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.
Category: News
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.”
Professor Fred Gardaphé on Growing Up Italian American in Chicago
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.
“Translating Italian Mobilities”: Calandra Annual Conference a Success
Scholars and interested participants began gathering at the Institute on April 26 to listen to presentations by speakers from around the world on the theme of this year’s conference, Translating Italian Mobilities. All sessions were livestreamed. With ten panels and individual presentations on topics related to translation and a keynote (“Rescue, Restore, Redeem: On Translating I Promessi Sposi“) by Michael F. Moore and Lawrence Venuti (“The Bourgeois Shudder: Translating Dino Buzzati’s Politics of Fantasy”)(with discusant Loredana Polezzi), the conference lasted two full days and provided ample material and opportunities for lively and collegial discussion. To review the program and see all the presenters and their topics, click here. Click here to see more photos from the conference.
Luisa Del Giudice at Calandra
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.
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.