On May 20, Calandra hosted the last of our spring series events: a screening of Stephen Mancini’s documentary Fedeltà: Soldati. Prigionieri. The film was followed by a Q&A facilitated by Dr. Joseph Sciorra.
Author: Sian Gibby
Calandra Annual Conference Call for Papers 2026
Religions, Beliefs, and the Supernatural in Italy and across Italian Mobilities
April 24–25, 2026
Religious practices, policies, tensions, and conflicts have been a defining feature of the construction of the modern Italian state and its struggle to assert a national identity while in the shadow of the Catholic Church. Various religious communities, such as Jews and Waldensians, and most recently Muslims and Buddhists, have had to contend with the dominance of Catholicism in Italy’s political and cultural spheres. Italy’s colonial and imperial projects in Africa and in the Mediterranean racialized religious differences as aspects of warfare and violent subjugation. Religious beliefs and practices have also shaped the ways in which Italian migrants were seen and understood in new environs, especially in Protestant-dominant countries like the United States. This conference builds on recent scholarship in the field of religious studies and Italian mobility studies to explore new avenues of research. For more information, please click here.
Call for Papers: Italian American Review Special Issue on Sacco and Vanzetti
Abstracts Due: July 1, 2025
Italian American “cause célèbre” and “anarchist martyrs” Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by the State of Massachusetts on August 23, 1927. Almost a full 100 years later, their names remain important touchstones around the world for migration activists and working-class radicals. The memory of Sacco and Vanzetti has been preserved and recreated through cultural and political manifestations over the ensuing years. While rooted in the diasporic Italian-anarchist communities of which they were a part, these manifestations across the globe—in music and art, in plays and novels, in strikes and street protests—long ago transcended those origins and remain significant to this day.
The Italian American Review seeks essays for a special issue dedicated to a re-thinking and re-articulation of the meaning of Sacco and Vanzetti both historically and today. In addition to submissions related to a revisiting of the details of their trial (and related murders) and the anarchist background from which they emerged, we especially invite submissions that focus on lesser explored themes in the historiography, including the global reach of their defense campaign, the impact of the failed fight to save their lives, how this struggle was used by various groups who rallied to their cause in the 1920s, and what they mean to those who have continued to commemorate their deaths with various actions and gatherings ever since. For more information, click here.
Creativity and World War II Italian POWs in the United States
The exhibition, curated by Laura E. Ruberto and Joseph Sciorra, presents creative work made by Italian soldiers who were imprisoned by the Allied forces during World War II, focusing on those held in the United States. These objects, often made from salvaged materials, ranged in size from a small inlaid ring to a large Catholic chapel with a 65-foot bell tower. There is no archive or collective depository about World War II Italian prisoners of war in Allied hands. To document this creative work, the exhibit pulls from research completed by co-curator Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College), including historical photographs, rare remaining artifacts, oral testimonies, written accounts, family memories, and private collections. The exhibition, designed by Polly Franchini, brings together a selection of these objects, images, and stories to present this little-known history. Highlighting the artistry of incarcerated Italian servicemen (some of whom maintained allegiance to Fascism) is not meant to trivialize the atrocities of war or to minimize the resistance of those who fought at great sacrifice. Rather, it offers an opportunity to reflect on the myriad ways that identity and imagination are shaped materially during the adverse conditions of war.
Click here to see the catalog from the exhibition.
In addition to the Calandra Institute, funding for this exhibit comes from the Australian Research Council and the Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies.
ON VIEW May 1, 2025–September 2, 2025
Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm
EXHIBITION OPENING May 1, 2025, 6pm
Video from Event Honoring the Late Professor Robert Viscusi
On the anniversary of the death of Professor Bob Viscusi, poet, teacher, theorist, friend of the Calandra Institute, we hosted a commemoration of him and his work. The event included readings from the Festschrift put together for him in 2021, This Hope Sustains the Scholar, as well as remembrances from colleagues and friends, some from New York City and others from Italy, joining via ZOOM. Click here to watch the entire event.
Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar in the News
The IDSSS got some favorable press in L’idea magazine. This year’s edition of the seminar ran through June 28 at Roma Tre University.
Italian Heritage and Culture Month 2024: Giovanni da Verrazzano 1524-2024
This year’s theme for Italian Heritage and Culture Month is Giovanni da Verrazzano 1524-2024: 500 Years. We present here the Italian Heritage & Culture Committee, New York, Inc.’s documents anticipating the October celebrations: click here for Cav. Joseph Sciame’s Events Letter; here for the Events Form; here for a Press Release about this year’s celebration; and here for the Donations Request Form.
Call for Papers for Calandra’s 2025 Conference: The Bitter Bread of War: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from Italy and the Diaspora
April 25–26, 2025
War has been foundational to the shaping of modern Italian history, memory, and culture—from the wars of the Risorgimento to colonial and Fascist wars of expansion up to and including the two world wars. Furthermore, in all these Italian war efforts, emigrant and diasporic communities have played significant roles whether through moral and material support, serving in the Italian military, or through their opposition to Italian wars. As such, scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the theme of war and its importance to our understanding of the history of Italy, the Italian diaspora, and former colonial subjects. This interdisciplinary conference is open to a wide range of topics concerning war from an Italian—broadly understood—perspective. As in the past, the Institute’s conference proposes an inclusive approach to Italy and Italian mobilities, including inhabitants of the nation-state, members of the diaspora, current immigrants in Italy and their descendants, and former colonial subjects.
Suggested paper topics include but are not limited to:
- Italian military history
- Italy’s reaction to other nations’ wars (e.g., Vietnam War, Russian-Ukraine War)
- Anti-war movements and statements (e.g., Scorsese’s 1967 The Big Shave)
- Colonial wars and anti-colonial responses
- Domestic warfare, e.g., brigands, partisans, Years of Lead
- Diasporic involvement with Italy’s military and wars
- Italian immigrant and descendants’ participation in host country’s military
- Displaced persons and refugees
- Internment, e.g., POWs, US government’s enemy alien designation, Fascist concentration camps in Libya
- Gendered approaches to war
- Creative accounts and depictions, e.g., memoir, fiction, film, visual arts (e.g., Mengiste’s 2019 The Shadow King)
- War as metaphor, e.g., class wars, war on organized crime, war on migrants
- Memory, oral history, and historical revisioning, e.g., the foibe, Fosse Ardeatine, the Shoah
This is an in-person event without virtual presentations.
The official language of the conference is English. All presentations are limited to twenty minutes, including audio and visual illustrations. Thursday evening is dedicated to welcoming comments and reception; sessions and panels will take place all day Friday and Saturday.
NOTA BENE: There are no available funds for travel, accommodations, or meals. There is no conference registration fee. The conference does not make arrangements with local hotels, so participants are responsible for booking their own accommodations.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: SEPTEMBER 15, 2024. Abstracts for scholarly papers (up to 500 words, plus a note on technical requirements) and a brief, narrative biography should be emailed as attached documents by September 15, 2024, to [email protected], where other inquiries may also be addressed. We encourage the submission of organized panels (of no more than three presenters). Submission for a panel must be made by a single individual on behalf of the group and must include all the paper titles, abstract narratives, and individual biographies and emails.
Notice of acceptance or rejection will occur in early November 2024.
This year’s conference title comes from Arturo Giovannitti’s poem “Anniversary II.”
Professor Fred Gardaphé on Growing Up Italian American in Chicago
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.
Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar
The
Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar™ is a three-week summer program that takes place at Roma Tre University. It is designed to introduce participants (primarily doctoral students and professors but also non-academic cultural and community leaders) to cultural studies of the Italian diaspora from a variety of academic perspectives and to foster development of individual projects responding to the materials covered in the series of seminars in literature, film, and the social sciences.
This is a collaborative program between the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute/Queens College of The City University of New York and the Roma Tre University. Professors from these two institutions and others will comprise the teaching faculty of the entire three weeks. This is the seventh year of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar.
The program will be accepting up to twenty participants for the 2025 summer program. The dates for this year are from June 9–27, 2025.
Fellowships of $1,500 per participant are available upon acceptance. Application forms can be found on-line at www.calandrainstitute.org.
Fellows will spend three weeks in a four-star hotel; the seminar classes will be held at Roma Tre University. Cost of room, board (breakfast and lunch), and tuition is $3,500. Graduate credit pending. Air and ground travel are additional. Click here for the application form and click here to read last year’s program.