Tag: immigration

Roundtable Discussion: Three Creative Women: Penny Arcade, Joanna Clapps Herman, and Helene Stapinski

Three women artists with roots in Basilicata gather to discuss their work and shared origins. Penny Arcade (born Susana Ventura into a family hailing from Picerno) is a primal force in the New York City performance art scene. Her work explores themes including women’s sexuality and working-class and immigrant identity. Joanna Clapps Herman is a writer who has portrayed the “two worlds” she inhabited while growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut, as the child of Italian American immigrants from Avigliano and Tolve, in works including The Anarchist Bastard. Journalist Helene Stapinski’s family origins in Bernalda formed the basis of her memoir Murder in Matera, in which she investigates the life of her great-great-grandmother, who fled to the United States after a murder.

In conjunction with the exhibition BASILICATË: A Celebration of Lucanian Culture in the World

Luisa Del Giudice at Calandra

Posted on by Sian Gibby

Thursday, April 11, Luisa Del Giudice, author and independent scholar, presented her new book In Search of Abundance: Mountains of Cheese, Rivers of Wine, and Other Gastronomic Utopias (2023 Bordighera Press), in which she outlines the fascinating and complex journey of ideas about plenty and scarcity in the history of Italian diasporic cultures. The book is available via Bordighera Press.

The Pietro “Pete” Panto Italian Diaspora Labor Dissertation Fellowship

Posted on by Sian Gibby

SCOPE OF THE FELLOWSHIP

The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, a university-wide institute under the aegis of Queens College, The City University of New York, is offering a fellowship for graduate students who are writing their dissertation on any topic involving Italian emigrant and/or Italian ethnic labor and/or working-class life either in the United States or in the wider Italian diaspora. Submissions may come from all relevant fields of study in the social sciences and humanities, including, but not limited to, history, literary studies, film studies, gender studies, and political science.

The fellowship is named after dockworker and labor activist Pietro “Pete” Panto (1910–1939), who was murdered for leading rank-and-file stevedores in a struggle for safe and democratic working conditions on the Brooklyn waterfront, which had long been in the grip of mobsters and corrupt elements in the union.

The fellowship will run for six years with one award given each year. The fellowship award is $1,000 US per year, distributed by check or bank transfer after the awardee is announced.

ELIGIBILITY

Graduate students will need to have been registered at their university in the twelve months previous to the application deadline. Recently graduated students are eligible to apply as long as they were registered within the twelve months immediately previous.

Applicants must have passed their qualifying exams, been admitted to candidacy, and have submitted an accepted dissertation proposal. This status must be confirmed in the dissertation director’s letter (see below).

Graduate students who do not win in a given year but continue to work on their dissertation or thesis in the following year are welcome to apply again.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

  • Application materials must be in English and submitted in .pdf format. The dissertation itself may be written in any language.
  • Project description: In no more than 750 words (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font with 1-inch margins), provide a title and brief description of the dissertation project, your progress toward its completion, and an explanation of the project’s contribution to the field of diasporic Italian emigrant and/or ethnic labor and/or working-class life.
  • Curriculum vitae: The CV should include your current mailing address, email address, and telephone number and should focus on publications, courses taken and/or taught, professional activities, and awards. Maximum length not to exceed two pages.
  • Unofficial transcripts: Proof of good standing. There is no need for the transcript to be translated into English.
  • Two letters of reference: One letter must come from the dissertation director and explicitly address the relevance of your project to the furthering of Italian diaspora and labor/working-class studies. Both letters must be in English.

Please upload the documents in .pdf format to Submittable: https://bordigherapress.submittable.com/submit/285828/john-d-calandra-italian-american-institute-pietro-pete-panto-italian-diaspora

For any questions about the application process, please write to the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at the following email: calandra@qc.cuny.edu.

DEADLINE

May 1, 2024. The announcement of this year’s winner will be made on September 2, 2024.

Calandra’s Dean Participates in Italian American Book Event in Settefrati

Posted on by Sian Gibby

Calandra’s dean Anthony Tamburri was in Italy recently, representing the Institute and Queens College, CUNY, at a number of events. One of these was a presentation, organized by the mayor of Settefrati, of a book titled Una Nuova e Più Grande Settefrati sul Suolo D’America (A new and greater Settefrati on American soil), written by Mario Vitti (edited by Dean Tamburri). The book covers the immigration of Italians from Settefrati (Frosinone province) to Connecticut. Dean Tamburri made some remarks at the event. (Video is in Italian; the book is in Italian and in English.)

 

Whom We Shall Welcome: Italian Americans and Immigration Reform, 1945–1965

Danielle Battisti
University of Nebraska–Omaha

In Whom We Shall Welcome (Fordham University Press, 2019), Danielle Battisti examines post–World War II immigration by Italians to the United States. The book looks at efforts by Italian American organizations to foster Italian immigration along with the lobbying efforts of others in the community to change the quota laws. While Italian Americans (and other white ethnics) had attained virtual political and social equality with many other ethnic populations by the end of the war, Italians nonetheless continued to be classified as undesirable immigrants. Battisti’s work is an important contribution toward understanding the construction of Italian American racial/ethnic identity in this period, the role of ethnic groups in U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War era, and the history of the liberal immigration-reform movement that led to the 1965 Immigration Act. Whom We Shall Welcome makes significant contributions to histories of migration and ethnicity, post–World War II liberalism, and immigration policy.