Tuesday, February 10, 2015, 6pm
A Great Conspiracy against Our Race: Italian Immigrant Newspapers and the Construction of Whiteness in the Early 20th Century

Peter G. Vellon, Queens College, CUNY

In A Great Conspiracy against Our Race (New York University Press, 2014), Peter Vellon explores how Italian immigrants, a once undesirable and "swarthy" race, assimilated into dominant white culture through the influential national and radical Italian-language press in New York City. This book investigates the ways in which these newspapers constructed race, class, and identity from 1886 through 1920. Their frequent coverage of racially charged events of the time, as well as other controversial topics such as capitalism and religion, reveals how the papers constructed a racial identity as Italian, American, and white. Vellon's work is an important contribution to U.S. history of immigration and race.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 6pm
Italian Scientific Migration to the United States after the 1938 Racial Laws

Alessandra Gissi, University of Naples "L'Orientale"

The Fascist government's 1938 anti-Semitic Racial Laws prompted a major migration of Italian intellectuals to the United States. While historiography has devoted considerable attention to the issue of scientific migration during the 1930s, scholars have mostly overlooked the Italian case. Drawing on individual biographies and institutional histories, Alessandra Gissi provides a new analytic approach to the topic. Using a wide range of sources, principally the records of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Gissi challenges the idea that the Italian scientific wave to the United States was an exile or an escape. Rather, it presented traits typical of migration, such as the placement of scholars via a system of migration networks.

Thursday, May 7, 2015, 6pm
Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City

Joseph Sciorra, Calandra Institute, Queens College, CUNY

For more than a century, Italian-American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create sacred spaces in homes and neighborhoods, spaces outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes. Today, yard shrines, domestic altars, presepi (Nativity crèches), extravagant Christmas house displays, and street processions are examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans continue to use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape New York City's religious and cultural landscapes. Built with Faith (University of Tennessee Press, 2015), Joseph Sciorra's ethnographic study, examines these forms of lived religious expression in the city from the 1980s to the present day.

Unless otherwise noted, all events are
free, open to the public, and held at the Calandra Institute.

RSVP by calling (212) 642-2094.

John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. Queens College, CUNY
25 West 43rd Street, 17th floor - New York, NY 10036
212-642-2094 - [email protected] - www.qc.edu/calandra