Calandra's Professor Fred Gardaphé spoke to podcaster Danielle Romero on her channel NYTN, in which she explores issues related to identity and ethnicity. Gardaphé spoke about his working-class background and his education journey and the ways in which his upbringing has reflected and refracted in his life as a professor at Queens College and as the author of numerous scholarly books and articles. Watch the whole conversation below.

Scholars and interested participants began gathering at the Institute on April 26 to listen to presentations by speakers from around the world on the theme of this year's conference, Translating Italian Mobilities. All sessions were livestreamed. With ten panels and individual presentations on topics related to translation and a keynote ("Rescue, Restore, Redeem: On Translating I Promessi Sposi") by Michael F. Moore and Lawrence Venuti ("The Bourgeois Shudder: Translating Dino Buzzati’s Politics of Fantasy")(with discusant Loredana Polezzi), the conference lasted two full days and provided ample material and opportunities for lively and collegial discussion. To review the program and see all the presenters and their topics, click here. Click here to see more photos from the conference.

Thursday, April 11, Luisa Del Giudice, author and independent scholar, presented her new book In Search of Abundance: Mountains of Cheese, Rivers of Wine, and Other Gastronomic Utopias (2023 Bordighera Press), in which she outlines the fascinating and complex journey of ideas about plenty and scarcity in the history of Italian diasporic cultures. The book is available via Bordighera Press.

Today Calandra's dean, Anthony J. Tamburri, will speak to the Appellate Division, Second Department, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. His topic is "Italian Americans: Who We Were and Who We Are."

  On March 4, Calandra's dean Prof. Tamburri spoke about the film Big Night (1996) from the perspective of identity. Through a comparative analysis of the three main characters (Primo, Secondo, and Pascal), we come to understand how Italian immigrants negotiated differently the challenges of the host country. Even of the same generation, we see how these three characters represent three different types of individuals, from one person to the next. Click here to see the entire presentation.