Book Launch and Commemoration for Gil Fagiani 1945–2018

Poet Laureate of the borough of Queens, Maria Lisella, reading from the collection of poetry by her late husband Gil Fagini at the Calandra event. (Photograph by Rosangela Briscese)

Last night Calandra Institute was fortunate to host, together with Bordighera Press and Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella, a book launch for the new collection of poems by the late poet Gil Fagiani, titled Missing Madonnas. You can purchase Missing Madonnas through Bordighera Press.

Elizabeth Zanoni and Migrant Marketplaces

Dr. Elizabeth Zanoni

Elizabeth Zanoni, associate professor of history at Virginia’s Old Dominion University, presented her new book Migrant Marketplaces: Food and Italians in North and South America (2018 University of Illinois Press) at the Institute on October 9. Her brilliant talk covered the intricate and fascinating links between Italian migration and foodways in both New York City and Buenos Aires. The relationships among all the factors are startling and rich. Autographed copies of the book were available for sale at a discount at the event (as is typically the case; another among many reasons to come to the Institute!), but you can still buy it here.

Christian Picciolini at Calandra

White nationalist rallies in the United States have drawn the ire of people across the nation and the world, and Christian Picciolini has emerged as an expert at unpacking the dangerous psychology of the white supremacist movement. Picciolini himself was recruited by a now notorious skinhead leader and encouraged to fight to “protect the white race from extinction.” Picciolini read excerpts from his book at the Institute and answered questions about how he got out of the movement and is working now to redeem others from its ranks. For information on how to buy his book White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement and How I Got Out, click here.

Diaspore Italiane: Italy in Movement

A Symposium on Three Continents
Australia * United States * Italy

Click here for videos and PowerPoint audio recordings of sessions from the Melbourne session of this tri-part symposium.

Melbourne * April 2018 / New York * November 2018 / Genova * June 2019

The second part of the symposium, “Transnationalism & Questions of Identity,” will take place in New York City * November 1-3, 2018, at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, Suite 1700, New York, NY 10036.

“Transnationalism and Questions of Identity,” the second chapter of the international conference Diaspore Italiane: Italy in Movement, will be held in New York City, the backdrop for discussions that explore ideas of identity building, claiming, maintaining, and maiming in the twenty-first century. Transnational contexts show cultural identities in motion as they react, adapt, and develop in reciprocal contact in reaction to changing notions of the individual nation in the world today. Transnational subjects, who, within varying degrees of structural constraint, navigate, evaluate, and negotiate different cultural options, emerge as the potentially rational agents of these changes. In parallel, cultural identities emerge as historical constructs affected by contemporary acts and this-worldly constructs of the human imagination.

This conference has a $50 fee. There will be a dinner after the conference on Saturday at a cost of $75.


Cost




With the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism

The 2018 Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar, Universita’ Roma Tre

The Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar™ is a three-week summer program that takes place at Roma Tre University. It is designed to introduce participants (doctoral students and professors) to cultural studies of the Italian Diaspora from a variety of academic perspectives and to foster development of individual projects responding to the materials covered in the series of seminars in literature, film, and the social sciences. All participants engage in a special research project.

For more information about the program schedule and faculty, contact Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri at 212.642.2094 or via email at anthony.tamburri@qc.cuny.edu.