Click here to watch a video discussion among Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri, Queens College Distinguished Professor of Italian American Studies Dr. Fred Gardaphé, Calandra’s Director of Academic and Cultural Programs Dr. Joseph Sciorra, and York College Professor Dr. Donna Chirico on new directions scholars are taking while exploring the historical and contemporary experiences and output of the world’s Italian diaspora.
To watch all Italics programs on YouTube, click here.
The theme for the 2022 edition of the Calandra Institute’s annual conference will be Eco Italie: Material Landscapes and Environmental Imaginaries. The conference will take place in person at the Institute on April 28–30, 2022.
As part of the Working-Class Studies Association Awards for work produced in 2020, this year’s Studs Terkel Award for Single Published Articles or Series, Broadcast Media, Multimedia, and Film in Media and Journalism goes to “Protesta Per Sacco & Vanzetti,” by the Calandra Institute’s Director of Academic and Public Programs Joseph Sciorra. A judge writes that the piece includes “extensive research into the songs related to the men’s arrest, trial and executions,” a case they compare with the death of George Floyd. “The balm for xenophobia is knowledge, but the challenge is to bring people to that table. I’m there.” Also, a judge writes that Sciorra has “preserved a vital record of American anarchist history, giving credit to the working-class reproductions of this period’s emotive sounds and sensations of this historical moment.” The essay’s “focus on Italian language items provides an explicit example of working-class experience across languages, cultures, and people.”
Bordighera Press has just published this volume of essays, a Festschrift for beloved colleague and friend of the Calandra Institute Robert Viscusi (1941–2020). In it scholars deal with an array of Bob’s contributions to the worlds of letters and of academia.
This volume is available everywhere now for purchase. You may buy it at IAMBooks or at Barnes & Noble, among other booksellers. You may purchase the book directly from Bordighera Press by writing to info@bordigherapress.org.
The Calandra Institute’s Olivia Tursi, LCSW-R, MA, has won the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s II Micro Story Contest, sponsored by the college’s Modern Languages Department. Congratulations, Olivia!
With the COVID-19 pandemic, venues that devote resources to public programming, like the Calandra Institute, have had to switch things up a bit. These more casual Zoom conversations offer a new and flexible means by which we have been able to continue with some of our scheduled events that could not take place in person as well as add other fun and informative online events. Click here to see all the conversations to date, and check back often, because we are only doing more.
Host Anthony Tamburri interviews Mark Rotella, the author of Amore: The Story of Italian American Song and Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria, as Rotella describes how his search for his own Italian American identity led to the writing of both books.
Rotella’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Washington Post, and the Village Voice, among others.
Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri sat down for a Zoom conversation with Consul General Francesco Genuardi, a dear friend of the Institute’s, about COVID-19 and its many ramifications here and in Italy. Please click here to watch the conversation.
On April 24 Calandra’s Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri had a conversation with Italy’s ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Armando Varricchio, about the plan for the gradual reopening of Italy. Click here to see the video.
On February 4, 2020, at the Calandra Institute was a presentation of Future: il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi, edited by Igiaba Scego. The evening featured Calandra’s dean Anthony Julian Tamburri giving opening comments and serving as moderator; Candice Whitney, who gave a general presentation of the book; Camilla Hawthorne, who spoke on “The Significance of Future and ‘African Italy’”; and Marie Moise and Angelica Pesarini, who gave readings from the work.
