Call for Papers: Italian American Review Special Issue on Sacco and Vanzetti

Abstracts Due: July 1, 2025

Italian American “cause célèbre” and “anarchist martyrs” Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by the State of Massachusetts on August 23, 1927. Almost a full 100 years later, their names remain important touchstones around the world for migration activists and working-class radicals. The memory of Sacco and Vanzetti has been preserved and recreated through cultural and political manifestations over the ensuing years. While rooted in the diasporic Italian-anarchist communities of which they were a part, these manifestations across the globe—in music and art, in plays and novels, in strikes and street protests—long ago transcended those origins and remain significant to this day.

The Italian American Review seeks essays for a special issue dedicated to a re-thinking and re-articulation of the meaning of Sacco and Vanzetti both historically and today. In addition to submissions related to a revisiting of the details of their trial (and related murders) and the anarchist background from which they emerged, we especially invite submissions that focus on lesser explored themes in the historiography, including the global reach of their defense campaign, the impact of the failed fight to save their lives, how this struggle was used by various groups who rallied to their cause in the 1920s, and what they mean to those who have continued to commemorate their deaths with various actions and gatherings ever since. For more information, click here.

Video from Event Honoring the Late Professor Robert Viscusi

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.

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.

Dr. Joseph Sciorra Wins Studs Terkel Award

Photograph of Joseph Sciorra
Joseph Sciorra

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.”

Anthony J. Tamburri and the Calandra Institute Receive Friend of NOIAW Award

Photograph by Italics, Calandra Institute

On Saturday, April 13, Dr. Donna Chirico, dean of York College, CUNY, on behalf of the National Organization of Italian American Women presented Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute with a Friend of NOIAW Award. In the audience were numerous luminaries including, but not limited to, New York First Lady Matilda Cuomo, Italian Consul Genral in New York Francesco Genuardi, and the two honorees for 2019 Sandra L. Depaolo and Dr. Judith A. Salerno. Incoming CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez congratulated all the honorees, via letter, saying of the Institute, “I am especially pleased to congratulate Dean Anthony and the Calandra Institute. … The Institute is well-known for its quality research and events that enrich our understanding of and appreciation for all things and people Italian–including the many Italian women and women of Italian heritage who make outsize contributions to society.”