Seminar Series in Italian American Studies

Monday, September 16, 2002: Giancarlo Lombardi on “Parigi o cara: Terrorism, Exile, and Escape in Contemporary Italian Cinema and Fiction.”

Giancarlo Lombardi of the College of Staten Island, CUNY will examine the role Paris plays in recent cinematic and literary texts about Italian terrorism. Paris -- locus of abjection, land of shelter and freedom -- always becomes a protagonist in these narratives and is ultimately contrasted with the Italian cities and towns where the authors and directors were born. Lombardi will look at a group of films and novels such as Cesare Battisti’s “L’orma rossa”(1995) and Marco Turco’s Vite in sospeso (1998) that portrays a bleak and menacing landscape of (in)voluntary exile which strangely yet forcefully allows Italians to justify their own well-being. Video will be shown.

Thursday, October, October 31, 2002: Christian Messenger on "The Godfather's

Silences."

Chris Messenger is the author of The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became "Our Gang" (2002) and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He will speak on Mario Puzo's inconsistent affiliation with the Italian American literary subject and the ways in which The Godfather, novel and films, may alternately be read through ethnic markers and less inflected traditional critical reading models. Prof. Messenger will focus on the multiple meanings of The Godfather's "silences" as Italian, modernist, popular, and "American."

Wednesday, February 19, 2003: Jennifer Guglielmo on “At the Crossroads: Italian

Women, Race, and Urban Politics in New York City, 1930-1950.”

In the post-World War II period, Italians in New York came to signify the quintessential blue-collar white ethnic conservative, as the vast majority abandoned an earlier affinity with leftist politics to defend anti-communism, protest racial desegregation, and support right-wing political leaders. Guglielmo, who teaches history and women’s studies at William Paterson University, will examine this period of transition from the perspective of Italian immigrant women and their daughters, demonstrating how this process was not inevitable but rather highly contested.

Thursday, March 6 , 2003: JohnT.McGreevy on "Bronx Miracle: Joseph Vitolo, Jr., Our Lady of the Universe, and Roman Catholic Devotion."

History professor John McGreevy of the University of Notre Dame will speak on the experience of Joseph Vitolo, Jr., an Italian American young boy, who claimed to see the Virgin Mary in the Bronx in 1945. The alleged apparition attracted

enormous public interest at the time, and the presentation will discuss how the apparition (and the shrine later constructed on the site) shaped the life of the boy and his immediate circle of family and friends. Professor McGreevy will also suggest the meaning of such phenomena for the workings of religion in the United States, and Catholic piety around the world.

Wednesday, March 12, 2003: Thomas Guglielmo on “White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power, 1890-1945”

Thomas Guglielmo, Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame, will explore Italians' encounters with race in Chicago and focus on questions of identity -- how Italians came to understand themselves racially over time -- and questions of power -- what Italians' precise location was in Chicago's developing racial structure; whether this location changed much over time; and what consequence this location had on Italians' everyday lives, opportunities, and social relations.

Thursday, April 10, 2003: Goffredo Plastino on “Buona Vendetta Social Club”: Calabrian ‘Malavita’ Songs and the Media.”

Calabrian “malavita” songs represent a long musical tradition that is distributed regionally vis-à-vis cassette recordings. Recently, this local music has achieved wider distribution and relative success resulting from the release of two CD compilations. Ethnomusicologist Goffredo Plastino of the University of Newcastle will discuss the repertoire’s general characteristics, the music’s economic position within local culture, and the new relationship the music has with the European media. Recordings will be played.

Thursday, April 17, 2003: Peter Savastano on “The Many Meanings of St. Gerard Maiella: Devotional Practices, Symbolic Polyvocality, and Marginality and Difference in Greater Newark, New Jersey.”

Peter Savastano earned his Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Drew University in Madison. Savastano, a native of Newark, belongs to a family devoted to St. Gerard Maiella for four generations. His talk will explore the role ethnic, sexual, and racial identity plays in shaping personal devotion to St. Gerard in New Jersey for heterosexual Italian Roman Catholics, Italian Roman Catholic gay men, and Haitian Roman Catholics in the greater Newark area. Slides will be shown.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003: Nancy C. Carnevale, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, on “Language and Italian Immigrant Experience in Farfariello's 'Italglish' Theater.”

Nancy C. Carnevale, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, will speak on the early twentieth century stage performer, Eduardo Migliaccio, aka Farfariello, who performed songs written in what some have called "Italglish," a mixture of standard Italian, various dialects, English, and Italianized English. Through Farfariello's lyrics-which represent perhaps the only significant body of writing in this Italian immigrant idiom-we can gain an understanding of the experience of life in America for the Italian immigrants who flocked to his performances. Her analysis of these lyrics reveals the centrality and the complexity of language in the immigrant imagination and experience.

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Lectures begin at 6:30 PM - Calandra Institute, 25 W. 43rd St. (between 5th & 6th Avenues), 18^th floor, in Manhattan. Call (212) 642-2042 for further information. Seating is limited.

The Calandra Institute is a university institute under the aegis of Queens College.