The Institute is currently hosting the exhibition Edward E. Boccia: Postwar American Expressionist, curated by Rosa Berland. The show will be on view until February 21, 2025, and the gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. Free and open to the public. Click here to see the full catalog of the exhibited works.
Category: News
Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri Receives Special Award at IASA Conference
At the annual conference of the Italian American Studies Association in Boca Raton, Florida, this past weekend, Calandra’s dean, Anthony Tamburri, was presented with the IASA’s 2024 Distinguished Service Award. “The most important feature of Anthony’s sense of the word service is one that comprehends all,” said IASA’s former president Alan Gravano. “Anthony serves his colleagues because he enjoys the success of others as his own. He loves to provide ways for others to succeed. He creates venues and means for others to shine. … You could not find one person in our field who has not been helped or motivated to become a better scholar by Anthony Tamburri.” Gravano, along with Dr. Ilaria Serra, presented the award. Congratulations to Dean Tamburri.
Calandra Chosen as NYC Launch Site for Italea Initiative
On Thursday, October 10, a slew of Italian dignitaries gathered at the Calandra Institute to toast a roots-travel initiative by Italea. From the Italea website:
Italea is the program to promote roots tourism, launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation within the NRRP project and financed by NextGenerationEU.
The project aims to attract Italians abroad and Italian descendants intending to discover the places and traditions of their origins, providing a set of services to facilitate travel in Italy, thanks also to the widespread organization of 20 groups, one in each Italian region, who will take care of informing, welcoming and assisting travelers from their roots.
Italea is a project dedicated both to those who already know their Italian origins and want to organize a trip to discover and rediscover the places, customs and culture of their ancestors, and to those who need to identify them, and who will be able to make use of a network of reliable genealogists.
The name Italea derives from “talea,” a practice by which a plant is allowed to propagate. By cutting a part of it and replanting it, it can be given new life, making new roots grow: just as happens with migrations. This program represents gratitude to the “mother plant” for its flowering in the world.
Photograph of Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri and Cons. Amb. Giovanni Maria de Vita courtesy of Catalina Santamaria
Calandra’s Joseph Sciorra on Pete Panto, at Casa Italiana
Last week, Calandra’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra delivered a talk at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on the topic of labor activist Pietro “Pete” Panto. Sciorra spearheaded a successful effort last year to have Panto’s headstone made and installed in St. John’s Cemetery on Long Island, where the longshoreman’s remains are buried.
Click here to watch the entire presentation at Casa Italiana.
Seeking Objects Made by Italian POWs in the United States
In April 2025 the Calandra Institute will mount an exhibit on the artistry of World War II Italian POWs in the United States. The exhibit will feature handcrafted objects, paintings, photographs, letters, newspapers, and other artifacts documenting creativity under captivity. During the war more than 51,000 Italian military personnel were held throughout the country, from Massachusetts to Hawaii. The curators, Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College) and Joseph Sciorra (Calandra Institute), are looking for items, especially crafts and artwork, for possible inclusion in the exhibit. While the exhibit will focus on the United States, objects from other parts of the world concerning Italian POWs are also of interest. Such artwork may have been made while in a POW camp or after the war as a reflection of wartime captivity and experience. The exhibit is co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY), the Australian Research Council, and the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships.
Please contact both Dr. Ruberto (lruberto@peralta.edu) and Dr. Sciorra (joseph.sciorra@qc.cuny.edu) directly with any leads, examples of artifacts, or questions.
Calandra Institute’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra Wins Bishir Prize
The Vernacular Architecture Forum has awarded Joseph Sciorra its 2024 Catherine W. Bishir Prize for his article “‘The Strange Artistic Genius of This People’: The Ephemeral Art and Impermanent Architecture of Italian Immigrant Catholic Feste,” published in the Fall/Spring 2023 issue of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.
Sciorra looks at late nineteenth and early twentieth-century mobile shrines and street chapels—Baroque confections as tall as sixty feet or as wide as buildings, shaped like altars, towers, or even land-faring boats. Italian American craftsmen created these for their immigrant community feste, or—as Sciorra calls them—“cultural-religious extravaganzas.” He shows the reader these works through the eyes of their intended audiences, as well as those of outsiders—photographers, journalists, visual artists—whose potential biases he carefully considers. Sciorra examines, “how these transient objects of devotion … enacted and proclaimed a diasporic community of believers that challenged hegemonic notions of artistry, religion, the built environment, and the public sphere.” He further expands his gaze to contextualize his hand-crafted sources of study as, in his words, “part of the Progressive era’s xenophobic climate and, in particular, the picturesque gaze that racialized and othered Italian immigrants.”
An online copy of the article is accessible here.
IDSSS: A Glowing Report
The latest image from the 2024 edition of the Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar at Roma Tre University. The program ends June 28, 2024.
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 calandra@qc.cuny.edu, 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.”