Tag: italy

Calandra Chosen as NYC Launch Site for Italea Initiative

Posted on by Sian Gibby

On Thursday, October 10, a slew of Italian dignitaries gathered at the Calandra Institute to toast a roots-travel initiative by Italea. From the Italea website:

Italea is the program to promote roots tourism, launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation within the NRRP project and financed by NextGenerationEU.

The project aims to attract Italians abroad and Italian descendants intending to discover the places and traditions of their origins, providing a set of services to facilitate travel in Italy, thanks also to the widespread organization of 20 groups, one in each Italian region, who will take care of informing, welcoming and assisting travelers from their roots.

Italea is a project dedicated both to those who already know their Italian origins and want to organize a trip to discover and rediscover the places, customs and culture of their ancestors, and to those who need to identify them, and who will be able to make use of a network of reliable genealogists.

The name Italea derives from “talea,” a practice by which a plant is allowed to propagate. By cutting a part of it and replanting it, it can be given new life, making new roots grow: just as happens with migrations. This program represents gratitude to the “mother plant” for its flowering in the world.

Photograph of Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri and Cons. Amb. Giovanni Maria de Vita courtesy of Catalina Santamaria

Gastrofascism and Empire: Food in Italian East Africa, 1935–1941

Simone Cinotto, University of Gastronomic Sciences Pollenzo

The Italian Fascist regime envisioned transforming Ethiopia into its own granary to establish self-sufficiency to encourage demographic expansion, and to strengthen Italy’s international political position. While these plans failed, the extensive food exchanges and culinary hybridizations between Ethiopian and Italian food cultures thrived, resulting in the creation of an Ethiopian-Italian cuisine, a taste of Empire at the margins. Using a decolonizing food-studies approach and unexplored Ethiopian and Italian sources, Simone Cinotto describes the meanings of different foods for different people at various points along the imperial food chain. Exploring the subjectivities, agencies, and emotions of Ethiopians and Italians, Gastrofascism and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2024) goes beyond simple colonizer/colonized binaries and offers a nuanced picture of lived, multisensorial experiences.

Il mondo è troppo per me: La storia di Vittorio Camardese

Il mondo è troppo per me: La storia di Vittorio Camardese (2023), 63 minutes

Vania Cauzillo, dir.

This film tells the story of Vittorio Camardese, a guitarist from Basilicata, who presaged techniques of both jazz and rock music. He played with jazz greats in Rome; so, how is it that he didn’t record even a single note? Why did American trumpeter Chet Baker live in his house for more than a year? And, above all, how has he remained in the shadows when he might have become a significant figure in musical history? Camardese’s story covers forty years, from the postwar to the era of la dolce vita, from 1970s TV shows to the 1980s pop explosion, leading up to the new millennium. Director Vania Cauzillo’s film has much to say about music, the responsibilities that come with talent, and the fear of success. In Italian with English subtitles.

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

Post-screening discussion led by Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.

Call for Papers for Calandra’s 2025 Conference: The Bitter Bread of War: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from Italy and the Diaspora

Posted on by Sian Gibby

April 25–26, 2025

War has been foundational to the shaping of modern Italian history, memory, and culture—from the wars of the Risorgimento to colonial and Fascist wars of expansion up to and including the two world wars. Furthermore, in all these Italian war efforts, emigrant and diasporic communities have played significant roles whether through moral and material support, serving in the Italian military, or through their opposition to Italian wars. As such, scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the theme of war and its importance to our understanding of the history of Italy, the Italian diaspora, and former colonial subjects. This interdisciplinary conference is open to a wide range of topics concerning war from an Italian—broadly understood—perspective. As in the past, the Institute’s conference proposes an 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.

Suggested paper topics include but are not limited to:

  • Italian military history
  • Italy’s reaction to other nations’ wars (e.g., Vietnam War, Russian-Ukraine War)
  • Anti-war movements and statements (e.g., Scorsese’s 1967 The Big Shave)
  • Colonial wars and anti-colonial responses
  • Domestic warfare, e.g., brigands, partisans, Years of Lead
  • Diasporic involvement with Italy’s military and wars
  • Italian immigrant and descendants’ participation in host country’s military
  • Displaced persons and refugees
  • Internment, e.g., POWs, US government’s enemy alien designation, Fascist concentration camps in Libya
  • Gendered approaches to war
  • Creative accounts and depictions, e.g., memoir, fiction, film, visual arts (e.g., Mengiste’s 2019 The Shadow King)
  • War as metaphor, e.g., class wars, war on organized crime, war on migrants
  • Memory, oral history, and historical revisioning, e.g., the foibe, Fosse Ardeatine, the Shoah

This is an in-person event without virtual presentations.

The official language of the conference is English. All presentations are limited to twenty minutes, including audio and visual illustrations. Thursday evening is dedicated to welcoming comments and reception; sessions and panels will take place all day Friday and Saturday.

NOTA BENE: There are no available funds for travel, accommodations, or meals. There is no conference registration fee. The conference does not make arrangements with local hotels, so participants are responsible for booking their own accommodations.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: SEPTEMBER 15, 2024. Abstracts for scholarly papers (up to 500 words, plus a note on technical requirements) and a brief, narrative biography should be emailed as attached documents by September 15, 2024, to calandra@qc.cuny.edu, where other inquiries may also be addressed. We encourage the submission of organized panels (of no more than three presenters). Submission for a panel must be made by a single individual on behalf of the group and must include all the paper titles, abstract narratives, and individual biographies and emails.

Notice of acceptance or rejection will occur in early November 2024.

This year’s conference title comes from Arturo Giovannitti’s poem “Anniversary II.”

Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar

Posted on by Sian Gibby

The Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar™ is a three-week summer program that takes place at Roma Tre University. It is designed to introduce participants (doctoral students and professors) to cultural studies of the Italian diaspora from a variety of academic perspectives and to foster development of individual projects responding to the materials covered in the series of seminars in literature, film, and the social sciences. All participants will engage in a special research project.

The Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar is open to graduate students (doctorate; advanced MA students may be considered) and professors from colleges and universities worldwide. This is a collaborative program between the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute/Queens College of The City University of New York and the Roma Tre University. Professors from these two institutions and others will comprise the teaching faculty of the entire three weeks. This is the seventh year of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar.

The program will be accepting up to twenty participants for the 2024 summer program. The dates for this year are from June 10–28, 2024.

Fellowships of $1,500 per participant are available upon acceptance. Application forms can be found on-line at www.calandrainstitute.org.

Fellows will spend three weeks in a four-star hotel; the seminar classes will be held at Roma Tre University. Cost of room, board (breakfast and lunch), and tuition is $3,300. Graduate credit pending. Air and ground travel are additional. Click here for the application form and click here to read this summer’s program. The 2024 edition begins on June 10, 2024.

Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar in Rome

Posted on by Sian Gibby

The 2023 edition of the Italian Diaspora Summer Studies Seminar at Roma Tre University has concluded, and it was a huge success. For more information on the Seminar or to apply for next year’s trip and course of study, please go to our IDSSS page. Buona estate.