Thursday, April 11, Luisa Del Giudice, author and independent scholar, presented her new book In Search of Abundance: Mountains of Cheese, Rivers of Wine, and Other Gastronomic Utopias (2023 Bordighera Press), in which she outlines the fascinating and complex journey of ideas about plenty and scarcity in the history of Italian diasporic cultures. The book is available via Bordighera Press.
Category: News
Dean Tamburri To Address Supreme Court of the State of New York
Today Calandra’s dean, Anthony J. Tamburri, will speak to the Appellate Division, Second Department, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. His topic is “Italian Americans: Who We Were and Who We Are.”
Dean Tamburri Gives a Talk at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò on Italian American Film
On March 4, Calandra’s dean Prof. Tamburri spoke about the film Big Night (1996) from the perspective of identity. Through a comparative analysis of the three main characters (Primo, Secondo, and Pascal), we come to understand how Italian immigrants negotiated differently the challenges of the host country. Even of the same generation, we see how these three characters represent three different types of individuals, from one person to the next. Click here to see the entire presentation.
Calandra’s Stephen Cerulli Talks Italian Americans and Ethnicity on NYTN Podcast
Podcaster Danielle Romero invited Calandra college assistant Stephen Cerulli, who is getting his PhD in Modern History at Fordham University, to talk about matters relating to Italian Americans and ethnicity.
The Pietro “Pete” Panto Italian Diaspora Labor Dissertation Fellowship
SCOPE OF THE FELLOWSHIP
The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, a university-wide institute under the aegis of Queens College, The City University of New York, is offering a fellowship for graduate students who are writing their dissertation on any topic involving Italian emigrant and/or Italian ethnic labor and/or working-class life either in the United States or in the wider Italian diaspora. Submissions may come from all relevant fields of study in the social sciences and humanities, including, but not limited to, history, literary studies, film studies, gender studies, and political science.
The fellowship is named after dockworker and labor activist Pietro “Pete” Panto (1910–1939), who was murdered for leading rank-and-file stevedores in a struggle for safe and democratic working conditions on the Brooklyn waterfront, which had long been in the grip of mobsters and corrupt elements in the union.
The fellowship will run for six years with one award given each year. The fellowship award is $1,000 US per year, distributed by check or bank transfer after the awardee is announced.
ELIGIBILITY
Graduate students will need to have been registered at their university in the twelve months previous to the application deadline. Recently graduated students are eligible to apply as long as they were registered within the twelve months immediately previous.
Applicants must have passed their qualifying exams, been admitted to candidacy, and have submitted an accepted dissertation proposal. This status must be confirmed in the dissertation director’s letter (see below).
Graduate students who do not win in a given year but continue to work on their dissertation or thesis in the following year are welcome to apply again.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
- Application materials must be in English and submitted in .pdf format. The dissertation itself may be written in any language.
- Project description: In no more than 750 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font with 1-inch margins), provide a title and brief description of the dissertation project, your progress toward its completion, and an explanation of the project’s contribution to the field of diasporic Italian emigrant and/or ethnic labor and/or working-class life.
- Curriculum vitae: The CV should include your current mailing address, email address, and telephone number and should focus on publications, courses taken and/or taught, professional activities, and awards. Maximum length not to exceed two pages.
- Unofficial transcripts: Proof of good standing. There is no need for the transcript to be translated into English.
- Two letters of reference: One letter must come from the dissertation director and explicitly address the relevance of your project to the furthering of Italian diaspora and labor/working-class studies. Both letters must be in English.
Please upload the documents in .pdf format to Submittable: https://bordigherapress.submittable.com/submit/285828/john-d-calandra-italian-american-institute-pietro-pete-panto-italian-diaspora
For any questions about the application process, please write to the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at the following email: calandra@qc.cuny.edu.
DEADLINE
May 1, 2024. The announcement of this year’s winner will be made on September 2, 2024.
Position Opening at Queens College: Confidential Executive Assistant
Confidential Executive Assistant (HEa)
Queens, New York
Job ID: 27403
Location: Queens College.
To read more about this position or to apply, click here.
A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists
Curated by Joanne Mattera and Joseph Sciorra
Exhibition opening takes place on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, at 6pm.
The work of the twenty-one artists featured in this exhibit offers a richness of form, medium, subject matter, color, and style that is a delight and a revelation to behold. Connections to a discernable Italian art tradition—or for that matter to Italian American aesthetic practices more specifically—vary across the exhibition, ranging from the explicit to the suggestive to the nonexistent.
After the opening on September 27, the exhibition will be accessible during business hours, 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday, and is located in the Galleria of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Detail of Due Facc’, by John Avelluto, 2020
Honoring Pete Panto, in the New York Times
Today’s New York Times features an article by James Barron that details Calandra’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra’s tireless campaign to recognize the life of dockworker Pete Panto by erecting a gravestone for the murdered labor activist buried in the St. Charles Cemetery on Long Island. Read the article here. And please consider attending the commemoration of Panto that will take place at the gravesite on Tuesday, September 26, 2023, at 2:30pm. Click here for the address and further details.
Calandra’s Dean Participates in Italian American Book Event in Settefrati
Calandra’s dean Anthony Tamburri was in Italy recently, representing the Institute and Queens College, CUNY, at a number of events. One of these was a presentation, organized by the mayor of Settefrati, of a book titled Una Nuova e Più Grande Settefrati sul Suolo D’America (A new and greater Settefrati on American soil), written by Mario Vitti (edited by Dean Tamburri). The book covers the immigration of Italians from Settefrati (Frosinone province) to Connecticut. Dean Tamburri made some remarks at the event. (Video is in Italian; the book is in Italian and in English.)
August 23, 2023: A Double Remembrance Day
Today, Wednesday, August 23, 2023, marks two solemn anninversaries: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 in Boston; and Yusuf Hawkins was murdered in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in 1989.