By now you may have already seen that in the Saturday, July 9, edition of the New York Times, Helene Stapinski—best-selling author and freelance journalist—published an article about Dr. Joseph Sciorra, Director of Academic and Cultural Programs, and his quest to procure a headstone for longshoreman Pietro “Pete”
...read more
In the spring of 2022, as the world began to be recalled to life (in Dickens’s phrase), the Calandra Institute decided, after two years, to hold its annual international conference in person again (the 2021 edition was held entirely online; click here for more information about those sessions). The 2022 conference, Eco Italie: Material Landscapes and Environmental Imaginaries, took place at the Institute on April 28–30. As usual, participants came from all over, this time to address ecological, philosophical, and literary matters relating to Italy and the Italian Diaspora. Conference sessions covered topics ranging from gardening in Italy to earthquakes and their aftereffects, waste management, irrigation as a Fascist political tool, and roots of the ecological movement on the peninsula. The conference keynote talk was delivered by Enrico Cesaretti and was titled "Green Traces: Vegetal Imagination in Italian Science Fiction from Gilda Musa to Solarpunk."
This conference, coming as it did at the end of the most disruptive two years of the pandemic, brought together an unusually focused and determined cohort of young scholars who presented creative and thought-provoking research.
Watch videos of the conference sessions on the Calandra Institute’s YouTube page by clicking here; and you can read the conference program here.
Prof. Barbero
In commemoration of Dante Alighieri's life and work, many projects were realized on the 700th anniversary of the poet's death. One of them, which took place at the end of 2021, was a series of conversations, sponsored in part by the Italian Heritage and Culture Committee Inc., including this one with Alessandro Barbero, a professor of history at University of Eastern Piedmont and a famous figure from Italy's numerous history programs on television. Barbero enjoys an unusual amount of fame in Italy, where it is fair to say that he is almost universally beloved on account of his uncanny ability to explain history in accessible language, as well as his general affability, which is on clear display in this video conversation with Calandra's dean Anthony Julian Tamburri. Barbero is fluent in many languages, including English, the language of this conversation.
Sen. Diane Savino and Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri. Image courtesy Italics
This year, 2022, on May 23, the New York State Conference of Italian American Legislators resumed its annual gathering in Albany and in Troy, New York, to distribute scholarship monies and to recognize notable Italian American citizens and celebrate at a festa in the evening. The Calandra Institute always receives a gracious invitation to attend, and the day's events are covered by Calandra's TV show, Italics. Stay tuned for this episode, which will air later in June. In it you will see, among other things, Dean Tamburri interview Senator Diane Savino.
Image courtesy Rosaria Musco
Novelist Christopher Sorrentino did a book reading on May 10 from his new memoir Now Beacon, Now Sea: A Son's Memoir. With him were Vanessa Pérez-Rosario and Joseph Salvatore to discuss the book. Co-sponsored with Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, the event was live-streamed to dozens of viewers and also videotaped.
In the book, Sorrentino excavates his own memories and family folklore in an effort to peel back the ways in which his mother Victoria seemed trapped between conflicting identities: the Puerto Rican girl identified on her birth certificate as Black, and the white woman she had decided to become.
The Tutto Italiano! radio show interviewed Dean Tamburri Sunday, May 15, 2022. Here is the episode description:
"Join us with guest Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures. His research interests lie in literature, cinema, semiotics, interpretation theory, and cultural studies. Dr. Tamburri has divided his intellectual work evenly between Italian and Italian/American studies, authoring sixteen books and more than one hundred essays on both subject areas in English and Italian."
And you can listen to the complete episode here: https://radiokingston.org/en/broadcast/tutto-italiano/episodes/anthony-julian-tamburri-dean-of-the-john-d-calandra-italian-american-institute
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Read More
The Tutto Italiano! radio show interviewed Dean Tamburri Sunday, May 15, 2022. Here is the episode description:
"Join us with guest Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures. His research interests lie in literature, cinema, semiotics, interpretation theory, and cultural studies. Dr. Tamburri has divided his intellectual work evenly between Italian and Italian/American studies, authoring sixteen books and more than one hundred essays on both subject areas in English and Italian."
And you can listen to the complete episode here: https://radiokingston.org/en/broadcast/tutto-italiano/episodes/anthony-julian-tamburri-dean-of-the-john-d-calandra-italian-american-instituteRead More