Calandra Annunal Conference: Italy and the Pacific Rim

Critical interpretations of modern Italy’s histories of migration and mobilities are often set within the confines of the Mediterranean basin or along a transatlantic trajectory. Such neat accounts serve to highlight the nation’s narratives of colonization and linear notions of migration to North and South America. This path, for instance, has long undergirded studies of Italian presences in cities like Buenos Aires, New York City, and Toronto.

What happens to our understanding of modern Italy in the world when we shift our focus away from Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean locales to consider the historical and contemporary connections between Italy and the Pacific Rim as part of transnational and transcultural interactions? How does a reconfigured study on Italy, Italians, or things Italian within contexts of lands bordering the Pacific heighten or challenge our understandings of national discourses and cultural spaces? Do Italian communities in the Pacific Rim share characteristics that set them apart from other areas of global Italian migration? What possibilities does such a realignment of perspective offer in diversifying Italian studies and migration studies broadly understood especially in regards to matters of race, gender, class, ability/disability, and other matters concerning power dynamics?

This interdisciplinary conference is open to a wide range of topics concerning connections between Italy and the Pacific. As in the past, the 2023 Calandra Institute conference proposes a transnational and 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.

This is an in-person event without virtual presentations. The sessions will be live streamed. Watch the Friday sessions here and the Saturday sessions here.

The conference is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 212-642-2094. Click here to see the complete program.