identity" from this article in La Voce di New York and by watching the video-taped conversation between Maddalena Tirabassi, Stafano Luconi, and Simone Battiston.

Andrea L. Dottolo, Rhode Island College (left), and Carol Dottolo, retired educator, Liverpool Central School District, New York (right). The mother-daughter research team came to the Institute Thursday, October 25, to present their work on the psychological facets of Syracuse's Italian American women and their relationships to food.