Interview: Anthony Tamburri on the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

Interviewed by Adam Kocurek

Today on the blog, Gotham editor Adam Kocurek speaks with the dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Anthony Julian Tamburri about the history of the Institute, and the work it does for supporting Italian American scholars and the history of Italian Americans.

What does Calandra do? Can you speak to its mission and its origin for readers who may not be familiar with Calandra Italian American Institute?

The Institute was founded in 1979, after close to two decades of complaints of anti-Catholic and anti-Italian bias within the City University of New York (CUNY) system. So, Italian American faculty and staff joined forces with then New York State Senator John D. Calandra. In 1978, Senator Calandra released an eighty-page report on CUNY’s treatment of Italian Americans, and the subsequent year the Institute was founded.

Our overall mission is to study the history and culture of Italian Americans, with a focus on New York. We are also in regular discussions with CUNY about the representation of Italian Americans as members of the faculty and staff overall. We have also expanded our geographic focus, organizing lectures and conferences about the larger Italian diaspora in other parts of the world. We have shifted much of our free public programming to a virtual mode due to the pandemic, but considering the international aspect of this work, we are looking forward to doing more work in-person in the spring.

Our primary activities are committed to student counseling, outreach with local and regional communities, and research. Over the years, the need for counseling (In the 1970s/1980s Italian Americans had the third highest high school dropout rate in the city) has diminished, though we still offer such services. Additionally, the Institute's counselors have conducted their own research, producing several important projects — conferences and books — that the Calandra Institute organized and published. Part of the Institute's community outreach involves lists of scholarships and publications which we provide electronically and in paper when requested.

Our public programming is vast; we do three series of lectures, book presentations, and screenings of documentaries. The Philip V. Cannistraro Seminar Series is dedicated to scholarly research, completed or in progress; the Writers Read invites some of the most prominent, cutting-edge, Italian American creative writers to debut and read from works of recent fiction, poetry, and memoir; and our Documented Italians screens recent documentary films and videos directed by Italian American and/or dealing with Italian American or Italian diasporic subjects. In addition, we curate exhibitions of both art and historical materials in our gallery space.

Since 2008 we have organized a two-day conference on a different theme each year concerning Italy and the Italian diaspora. The conferences have covered such topics as language, youth, material culture, the body, borders, among other topics. This year's conference will be held on April 29th-30th with the theme of "Eco Italie: Material Landscapes and Environmental Imaginaries." Italian American studies is still a growing field within the academy thus, our annual conference has proven to be an important venue in this regard. It is a productive meeting for an exchange of scholarly work on all realms of the Italian diaspora. The themes have been many and varied, and from these meetings over the years excellent projects and collaborations were born.

In addition to our local activities, the Calandra Institute sponsors two educational programs. The first is a summer language held at the University for Foreigners in Perugia where students can study Italian language and culture at a university located in one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Italy, Perugia. The second program is the CUNY/Italy Exchange, designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in course work and/or research in a wide range of academic areas with a series of Italian universities.

Can you speak a bit more about the new work that Calandra is producing? Are there any new projects coming out of Calandra soon that people interested in Italian American history and the history of New York City might find interesting?

With regard to most disciplines, all our research projects provide much qualitative and quantitative data and critical and analytical analyses that have proven fundamental for others interested in Italian American culture and history. We have staff focused on cinema, literature, vernacular culture, demographics, statistics, psychology, and oral histories. Five to six staff members engage regularly in research in the form of essays, books, conferences, and more. This scholarship is published either by the Calandra Institute’s imprint (Studies in Italian Americana), Bordighera Press, or other academic presses both in the United States and in Italy. The Institute is home to the Italian American Review, an interdisciplinary, bi-annual peer-reviewed journal published and distributed by the University of Illinois Press. In addition to these publication venues, our other outlet for promoting Italian American history and culture is our monthly TV program, Italics, which airs on CUNYTV and archived on YouTube.

We always have research projects in progress. Currently a group of staff members is working on an analytical survey and analysis of Italian American educators, coordinated by Dr. Vincenzo Milione, Director of Demographic Studies. We are looking at where they are located geographically, at which stage they are in their careers, what their subject matter is, what level they are teaching (K-12, university, etc.), and more. We are holding around forty oral interviews with Italian American educators, and the final text will have transcripts, raw data, and analyses. A previous project of a similar nature was on forty years of Italian American government employment in New York City and New York State. That resulted in a 500-page study.

Another research project that has proven to be of great significance and a first of its kind consists of two volumes that Dr. Joseph Sciorra, Director for Academic and Cultural Programs, co-edited with Professor Laura Ruberto of California: New Italian Migrations to the United States, looking at the history, politics, culture, and arts produced by and about new Italian immigrants and their descendants from 1945 to present. These two volumes truly lay the foundation for new and continued interest in the stories, histories, and culture by and about Italian immigrants to the United States in the last seventy years.

Closer to home, other examples of research from our colleagues include: the award-winning Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City (Joseph Sciorra); From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities (Fred Gardaphé); Nursing Homes for Italian Americans in New York City: Factors for Utilization (Rosaria Musco); Diversity in Italian Studies (Sian Gibby and Anthony Julian Tamburri); The Columbus Affair: Imperatives for an Italian/American Agenda ( Anthony Julian Tamburri).

Other than publishing new works of scholarship, are there any new other initiatives that the Calandra Institute is spearheading?

Within the realm of professional development, we organize the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar. It is an intensive series of classes on the Italian diaspora, looking at politics, linguistics, material culture, history, literature, and more. It is geared towards doctoral students and college faculty, who will then return to their home institutions and teach courses on Italian diaspora studies. In all, fellows spend three weeks in Rome, at Roma Tre University, our partner in Italy.

A second major initiative is a series of international conferences on the Italian diaspora. Born out of a conversation between our Distinguished Professor Fred Gardaphé and colleagues in Australia, we have to date co-organized three meetings: Melbourne, Australia; New York City, USA; and Genova, Italy. We are looking to Buenos Aires for our fourth meeting once we can travel post-COVID.

When we believed it is necessary, we have tackled some controversial subjects. In 2017, we addressed the issue of controversial monuments in the United States as well as in Italy, such as Rodolfo Graziani, Italo Balbo, and Christopher Columbus. In like fashion, later in 2020, we held a series of symposia, both in person and on Zoom, on the validity of monuments, more specifically for this series Columbus monuments. We will publish a special issue on the topic of monuments and memorials in the spring 2022 issued of the Italian American Review. In 2019 we organized a symposium around the issue of diversity in Italian studies and subsequently we published a volume of essays, Diversity in Italian Studies.

Could you speak a bit more about how the Calandra Institute is platforming and exploring contemporary Italian American contributions to arts and culture?

There is a plethora of incredible artists of Italian American background who are being discovered and appreciated on a regular basis. Within the realm of visual artists such as painters, sculptors, photographers, and video artists, we can hark back to those like the Piccirilli Brothers, Ralph Fasanella, Onorio Ruotolo, and Bill Viola. One way in which the Calandra Institute has contributed is through publications and the various exhibits we have mounted over the past dozen years. Some of the contemporary artists whose work we have displayed include Nancy Agati, John Avelluto, Vincent Baldassano, Lilian Caruana, Cianne Fragione, Eleanor M. Imperato, Franc Palaia, William Papaleo, Rose Michelle Taverniti, Marisa Tesauro, and others.

Under the directorship of Dr. Sciorra, we have also mounted exhibitions and sponsored a series of symposia on various art forms. Two particularly successful events were a two-symposium on women's domestic needlework and the exhibit of Italian ex-votos, examples of metal and painted Catholic folk art. In addition, the Calandra Institute has organized symposia on various aspects of music, from the Neapolitan song tradition, the doo-wop and early rock and roll, to independent music genres.

Being situated in the heart of Manhattan, the Calandra Institute is surrounded by so many amazing cultural, historical, and academic institutions. Are there any NYC organizations or institutions that the Institute has partnered with, or is planning to partner with?

There are several institutions in NYC with whom we’ve partnered. We have worked with the St. Nick’s Alliance, a nonprofit community development organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to offer public programming for local community. We have also collaborated with cultural institutions such as the Centro Primo Levi and the Casa Italiana of New York University, as well as with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Consulate General of New York.

The Italian Heritage and Cultural Committee of New York (IHCC) is the one local organization with which we collaborate on a steady basis. In 2020 we assisted in a four-part series of videos dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Federico Fellini’s birth. In 2001, we helped organize a four-part series of videos commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Our institute also assists in the production of the IHCC’s annual book of events.

We are always in conversation with other institutions, so people should visit our website for events in development.

Is there anything we haven’t already addressed that you would like to share with readers?

In 1976, before the establishment of the Calandra Institute, Italian Americans were designated by then Chancellor R. Kibbee an “affirmative action” group with The City University of New York. As a result, one of our responsibilities is to monitor the treatment of Italian Americans within CUNY, including utilization among faculty and staff. As a result, all colleges and “schools” within CUNY must complete an affirmative action tally for Italian Americans, as well as other groups. Thus, as an institute, we are in continued dialogue with CUNY Central Office, advocating for greater utilization among faculty and staff as well as promoting for Italian American studies across the curriculum.

Regarding curriculum, we have established a series of four courses at the Master’s level at Queens College. These courses can be taken as part of some MA programs. We are also engaged in the promotion of Italian American and Italian diaspora studies across CUNY at the doctoral level.

Anthony Julian Tamburri is Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures. His latest authored books include: The Columbus Affair: Imperatives for an Italian/American Agenda (2021); and Signing Italian/American Cinema: A More Focused Look (2021). He is executive producer and host of the Calandra Institute’s TV program, Italics, produced in collaboration with CUNY TV.

Adam Kocurek is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Center, CUNY and an editor for Gotham.