Can two centuries of Italian diaspora across the globe fit into a 30-second sound bite or a 280-character tweet? “No, no and no again,” say the faculty of the fourth edition of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar. Sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and Roma Tre University, the session took place in Ostiense, a southern quarter of Rome. The 16 participants arrived from Turkey, Canada and Italy, and from California, Colorado, Indiana, New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania in the United States. The IDSSS is the dream child of a team of innovative scholars who have supported …
Read More »Landmark book enjoys a stellar second edition
“Reconstructing Italians in Chicago — Thirty Authors in Search of Roots and Branches” was released in 2011 as “a sampler of the best writing on the subject of Italians in Chicago,” according to Dominic Candeloro, who spearheaded the book’s publication by Casa Italia. The first edition has sold out, and a 10th anniversary edition has now been published by Amazon at a much lower price, both in print and on Kindle. The new edition includes an introduction by Candeloro and Fred Gardaphe, an associate editor at Fra Noi and professor at Queens College. References have been updated, some of which …
Read More »Education trumps anti-defamation
The predominant image of Italian Americans in today’s media comes through representation of our working-class presence. The predominant voice of protest of those images comes from Italian Americans in the middle class. Those educated out of the working class no longer connect to those who have remained working class. One result of this class mobility through education is the creation of Americans with Italian names who do not see anything wrong with writing, producing, directing and acting in films that, while protected by the First Amendment, offend other Italian Americans. For help in understanding this struggle, we need to review …
Read More »Academic ace Fred Gardaphè
by Ryan Calabretta-Sajder The American Association of Teachers of Italian recently bestowed its Honorary Membership Award (Socio Onorario) upon longtime Fra Noi Associate Editor Fred Gardaphè. A pioneering voice in the field of Italian-American studies, Gardaphè recently gave a keynote lecture at AATI’s 2016 International Conference in Naples. A Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Gardaphè directs the Italian/American Studies Program at Queens College and formerly directed the programs in Italian American and American studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Gardaphè is …
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