Category: News

Exhibition: Creativity and World War II Italian POWs in the United States, May 1–September 26, 2025

Posted on by Sian Gibby
Unidentified Italian Service Unit member working on an inlayed wooden box, unknown camp location. Credit: National Archives

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.

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

Calandra’s Annual Conference: The Bitter Bread of War

Posted on by Sian Gibby

Calandra’s annual conference, this year titled The Bitter Bread of War: Multidisciplicary Perspectives from Italy and the Diaspora, will take place in person at the Institute Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26, 2025.

This interdisciplinary conference explores 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.

Click here to see the complete conference program.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Summer Minerva Presents Summer Within

Posted on by Sian Gibby
Professor Fred Gardaphe sits at a table next to Summer Minerva
Fred Gardaphe and Summer Minerva

Yesterday at the Institute filmmaker Summer Minerva presented her latest film (with co-director Adam Golub), Summer Within, a documentary about the history and tradition of femminielli in Southern Italy. After the screening, Minerva discussed the film with Professor Fred Gardaphè, of Queens College and the Calandra Institute. For more on the film, click here.

FK Clementi Reads from South of My Dreams

Posted on by Sian Gibby
FK Clementi and Sian Gibby, in front of a banner for the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
FK Clementi and Sian Gibby. Photo by Susan Keefer.

On March 20, the Calandra Institute hosted professor and author FK Clementi, who read from her captivating and charming memoir, South of My Dreams. Clementi, born and raised in Rome, came to the US as a young student after having nursed romantic fantasies about New York City. It’s safe to say that her trajectory to teaching Holocaust studies at the University of South Carolina was an extremely atypical one for an Italian immigrant: The details are by turns funny, alarming, and downright horrifying. It is a cautionary tale like no other from a newly minted American citizen who has looked at the US from many angles and has a rich and appropriately complex impression of the nation.

Video from Event Honoring the Late Professor Robert Viscusi

Posted on by Sian Gibby

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.

Calandra Institute’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra Wins Bishir Prize

Posted on by Sian Gibby

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.

Italian Heritage and Culture Month 2024: Giovanni da Verrazzano 1524-2024

Posted on by Sian Gibby

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

Posted on by Sian Gibby

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.”

Professor Fred Gardaphé on Growing Up Italian American in Chicago

Posted on by Sian Gibby

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.