Last week, Calandra’s Dr. Joseph Sciorra delivered a talk at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on the topic of labor activist Pietro “Pete” Panto. Sciorra spearheaded a successful effort last year to have Panto’s headstone made and installed in St. John’s Cemetery on Long Island, where the longshoreman’s remains are buried.
Click here to watch the entire presentation at Casa Italiana.
In April 2025 the Calandra Institute will mount an exhibit on the artistry of World War II Italian POWs in the United States. The exhibit will feature handcrafted objects, paintings, photographs, letters, newspapers, and other artifacts documenting creativity under captivity. During the war more than 51,000 Italian military personnel were held throughout the country, from Massachusetts to Hawaii. The curators, Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College) and Joseph Sciorra (Calandra Institute), are looking for items, especially crafts and artwork, for possible inclusion in the exhibit. While the exhibit will focus on the United States, objects from other parts of the world concerning Italian POWs are also of interest. Such artwork may have been made while in a POW camp or after the war as a reflection of wartime captivity and experience. The exhibit is co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY), the Australian Research Council, and the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships.
Please contact both Dr. Ruberto (lruberto@peralta.edu) and Dr. Sciorra (joseph.sciorra@qc.cuny.edu) directly with any leads, examples of artifacts, or questions.
The latest image from the 2024 edition of the Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar at Roma Tre University. The program ends June 28, 2024.
Today Calandra’s dean, Anthony J. Tamburri, will speak to the Appellate Division, Second Department, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. His topic is “Italian Americans: Who We Were and Who We Are.”
On March 4, Calandra’s dean Prof. Tamburri spoke about the film Big Night (1996) from the perspective of identity. Through a comparative analysis of the three main characters (Primo, Secondo, and Pascal), we come to understand how Italian immigrants negotiated differently the challenges of the host country. Even of the same generation, we see how these three characters represent three different types of individuals, from one person to the next. Click here to see the entire presentation.
A Conversation about Identity and Art: John Avelluto, Joanne Mattera, Timothy McDowell, Sheila Pepe
Identity politics has become an increasingly significant aspect of the art world. This shift signaled, to a large degree, interventionist critiques by artists of color of an art scene and market dominated by straight, white men with a definitive Western perspective. Given this context, what does it mean to consider ethnic identity—italianità—when discussing US-based artists of Italian heritage? What are the benefits and limitations of organizing an exhibit featuring “21 Italian American artists” at an Italian American venue like the Calandra Institute? Join us for a conversation about cultural identity and art and other related topics.
On May 9, 2023, Bordighera Press republished The Italians in America Before the Revolution, by Giovanni Schiavo, as the first book in the Giovanni Schiavo Series.
On Wednesday, May 24, 2023, join Stanislao G. Pugliese, Marcella Bencivenni, and Stephen J. Cerulli at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute for a conversation on Schiavo, his legacy, and the practice of Italian American history.
Giovanni Schiavo is considered one of the pioneers of Italian American studies. He dedicated his life to highlighting Italian contributions to the United States of America. Schiavo published numerous volumes on Italian American history including: Italian-American History: Volume I; Italian-American History Volume II: Contribution to the Catholic Church; Four Centuries of Italian-American History; The Italians in America Before the Civil War; The Italians in America Before the Revolution; Antonio Meucci: Inventor of the Telephone; Italians in Missouri; and The Italians in Chicago.
The Giovanni Schiavo Series aims, in honor of its namesake, to “attempt to rescue from oblivion” the work of the founders of Italian American and Italian Diaspora studies as an academic discipline. The field has expanded greatly, especially during the last twenty-five years of the twentieth century; as a result, a plethora of contemporary works fill the shelves of scholars, readers, and university libraries. However, many of the classics remain out of print. Hence, in the spirit of Giovanni Schiavo, who sought to highlight the experience of Italian Americans’ forgotten past, we seek to do the same but with scholarly works on Italian American subjects.
Stanislao G. Pugliese is the Queensboro UNICO Distinguished Professor of Italian & Italian American Studies at Hofstra University. He specializes in modern Italy, Italian Fascism and anti-Fascism, the Holocaust, Italian Jews, Italian American history and culture, and modern Europe’s intellectual and cultural history. He is the author, editor, and/or translator of fifteen books on Italian and Italian American history. In 2009, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux published Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, which won the Fraenkel Prize in London, the Premio Flaiano in Italy, and the Howard Marraro Prize from the American Historical Association. He co-edited The Routledge History of Italian Americans with William Connell.
Marcella Bencivenni is a professor of history at Hostos Community College, CUNY. Her research focuses on the histories of im/migration, labor, and social movements in the modern United States, with a particular interest in the Italian diaspora. She is the author of Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890–1940 (NYU Press, 2011, repr. 2014), and co-editor of Radical Perspectives on Immigration (Routledge, 2008), a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy of which she is an editorial board member. She is editor emerita of the Italian American Review.
Stephen J. Cerulli is the Bennet Distinguished Fellow at Fordham University, where he is a PhD candidate in modern history. He holds two appointments at The City University of New York as a Lecturer in Social Sciences at Hostos Community College (CUNY), and as a researcher at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (CUNY). He sits on the board of the Italian Enclaves Historical Society. His writings on Italian America have appeared in La Voce di New York, Ovunque Siamo, and Pumarol.
From the Calandra Institute’s Director for Academic and Public Programming Dr. Joseph Sciorra: “I am euphoric to announce that a tombstone for murdered dock worker and labor activist Pietro ‘Pete’ Panto was recently placed at his grave that went unmarked for 82 years. I thank all of you who made this possible, with your support, your donations, and work of various sorts. We will soon be organizing a ceremony at the site. Stay tuned.”
The Tusiani Translation Prize will be presented to Geoffrey Brock for his translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti‘s Allegria. Presenting the prize will be Chairman of the Prize, Prof. Gaetano Cipolla, and the members of the Judging Committee: Peter Carravetta, Michael Palma, Giuseppe Perricone, and Minna Zallman Proctor, as well as Luigi Bonaffini, editor of Journal of Italian Translation, which sponsors the Tusiani Prize. The program will include a bilingual reading of excerpts of Brock’s translation. Sponsored by the Journal of Italian Translation and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, QC/CUNY.
