John D. Calandra Italian American Institute: Academic & Cultural Programs

2007-2008

The Philip V. Cannistraro Seminar Series in Italian American Studies

Thursday, September 27, 2007

“Italian Vernacular Healing and the Enchanted Worldview”

Sabina Magliocco, California State University-Northridge

When Italians came to North America, they brought with them a panoply of vernacular healing traditions, from herbal cures to techniques that were more spiritual or magical. Cunning traditions, as they are called, are part of a larger magico-religious worldview that was, and remains, deeply embedded in the everyday life of rural Italy. These healing practices were tied to rites of passage, the agro-pastoral cycle, the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar; and the most ordinary aspects of day-to-day life. This presentation examines some Italian cunning traditions in the context of this enchanted worldview, and asks what became of them in New World communities.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

“The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian-American Immigrant Autobiographies”

Ilaria Serra, Florida Atlantic University

“Immigrants left behind sweat and tears, but no memories,” wrote the Italian scholar Giuseppe Prezzolini, in his search for first-person accounts of Italian immigration to the United States. He found none. Yet immigrants, even if barely literate, did in fact record their lives in autobiographies that have long been overlooked and ignored. Written in school notebooks or published at the writer’s expense, these testimonies are neither literature nor history, but intriguing tales of real life filled with immigrant pathos. After scavenging archives and private houses, Ilaria Serra has gathered these works in her book The Value of Worthless Lives (Fordham University Press, 2007), and offers a theoretical analysis of the narration of these unorthodox writers who survived history.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

“Diversity’s Blind Spot: Catholic Ethnics on the Faculties of Elite American Universities”

Richard Alba, State University of New York-Albany

In the United States, Italian Americans and other European groups from predominantly Catholic backgrounds provide a critical test case of the continuing power of past institutional exclusion. While these ethnic groups have advanced into the socioeconomic mainstream and that, other than religion and forms of symbolic ethnicity, little distinguishes them on average from other whites, questions remain about their ability to enter elite academic institutions. Catholics were long excluded from the faculty of elite universities, many of which originally had Protestant denominational affiliations. While this systemic discrimination gradually came to an end during the twentieth century, the prejudices of intellectuals against Italian Americans and other predominantly Catholic groups have not disappeared. The empirical analysis to be presented demonstrates that, despite the educational ascent of Italian Americans, they remain substantially underrepresented on elite faculties. The implication is that they continue to face subtle prejudices and discrimination.

Monday, December 10, 2007

“Education as if Citizenship Mattered: Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School”

Michael Johanek and John Puckett, University of Pennsylvania

Leonard Covello, Benjamin Franklin High School’s founding principal (1934-1956), along with his professional allies Vito Marcantonio, Fiorello LaGuardia, and others in East Harlem, built a community school infrastructure geared to educating young people as agents for a most just and humane society. Every facet of Franklin’s community program focused on civic education, reinforced the high school’s instructional program and community work, and modeled engaged public work citizenship. In their book Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School (Temple University Press, 2007), Michael Johanek and John Puckett consider how, and to what extent, Covello was able to balance the demands of disciplinary studies and state examinations with his commitment to civic education and democratic community development. The experience of community-centered schooling in East Harlem suggests the power and promise of an institutional commitment and institutional modeling of democratic citizenship.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

“Il Fuoco di Minonga”: The 1907 Mine Disaster and the Making of Transnational Identity in West Virginia

Joan Saverino, Historical Society of Pennsylvania

On December 6, 1907, the worst mine disaster in American history occurred in Monongah, West Virginia. About fifty percent of the victims were Italian immigrants. Joan Saverino explores current efforts to publicly commemorate the 100^th anniversary of this historic tragedy. Much of the ceremonial planning has been spearheaded by local Italian Americans. Their efforts have rekindled a public relationship between two peoples and two places—Marion County, West Virginia, and specific regions of Italy from where many of the miners originated—that have been left out of history and memory. Using the lens of place, this talk examines the meanings this historic event and these current initiatives have for Italian Americans in West Virginia and implications for the remaking of Italian American identity in the 21^st century.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women at Work

Laura E. Ruberto, Berkeley City College

Revisited from a feminist perspective, the work of Italian cultural theorist Antonio Gramsci offers insights into the relationship between the history of Italian emigration and contemporary immigration to Italy, particularly in relation to the representation of women's work. In her book Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women’s Work in Italy and the U.S., Laura Ruberto underscores the importance of Gramsci's ideas as she examines representations of immigrant women workers, focusing on rice work and paid domestic labor in Italy, and cannery labor and unwaged housework in the U.S. Through an interdisciplinary study of novels, films, testimonials, photographs, and other forms of cultural representation, Ruberto shows how migrant women workers take part in the development of what Gramsci calls national popular culture, even as they are excluded from dominant cultural narratives.

Podcast available

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The American Myth Through Architecture: Modernism and Anti-Modernism

Giulia Guarnieri, Bronx Community College, CUNY

Italian intellectuals Giuseppe Giacosa, Emilio Cecchi, Mario Soldati, Italo Calvino, and Furio Colombo traveling to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries confronted an enigmatic reality, one they found to be exciting and fascinating. For them, this encounter was an opportunity to meditate on the significance of modernity. They understood, with varying viewpoints, that what was happening in the United States would eventually influence the destiny of Europe. In her book Narrative di viaggio urbano: Mito e anti-mito della metropoli americana (Bononia University Press, 2006), Giulia Guarnieri addresses the interpretation of American architecture, both metropolis and iconic symbol, as a quintessential metaphor of American identity expressing modernity, pragmatism, spontaneity, and mental openness. Counter positions, instead, comment negatively on urban architecture, defining the extravagant heights as “americanate” that reveal a resistance towards modernity and recognize the repercussion of capitalism and rampant consumerism.

Podcast available

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Italian in Florida: Shifting Identities in the Wake of Assimilation

Denise Scannell, New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Tampa’s Italian Americans express a counter-discourse disputing the discourse of assimilation in which Italian-American ethnic identity is typically framed. Denise Scannell explores the identities that resonate in the community’s language and their communication practices. The personal narratives of Tampa’s Italians tell a story that includes the fusion of many ethnicities and languages. Many speak a Sicilian shaped by English words, Spanish, and an Italian-American patois. Community members make claims to shifting identities and multiple social realities, revealed in self-identifying comments like “I’m Latin,” “I’m Sicilian,” “I’m Italian,” and “I’m American.” This study explores how Tampa’s Italian Americans speak of themselves as different from others, and examines the ways in which they maintain an ethnic identity through language, in the face of a looming identity crisis.

Presentations begin at 6 PM.

All events are free.

Building management requires people attending events after business hours to pre-register with the Calandra Institute by calling (212) 642-2094. You will need to show a photo ID to the building’s concierge.