Author: Sian Gibby

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.

Last night Calandra Institute was fortunate to host, together with Bordighera Press and Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella, a book launch for the new collection of poems by the late poet Gil Fagiani, titled Missing Madonnas. You can purchase Missing Madonnas through Bordighera Press.

Elizabeth Zanoni, associate professor of history at Virginia’s Old Dominion University, presented her new book Migrant Marketplaces: Food and Italians in North and South America (2018 University of Illinois Press) at the Institute on October 9. Her brilliant talk covered the intricate and fascinating links between Italian migration and foodways in both New York City and Buenos Aires. The relationships among all the factors are startling and rich. Autographed copies of the book were available for sale at a discount at the event (as is typically the case; another among many reasons to come to the Institute!), but you can still buy it here.

Click here to see and/or download a complete listing of the events for this year’s Italian Heritage and Culture Month.

The exhibition of Martha Cooper’s photographs (“Italian Brooklyn: Photographs by Martha Cooper”) on view currently in the Calandra Gallery has been extended through December 14, 2018. The Gallery is open regular business hours, 9:00AM to 5:00PM, Monday through Friday.

White nationalist rallies in the United States have drawn the ire of people across the nation and the world, and Christian Picciolini has emerged as an expert at unpacking the dangerous psychology of the white supremacist movement. Picciolini himself was recruited by a now notorious skinhead leader and encouraged to fight to “protect the white race from extinction.” Picciolini read excerpts from his book at the Institute and answered questions about how he got out of the movement and is working now to redeem others from its ranks. For information on how to buy his book White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement and How I Got Out, click here.