Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 6 PM. This program is free and open to the public and will take place at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute - 25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor - New York, NY 10036. For more information, call 212-642-2094. Francesco and Mary Giambelli Foundation Lecture Series: In Education Begin Responsibilities or "They don't know what they don't know". Lecture by Fred Gardaphé (Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute)

This talk is based on more than forty years of reading, studying, teaching, and writing about Americans of Italian descent. Fred Gardaphé surveys the education of Italian Americans in the United States and the development of Italian/American studies to expose and explore the tension created between the conscious and the unconscious of Italian people as we have become American people.

Conscious in this context means the ways we publicly identify ourselves as Italian Americans and the ways we express that identity. Unconscious means the psychic elements that haunt us in our private thoughts, that come to us in dreams, and find their ways into our art: those thoughts and feelings that we cannot understand unless we engage in dialogues within and outside our communities. The resulting responsibility lies in the institutionalization of Italian/American studies.

Fred Gardaphé is Distinguished Professor of English and Italian/American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. Past director of Stony Brook University's American and Italian/American Studies programs, he is a Fulbright Fellow (University of Salerno, Italy [2011]) and past president of the Italian American Studies Association (formerly AIHA), MELUS, and the Working Class Studies Association. His books include Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative; Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian/American Writer; Moustache Pete is Dead!; Leaving Little Italy; From Wiseguys to Wise Men: Masculinities and the Italian American Gangster; The Art of Reading Italian Americana; and Read 'Em and Reap. He is co-founder/co-editor of VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, editor of the Italian American Culture Series of SUNY Press, and frequent contributor to Fra Noi, L'italoamericano, and i-Italy magazine and television.

The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute is most grateful to the Board of Trustees of the Francesco and Mary Giambelli Foundation for its generous donation to this lecture series. Fred Gardaphé's is the third of the four lectures. Last spring, the Calandra Institute hosted Maria Laurino, and this past fall Robert Viscusi gave the second talk. In December, Donna Gabaccia will conclude the series. So, please mark your calendars and be sure to continue to check your emails.

Francesco and Mary Giambelli spent most of their lives running successful Italian restaurants, where they served business people, world leaders, and most notably, Pope John Paul II. They also shared the fruits of their labors with those less fortunate through their lifetime charitable donations and participation in the Cardinal's program of feeding the homeless. Their legacy of charity and good works and their commitment to support Italian Culture and Heritage live on today through the Francesco and Mary Giambelli Foundation, Inc.