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, 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.
As people turn their thoughts to the new academic year ahead of us, I want to share with you some highlights of what will be happening at the Calandra Institute this autumn so you can understand why we’re so excited about it.
Click here to see and/or download a complete listing of the events for this year’s Italian Heritage and Culture Month.
The exhibition of Martha Cooper’s photographs
(“Italian Brooklyn: Photographs by Martha Cooper”) on view currently in the Calandra Gallery has been extended through December 14, 2018. The Gallery is open regular business hours, 9:00AM to 5:00PM, Monday through Friday.
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.
More information about the event here.
As the summer begins to wind to a close, and people turn their thoughts to the new academic year ahead of us, I want to share with you some highlights of what will be happening at the Calandra Institute this autumn so you can understand why we’re so excited about it.
The fall events get off to a great start with a reading from former white nationalist Christian Picciolini from his book White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out, (Hachette Books, 2017). Read more about the event here.
With October comes Italian Heritage and Culture Month as well as the continuation of all our series, Writers Read, the Cannistraro Lectures, and Documented Italians film screenings. And in November, among our other regular offerings, we will proudly host the second installment of the three-part multinational Diaspore Italiane/Italy in Movement symposium, which situates Calandra, together with our European and Australian partners, at the absolute cutting edge in research work on Italian diaspora scholarship.
We have also made changes to our TV programming. In addition to Italics, which is cablecast on Ch. 75 (Spectrum and Cablevision/Optimum Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN) and Ch. 30 (Verizon), we also initiated a web platform program titled Calandra TV, for those topics that may require more timely attention.
So, please take a look at our calendar for more information about all our events, and be sure you are included on our mailing list to receive notice of what’s going on at the Institute. And do check back frequently to the site for updates on last-minute events added to our terrific schedule for academic year 2018–2019.
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.
With the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism
