Calandra Institute

A Reconsideration of Italian/American Cinema, with Dr. Anthony Tamburri
2022-04-12 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Join us at the Townhouse for A Reconsideration of Italian/American Cinema with CCF Member, Dr. Anthony Tamburri.

A 6:00pm cocktail reception will precede Dr. Tamburri’s engaging overview of Italian American filmmaking. The event is $35 and includes a copy of Tamburri’s book, Signing Italian/American Cinema: A More Focused Look.

CCF Members wishing to dine in the Taverna following the event must make a reservation on the booking form, or by emailing mzappa@columbuscitizens.org.

Please note, dinner reservations following the lecture are limited to Foundation Members ONLY; the cocktail reception and lecture are open to all.

The Philip V. Cannistraro Seminar Series in Italian American Studies: Pamela Ballinger
2022-04-07 18:00 - 20:00
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.

Writers Read: Claudia Durastanti Reads from Strangers I Know
2022-04-04 18:00 - 20:00
Strangers I Know is the fourth novel by Claudia Durastanti and her first to be translated to English; the book is a bestseller in Italy and winner of the Premio Pozzale Luigi Russo and the Premio Strega Off. The largely autobiographical novel is a subversive story about family and coming of age; it crosses oceans, languages, and generations, bringing readers into small pastoral villages of Southern Italy as well as into smoky night clubs and the NYC punk rock scene. The novel’s narrator finds herself living in a strange transnational atmosphere in which communication is nearly nonexistent. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she isn’t sure exists and attempts to create her own version of her life.
“Formally innovative and emotionally complex, this novel explores themes of communication, family, and belonging with exceptional insight. Durastanti, celebrated in Italy for her intelligent voice and her hybrid perspective, speaks to all who are outside and in-between. Strangers I Know, in a bracing translation by Elizabeth Harris, is a stunning English-language debut.”
—Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Whereabouts
Discussion led by Joseph Salvatore, The New School.

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.

Documented Italians: Dear Sirs (2021)
2022-03-22 18:00 - 20:00
Dear Sirs (2021), 93 minutes
Mark Pedri, dir.
Filmmaker Mark Pedri had never heard his grandfather Silvio’s story, despite spending nearly every day with him for ten years. It wasn’t until after Silvio’s death that Mark found an archive of old photos, letters, and documents detailing Silvio’s horrifying experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II. The discovery inspired Mark to bike across Europe with his wife, the film’s producer Carrie McCarthy, following the original POW transportation routes, in an effort to better understand his grandfather and tell his story.
Post-screening discussion with the director led by Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY.

An Appreciation for the Late Robert Viscusi
2022-01-18 14:00 - 15:30
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.”

Italics: Paradiso Promotes Italian Language & Avelluto Talks about His Exhibition"Foogayzee"
2022-01-16 18:30 - 19:30, 2022-01-15 07:30 - 08:30, 2022-01-12 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-01-12 10:30 - 11:30, 2022-01-11 21:30 - 22:30
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

Our Voyage: Italian American Stories
2022-01-13 19:00 - 20:00
Join us for this conversation about Italian American histories and writings, held online and framed as a discussion between writer Patricia Dunn and Anthony Julian Tamburri, co-founder of Bordighera Press. The conversation will be moderated by Chiara Durazzini and Nicola Orichuia.
Register free at www.iambooksboston.com/events.

Italics: Alison Cornish on Dante & Cav. Joan Migliori Receives Christopher Columbus Award
2021-12-19 18:30 - 19:30, 2021-12-18 07:30 - 08:30, 2021-12-15 16:30 - 17:30, 2021-12-15 10:30 - 11:30, 2021-12-14 21:30 - 22:30
This month Alison Cornish, professor & chair of Italian studies at NYU, talks about Dante.
We attended the Charities of America celebration honoring Cav. Joan Migliori, from the Calandra Institute’s Director for Community and International Programs.
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

Adriana Ink: In Conversation with Anthony Tamburri
2021-12-02 16:30 - 17:00
Award-winning author Adriana Trigiani joins Calandra’s Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri live on Facebook for a conversation about his recent book Signing Italian/American Cinema: A More Focused Look (Ovunque Siamo, 2021). The conversation will be part of Trigiani’s Adriana INK: The World’s Biggest Book Club series.
https://www.facebook.com/AdrianaTrigiani

Italian Heritage and Culture Committee Dante Lecture Series: Luigi Ballerini
2021-12-01 18:00 - 20:00
“He (Dante) Showed How Powerful Language (Our Language) Could Be”
Luigi Ballerini, UCLA, Emeritus

An invitation to reflect on Dante’s divine obsession with language, poetry and the making of meaning. Is there something we can learn from it that would re-tool our own ability to bridge the gap between saying and signifying?

Register in advance for this Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T58XXJ97RWCQY7w90UekZg.

Sponsored by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.

Italian Heritage and Culture Committee Dante Lecture Series: Catherine Adoyo
2021-11-10 18:00 - 20:00
RESCHEDULED FROM 10/20

“’The Joy You Have but Tasted’: Savoring the Commedia with Dante”
For the septicentennial of Dante’s Commedia, this talk celebrates Dante’s relationship with a figure often overlooked by readers yet whose role as perennial confidant the poet establishes and reiterates throughout the poem. The identity of this universal figure? You, the Reader.
Dr. Catherine Adoyo received her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University with a dissertation on the textual architecture of Dante’s Commedia. Trained in music composition and piano performance, Dr. Adoyo is the author of Rain: A Song for All and None, a genre-bending work of literary fiction that draws compositional inspiration from Dante’s Poetics to reclaim the storytelling voices of oral tradition in the Great Lakes region of East Africa.
Register in advance to attend this Zoom event by clicking on this link.
Sponsored by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.

Italian Heritage and Culture Committee Dante Lecture Series: Alessandro Barbero
2021-11-03 12:00 - 13:00
“A Conversation: Dante Today”
Alessandro Barbero in conversation with Anthony Julian Tamburri
The author of numerous books and essays, Alessandro Barbero is both a novelist and scholar of Italian Medieval history and literature. As novelist, in 1996, he won Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Strega Award, for his novel, Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle, gentiluomo. His book, Dante (Laterza, 2020) was extremely well received; a copy in English is due out in 2022, Dante. A Life (Simon & Schuster). Barbero is the author of The Battle, an account of the Battle of Waterloo; The Day of the Barbarians, the story of the Battle of Adrianople; and Charlemagne—all published in Britain. He writes for Il Sole 24 Ore and La Stampa, is the editor of Storia d’Europa e del Mediterranean, and regularly appears on Italian television and radio. In 2005, the Republic of France awarded Barbero with the title of Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in Italy, and Dante is his first book to be published in America.
Register in advance for this Zoom event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WR49eTJYT3K8_mO71r8JZg
Sponsored by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.

Italian Heritage and Culture Committee Dante Lecture Series: Florentina Russo
2021-10-27 18:00 - 20:00
“Teaching Dante”
Teaching and meeting the skills of undergraduate curriculum: Dante as a vehicle for good undergraduate readership. Prof. Russo explains how basic skills in the undergraduate curriculum, such as information literacy and critical thinking skills, are addressed while teaching the Divine Comedy.
Professor and coordinator of the Italian program at St. John’s University, Russo is the author of a book on Dante Alighieri titled Dante’s Search for the Golden Age (FIlibrary SUNY, 2011). She has also published several scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals on Dante and has recently collaborated with UPenn’s online Dante encyclopedia. She holds a position on the Board of Advisers of the Italian Cultural Center at St. John’s University.
Sponsored by the Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Register in advance for this Zoom event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nVfBEA-QQ2aiCz2UK8mstg
Nota bene: This October 27 event will also take place in person at the Institute. Attendance will be limited to the first fifteen people who register. Call the Institute at 212-642-2094 to register to attend in person.
25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor (between 5th & 6th Avenues), Manhattan
As per CUNY rules, COVID-19 protocols will be followed by all in attendance. Anyone attending our events will have their temperature taken and will need to show proof of vaccination (e.g., NYS Excelsior Pass, Vaccination Card) and photo ID upon entering the facilities. There will be no exceptions.

Italics
2021-10-26 21:30 - 22:30
This second special edition of Italics features Fabio Finotti, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, as well as Cav. Joseph Sciame, president and chairman of the Italian Heritage and Culture Month Committee in New York.

Italics re-airs on Wednesday 10:30am, 3:30pm; Saturday 7:30am; Sunday 6:30pm.
Cable subscribers in the five boroughs of New York City receive CUNY TV on Ch. 75 (Spectrum and Optimum), Ch. 77 (RCN) and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS).
CUNY TV (Channel 75, Spectrum)
CUNY TV is available over-the-air on channel 25.3. The broadcast signal can be received within a 35-mile radius from Times Square, including areas of Long Island, Westchester County, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Italian American Heritage Month: Celebrating Contributions and Confronting the Past
2021-10-18 13:00 - 15:00
Monday, October 18
1:00 pm to 3:00pm
Live on Microsoft Teams; link below

Italian immigrants have left a lasting impression on this country, contributing to everything from literature, art, and architecture to politics, industry, and labor. In this online panel discussion, scholars will explore the ways in which Italian Americans have shaped our culture and society. They will examine a variety of issues, including Italian American authors and labor history as well as the recent debates around Christopher Columbus and how the issue has forced Italian Americans to reconsider their perspective on this controversial historical figure and the impact of colonization.

The panel will be moderated by Anthony Julian Tamburri, PhD, dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and distinguished professor of European languages and literature at Queens College.

Panelists for this event are Joseph Sciorra, PhD, director for academic and cultural programs, and Fred Gardaphé, PhD, distinguished professor of English and Italian American studies, both from the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College; and Marcella Bencivenni, PhD, professor of history and coordinator of the Social Sciences Unit at Hostos Community College.

To attend the Reason & Respect event, please click here.

Exhibition Online Roundtable Conversation
2021-10-14 18:00 - 20:00
An Intellectual Between Two Worlds: Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

The exhibition will be accompanied by a Zoom roundtable conversation hosted by Prof. Anthony Tamburri, Dean of the Calandra Institute, with the participation of Prof. Valerio De Cesaris, Rector of the University for Foreigners of Perugia; Prof. Fred Gardaphé (City University of New York); Prof. Roberto Dolci (University for Foreigners of Perugia); Prof. Ruggero Ranieri, President of Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello; and Dr. Antonella Valoroso, curator of the exhibition and co-author with Ruggero Ranieri of the book Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello. Un intellettuale tra due mondi (Morlacchi Editore, 2019).

Register in advance to attend this roundtable discussion by clicking here.

Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello was a lecturer in Italian language and literature at Yale University in the 1930s, a World War II hero, a journalist, writer, speaker at conferences, public administration official and manager at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, cultural attaché to the Italian Embassy in the United States, and the manager of the Cultural Office at the Consulate General of Italy in NYC in the 1950s.

The exhibit’s itinerary illustrates Sorbello’s life and legacy, focusing on his activity in the United States and features reproductions of pictures and documents from the Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello Archive in Perugia.

On view October 14 through December 20, 2021
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.

The exhibition is promoted by the Sorbello Foundation in partnership with the Calandra Institute, the Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello, and the University for Foreigners of Perugia.
The event is part of the NY Italian Heritage and Culture Month program.

Virtual Conference, Italian Borderlands: Restrictions, Breaches, Encounters
2021-04-05 14:00 - 2021-04-21 15:30
This year’s conference will be entirely virtual. Each weekday from April 5 to April 21, 2021, one presentation or panel will take place at 2pm EST.
Capacity at each Zoom event is 100 participants max.
See session descriptions below for registration links for each event.
For a PDF version of the complete program, click here.

Conference Program

MONDAY, APRIL 5
New York Borderlands
Negotiating the Upstate/Downstate Divide: Fiorello H. La Guardia, New York State’s Milk Crises, and the Potential for Rural-Urban Coalitions Today
AMY E. TRAVER, Queensborough Community College, CUNY
Wyckoff Heights? Italian American Borderland on the Brooklyn/Queens Line
STEPHEN J. CERULLI, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY
The Young Italians’ Visions and Dreams of New York: Myth or Reality? ROSEMARY SERRA, University of Trieste
Click here to register for this session.

TUESDAY, APRIL 6
Literature beyond Borders
Giose Rimanelli, a Border Writer
ROSINA MARTUCCI, Independent Scholar
Border Crossings and Kinship in Women’s Letteratura della Migrazione
MERIEL TULANTE, Thomas Jefferson University
Albania as Perennial Italian Borderland in the Novels of Albanian Italophone Authors
VIKTOR BERBERI, University of Minnesota Morris
Click here to register for this session.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7 ROUNDTABLE
Hope Amidst the Chaos of the New Migrations to Southern Italy: Principles, Realities, and Trends
FILIPPO PISCOPO, director, It Will Be Chaos (2018)
KATIA PASSERINI, Seton Hall University
ARTURO PAGÁN, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Click here to register for this session.

THURSDAY, APRIL 8
Cultural Encounters between Italy and Latin America
Italian Immigrants and Ideas in Nineteenth-Century Argentina
HEATHER SOTTONG, University of California, Los Angeles
Crossing Cultural Borders: Fernando Ortiz and Italian Thought in Latin America
DAVID ALIANO, College of Mount Saint Vincent
Click here to register for this session.

FRIDAY, APRIL 9
Cinematic and Musical Borderlands
Italian American Borderlands in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever
MARIE-CHRISTINE MICHAUD, Université de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient
The Politics of Italian Identity: Alessandro Mahmoud and Sanremo 2019
ANTHONY D. SARGENTI, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Bonding across Borders in Matteo Troncone’s Arrangiarsi (Pizza … and the Art of Living)
EVELYN FERRARO, Santa Clara University
Mediterranean Border: The Case of Venice
GIULIANA MUSCIO, University of Padua
Click here to register for this session.

MONDAY, APRIL 12
Families, Neighborhoods, and Beyond
The Italian/American Question: Memory, Space, and Identity
JACQUELINE MAY, Independent Scholar
Breaking Down Borders in the Digital Age: A Case Study of the Descendants of
Gaspare Cario
AMY DEUINK, Pennsylvania State University, and MELISSA E. MARINARO, Senator John Heinz History Center
Arbëreshë, Italian Albanians, Albanian Americans, Italian Americans: Intersecting Borders during the Migrations of the 1890s–1920s
FRANCESCA CANADÉ SAUTMAN, Hunter College, CUNY
Click here to register for this session.

TUESDAY, APRIL 13
Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar
Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione
Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)
Uguccione Ranieri, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and the Teaching of Italian Language in the United States in the 1930s
ROBERTO DOLCI, University for Foreigners of Perugia
The Journey away from the Fascist Regime in the Wartime Experience of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello
RUGGERO RANIERI, Romeyne Robert and Uguccione Sorbello Foundation
“The Italian Scene”: A Cultural Bridge between Postwar Italy and the United States
ANTONELLA VALOROSO, The Umbra Institute
Click here to register for this session.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14
Colonial Africa
Research Resources on Italians in the Horn of Africa
COLLEEN BRADLEY-SANDERS, Brooklyn College Library
Italy’s Recruitment of Migrants in the Interwar Years: Empire and Labor Mobilization
DONATELLA STRANGIO, Sapienza University of Rome
Click here to register for this session.

THURSDAY, APRIL 15
Negotiating Boundaries, Negotiating Identities
The Arrests of Alberto Mario and Jessie White Mario: British Exceptionalism, Transnational Families, and Derivative Citizenship
DIANA MOORE, John Jay College, CUNY
Testing Hybridity: Arab-Muslim Solidarity and the Italian Conquest of Ottoman Tripolitania, 1911–1912
CHRIS J. ROMINGER, University of North Florida
Returning Home as Enemies: Luigi Antonini, the Italian-American Labor Council, and the Fight against Italy during World War II
ANTONIA CUCCHIARA, The New School of Social Research
Click here to register for this session.

FRIDAY, APRIL 16
Sicily as Mediterranean Borderland
From Micheli to the Baracche: The Polis in Flux and Stasis after the 1908 Earthquake of Messina
LINA INSANA, University of Pittsburgh
The Rebirth of a Mediterranean Migration System: Migration between Sicily and Tunisia
GIULIANO FLERI, The Graduate Institute, Geneva
Click here to register for this session.

MONDAY, APRIL 19
Northeast Italy
Fostering a Nationalist Geographical Fantasy: Women Writers and the Italian Northeastern Border (1915–1918)
CRISTINA GRAGNANI, Temple University
Redrawing the Map, Reconstructing Identity: Italian-Yugoslavian Borderlands and Anti- Slavism in Italian Discourse during Fascism
LUISA MORETTIN, NCI University in London
Click here to register for this session.

TUESDAY, APRIL 20 ROUNDTABLE
Crossing Borders with Ulysses’s Second Eye: Searching for Italy’s Identity in Il secondo occhio di Ulisse
SILVIA CARLOROSI, Bronx Community College, CUNY
PETER CARRAVETTA, Stony Brook University, SUNY
WILEY FEINSTEIN, Loyola University Chicago
DANIELE FIORETTI, Miami University
SIMONA WRIGHT, The College of New Jersey
Discussant: SANTE MATTEO, Miami University
Click here to register for this session.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21 KEYNOTE
Where Is Italy? Borders and Borderlands from Metaphor to Geopolitics
DONNA GABACCIA, University of Toronto (Emerita)
Click here to register for this event.

Joanna Clapps Herman Reads from When I Am Italian: Quando sono italiana
2020-05-13 18:00 - 20:00
“My Italian village in America was in Waterbury, Connecticut.” With this sentence, Joanna Clapps Herman raises this book’s central question: To what extent can a person born outside of Italy be considered Italian? The granddaughter of Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, she takes a nuanced look at identity: to whom and to which culture she ultimately belongs. Sometimes the Italian part of her identity feels inexpressible. Sometimes it finds its expression in the rhythms of daily life. Sometimes it is embraced and enhanced; at other times, it feels attenuated.

“In this collection of evocative essays, Clapps Herman illuminates the complex process of ethnic identity formation as she takes the reader on her life’s journey starting with her girlhood ‘up the farm’ in rural Connecticut. … Stops in her ancestral home in Basilicata, and Torino … reveal that being an American of Italian descent in Italy poses its own challenges.”
—Nancy Carnevale, author of A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890–1945

Joanna Clapps Herman’s reading will be accompanied by a presentation by Annie Lanzillotto from her one-woman show Feed Time. Edvige Giunta, New Jersey City University, will moderate the discussion.

Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965
2020-05-04 18:00 - 20:00
Maddalena Marinari
Gustavus Adolphus College
In the late nineteenth century, millions of Italians and Eastern European Jews left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in industrializing nations including the United States. Many Americans of Northern and Western European ancestry regarded these newcomers as biologically and culturally inferior, and by 1924 the United States had instituted national-origins quotas to curtail their immigration. Weaving together political, social, and transnational history, Maddalena Marinari in Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) examines how Italian American and Jewish reformers profoundly influenced the country’s immigration policy. Restrictionist legislators, anti-immigrant hysteria, and a fickle executive branch often left these immigrants with few options except to negotiate and accept political compromises. As they tested the limits of citizen activism, the reformers shaped the terms of debate around immigration in the United States in ways we still reckon with today.

Annual Conference—Italian Borderlands: Restrictions, Breaches, Encounters
2020-04-24 08:00 - 2020-04-25 18:00
Borders can be concrete parameters, and they can also be metaphorical markers. Either way, the border as a political, economic, cultural, and personal site, one to be policed, extended, breached, opened, celebrated, and/or erased, has long been of interest to those concerned with Italy. The areas of scholarly inquiry are as infinite as the varied Italian and Italianate borders themselves. This interdisciplinary conference builds on recent books, symposia, and conferences investigating similar themes of Italian borderlands. The 2020 Calandra Institute conference proposes a transnational, mobile, and inclusive approach to Italy and “Italians”—including inhabitants of the nation-state, members of the diaspora, and former colonial subjects–as it positions itself at the border in an attempt to elucidate the consequences and possibilities that border studies suggest and to gain a deeper understanding of class, gender, and race.
As always, admission to the conference is free and open to the public.

Creating the New Right Ethnic in 1970s America: The Intersection of Anger and Nostalgia
2020-04-15 18:00 - 20:00
Richard Moss
Harrisburg Area Community College
This work analyzes the “New Ethnicity” of the 1970s as a way of understanding the United States’ political turn to the right during that decade. An upsurge of vocal ethnic consciousness among second-, third-, and fourth-generation Southern and Eastern Europeans, the New Ethnicity both challenged and emulated earlier identity movements such as Black Power. Richard Moss’s Creating the New Right Ethnic in 1970s America (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017) explains how the reassertion of ethnicity involved the invention of symbols and traditions. Public intellectuals created a mythical white ethnic who shunned welfare, valued the family, and provided an antidote to liberal elitism and neighborhood breakdown. The image of hard-working, self-sufficient ethnics who took care of their own neighborhood problems became powerful currency in politicians’ effort to create racial divisions and dismantle New Deal and Great Society protections.

Nadina LaSpina Reads from Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride
2020-04-06 18:00 - 20:00
Such a Pretty Girl charts Nadina LaSpina’s life from her childhood in Sicily to her adolescence and youth in the United States to her activism in the disability-rights movement. As a baby she contracted polio, becoming the target of pity and hopelessness; once her family moved her to New York City in 1961, she spent much of her time in hospitals, where she was relentlessly operated on in the quest for a cure. LaSpina’s personal growth parallels the political development of disability arts and culture and the embracing of disability pride. LaSpina refutes all stereotypical narratives of disability; she shows the harm that the focus on pity and on elusive cures have done to disabled people. As captivating as a novel, Such a Pretty Girl is one of the few disability memoirs to focus on activism, and one of the first by an immigrant.
“From the first vivid chapter set in Sicily to her gutsy activism in the U.S., LaSpina’s triumphant memoir of a richly lived life held me rapt.”
—Alix Kates Shulman, author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen
Discussion led by Edvige Giunta, New Jersey City University.
