Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Alyssa J. Maldonado-Estrada
Kalamazoo College
Every Saturday, a group of men can be found in the basement of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, busily measuring, hammering, and painting. Each year the parish hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. Its crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, where men lift and carry a seventy-foot-tall, four-ton tower through the streets, bearing its weight on their shoulders. Drawing on six years of research, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada tells the story of how this Italian American tower comes into being. Lifeblood of the Parish (NYU Press, 2020) evocatively presents Catholicism in Brooklyn, where religion is raucous and playful. It offers a new lens through which to understand men’s religious practice, showing how men and boys become socialized into their tradition and express devotion through unexpected acts like woodworking, fundraising, and sporting tattoos.
The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy, by Pamela Ballinger
In The World Refugees Made (Cornell University Press, 2020), Pamela Ballinger reframes our understandings of early postwar Italy by explaining the transformative role played by both decolonization and the “return” migrants from the various possessions in Africa and the Balkans lost with Fascism’s defeat. While these so-called “national refugees” ultimately became the responsibility of the Italian state, the debates over their legal status and who should provide them humanitarian assistance reveal the ways international and intergovernmental networks overlapped in the nascent Italian Republic. Such discourses played a critical role in the consolidation of the international refugee regime as well as in the remaking of the Italian state and citizenship after empire.
Free, open to the public, and held in person at the
Calandra Institute.
RSVP by calling (212) 642-2094.
Registration is required for all events in order to follow current CUNY COVID guidelines. Proof of vaccination and ID are required upon entry. Masks are encouraged but not required. We will continue to assess the latest data and public health guidance and to act in compliance with CUNY protocols.
With us this month is Berardo Paradiso, president of IACE, the Italian American Committee on Education. We also visited John Avelluto’s exhibition “Foogayzee” at Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn.
Regular Air Times
Tuesday 9:30pm
Wednesday 10:30am, 4:30pm
Saturday 7:30am
Sunday 6:30pm
CUNY-TV, Spectrum Ch.75 and RCN, Ch.77 in New York City
Calandra’s annual international conference will take place in person at the Institute on Friday, April 29, 2022 and Saturday, April 30, 2022. More information and schedule of presentations forthcoming. This conference, like all Calandra’s events, will be free and open to the public. REGISTER in advance by calling 212-642-2094. Covid protocols will be strictly enforced. Click here to read the conference program.
On Tuesday, January 18, 2022, at 2:00pm, EST, the Institute will host a virtual and in-person hybrid event to celebrate the recent publication of This Hope Sustains the Scholar: Essays in Tribute to the Work of Robert Viscusi (2021 Bordighera Press). The volume, a collection of writings from colleague-friends of Bob’s, was edited by Siân Gibby, Joseph Sciorra, and Anthony Julian Tamburri. The event will include participation from contributors to the volume. Friends and colleagues of Bob’s are most cordially and warmly invited to attend in person or via Zoom.
Register for the Zoom event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q2H-Ws4STs-5-ff_yDDttQ.
More about the book: “Eleven academics pay tribute to the work of Robert Viscusi (1941-2020), a poet and a scholar of Italian American culture, predominantly literature. Some of these essays deal directly with Viscusi’s research and creative work, while others are inspired by him and the topics and ideas he explored in his lifetime. Robert Viscusi’s legacy is a deep and lasting one. His written body of work challenges us to think about the historical and ongoing Italian American creative presence in the United States by engaging with the artists and the myriad characters they have conjured into existence. Viscusi was a timeless scholar, whose insightful evocations and often playful turns of phrase have helped move the field beyond the parochial to the universal.”
