More information about the event here.
Coming This Fall: October 16, Readings from Gil Fagiani’s Missing Madonnas
Author: Sian Gibby
Greetings and Fall Preview
As the summer begins to wind to a close, and people turn their thoughts to the new academic year ahead of us, I want to share with you some highlights of what will be happening at the Calandra Institute this autumn so you can understand why we’re so excited about it.
The fall events get off to a great start with a reading from former white nationalist Christian Picciolini from his book White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out, (Hachette Books, 2017). Read more about the event here.
With October comes Italian Heritage and Culture Month as well as the continuation of all our series, Writers Read, the Cannistraro Lectures, and Documented Italians film screenings. And in November, among our other regular offerings, we will proudly host the second installment of the three-part multinational Diaspore Italiane/Italy in Movement symposium, which situates Calandra, together with our European and Australian partners, at the absolute cutting edge in research work on Italian diaspora scholarship.
We have also made changes to our TV programming. In addition to Italics, which is cablecast on Ch. 75 (Spectrum and Cablevision/Optimum Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN) and Ch. 30 (Verizon), we also initiated a web platform program titled Calandra TV, for those topics that may require more timely attention.
So, please take a look at our calendar for more information about all our events, and be sure you are included on our mailing list to receive notice of what’s going on at the Institute. And do check back frequently to the site for updates on last-minute events added to our terrific schedule for academic year 2018–2019.
Diaspore Italiane: Italy in Movement
A Symposium on Three Continents
Australia * United States * Italy
Click here for videos and PowerPoint audio recordings of sessions from the Melbourne session of this tri-part symposium.
Melbourne * April 2018 / New York * November 2018 / Genova * June 2019
The second part of the symposium, “Transnationalism & Questions of Identity,” will take place in New York City * November 1-3, 2018, at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, Suite 1700, New York, NY 10036.
“Transnationalism and Questions of Identity,” the second chapter of the international conference Diaspore Italiane: Italy in Movement, will be held in New York City, the backdrop for discussions that explore ideas of identity building, claiming, maintaining, and maiming in the twenty-first century. Transnational contexts show cultural identities in motion as they react, adapt, and develop in reciprocal contact in reaction to changing notions of the individual nation in the world today. Transnational subjects, who, within varying degrees of structural constraint, navigate, evaluate, and negotiate different cultural options, emerge as the potentially rational agents of these changes. In parallel, cultural identities emerge as historical constructs affected by contemporary acts and this-worldly constructs of the human imagination.
This conference has a $50 fee. There will be a dinner after the conference on Saturday at a cost of $75.
With the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism
Call for Papers: Calandra International Conference 2019
Click here to read the Call for Papers for our 2019 conference, Eye-centricity and the Visual Cultures of Italy and Its Diaspora.
The 2018 Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar, Universita’ Roma Tre
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 (doctoral students and professors) 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. All participants engage in a special research project.
For more information about the program schedule and faculty, contact Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri at 212.642.2094 or via email at [email protected].
Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar
Friday, June 29, together with the Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Straniere of Roma Tre University, the Calandra Institute concluded the fourth edition of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar. At the close of the Seminar, the article at left appeared in the Corriere della Sera. (Click on the image to enlarge the article.)
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 (doctoral students and professors) 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. All participants will engage in a special research project.
For more information about the program schedule and faculty, contact Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri at 212.642.2094 or via email at [email protected].
Incoronata Serra and Global Tarantella
At the final event of our regularly scheduled programming for the term, Incoronata Inserra presented her book Global Tarantella (University of Illinois Press, 2017), which ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of tarantella, a genre of Southern Italian folk music and dance. Examining tarantella’s changing image and role among Italians and Italian Americans, Inserra illuminates how factors like tourism, translation, and world music venues have shifted the ethics of place embedded in the tarantella cultural tradition.
Chalking for the Triangle Fire Commemoration
Sunday, March 25, 2018, marks the one-hundred-seventh anniversary of the fire that took the lives of one-hundred and forty-six people. The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition each year hosts a commemoration of the tragic event.
Italian Brooklyn: Photographs by Martha Cooper
In this collection of images, photojournalist Martha Cooper, well-known for her work on graffiti and the early days of hip-hop, documents Italian American vernacular expressive culture in 1980s Brooklyn. These thirty-nine photographs were made as part of various documentation projects undertaken by folklorists some three decades ago. Cooper’s photographs of everyday scenes and interactions, many of them involving public Catholic practices in Italian Brooklyn, shine a light on often overlooked details of the urban landscape. Digitized from their original slide formats and newly printed, the photographs depict, among other things, Williamsburg’s annual giglio feast, the Manteo Sicilian marionette theater, yard shrines and sidewalk altars, as well as portraits of community members both noted and lesser-known. This is the first exhibit of Cooper’s extensive earlier Italian American oeuvre.
This exhibition is in collaboration with City Lore, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to New York City’s vibrant folk arts. City Lore is the repository of Cooper’s extensive slide collection.
On view April 19–August 31, 2018
GALLERY HOURS: MONDAY-FRIDAY, 9AM-5PM
Exhibition Opening: Wednesday, April 18, 20
Italian Americans and Immigrants
Italiani d’America, before you jump on the anti-immigration band wagon here in the United States, just keep in mind not only what our grandparents and great-grandparents had to endure, but check out what is going on today with Italians having to leave Italy in order to find a job and have a decent wage. No one in this video is sitting on “their ass,” to quote a prominent U.S. official… A little sympathy and good karma go a long way! Alla ricossa, ragazzi!
Oh, yeah, it is not a “spostamento,” as one former Italian official would have it; it is a “fuga,” and then some!