The second edition of this three-week summer program at the University of Calabria (Arcavacata di Rende) takes place June 13 through July 1, 2016, and is designed to introduce participants to cultural studies of the Italian Diaspora from a variety of academic perspectives and to foster development of individual projects responding to the materials covered in the series of seminars in literature, film, and the social sciences. All participants will engage in a special research project.

All of the six courses are taught by leading scholars in the field. Faculty includes: Mary Jo Bona, Fred Gardaphe, Margherita Ganeri, Donato Santeramo, Joan Saverino, Maddalena Tirabassi, and Anthony Julian Tamburri. Seminars will be visited by leading artists and scholars from a variety of disciplines.

The Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar is open to graduate students (doctorate; advanced MA students may be considered) and professors from colleges and universities worldwide. This is a collaborative program between the University of Calabria and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute / Queens College of The City University of New York. Professors from these two institutions and others will comprise the teaching faculty of the entire three weeks.

Patronage of U.S. Consulate General to Southern Italy

Program Directors

Faculty

Mary Jo Bona is Professor of Italian American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. She is past president of The Italian American Studies Association and serves on the board of MELUS, the Association of Multiethnic Literature of the United States. Her authored books include: By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America, Claiming a Tradi- tion: Italian American Women Writers, and a book of poetry, I Stop Waiting For You. Bona is also editor of The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women’s Fiction; co-editor (with Irma Maini) of Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates; and series editor of Multiethnic Literature for SUNY Press. Her latest publication, Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary (Lex- ington Book, 2015), examines representations of migratory women through the trope of needlework.

Margherita Ganeri is Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Calabria (Italy). She has published widely on various topics related to the Italian and to the Italian/American Literature and Criticism. She has been visiting professor in Cambridge University (UK), Stony Brook University (US), Italian School at Middlebury college (US), and other universities in Europe and Australia. In the current academic year 20014-15 she holds the University of Chicago’s Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Italian Studies. Among her books: Il romanzo storico in Italia. Il dibattito critico dalle origini al postmoderno (1999), Pirandello romanziere (2001), L’Europa in Sicilia. Saggi su Federico De Roberto (2005), L’America italiana. Epos e storytelling in Helen Barolini (2010), recently translated in English: The Italian America. Epos and storytelling in Helen Barolini, Mimesis International (2015).

Fred Gardaphé is Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. He is past director of the Italian/American and American Studies Programs at Stony Brook University. 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, and From Wiseguys to Wise Men: Masculinities and the Italian American Gangster, and The Art of Reading Italian Americana. He is co-founding/co-editor of VIA: Voices in Italian Americana and editor of the Italian American Culture Series of SUNY Press.

Donato Santeramo is Head of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Queen’s University. He is cross-appointed to the Department of Drama and is associated with the Cultural Studies Graduate Program. He also holds appointments at the University of Rome II and at Middlebury College, VT (Summer Language Schools) where he teaches graduate courses in Italian literature, Theatre and Semiotics. Dr. Santeramo received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto where he was later the Emilio Goggio Chair Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on Italian literature and theatre, Film and Semiotics. He has translated and staged works of contemporary Italian playwrights in Kingston, Toronto and New York: Injury Time, Words in the Dark and An Evening to celebrate the life and Work of Dario Fo (1997 Nobel Prize for Literature). He is on the editorial boards of several academic journals including Pirandelliana, Libero: Rivista del documentario, and Letteratura e interpretazione. Dr. Santeramo also participated in several creative and artistic endeavors including the art exhibit Chromosomes (Rome 2008 and Lisbon 2009) and co-edited the book Red Cars–An Original Screenplay by David Cronenberg (2005). He was also co-founder of the Toronto Italian Outdoor Film Festival and was member of the Advisory Board of the Toronto Festival of Italian Cinema. He served on the jury of the Arlecchino d’Oro European Acting Prize and was President of the “Teatro Scuola” Adjudicating Committee for best play for the Centro nazionale di studi pirandelliani. He is presently working on the Italian Immigrant experience shaping the Canadian Political scene. In 2004 Dr. Santeramo was awarded the prestigious Queen’s University Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Joan L. Saverino is an educator, museum professional, and consultant. She is currently a research assistant professor at Arcadia University in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in the Urban Studies Program. Her ethnographic field research includes a diversity of Philadelphia communities with her primary focus on Italian Americans in Philadelphia, Reading, PA, and West Virginia as well as Calabria. She is currently writing a multi-sited ethnohistory looking at the expressive lives of Calabrian women immigrants to Appalachia that has been accepted into the multicultural folklore series with the University of Mississippi press. Saverino’s expertise in public programming includes cultural tours, teacher workshops, museum exhibitions, symposia and panel discussions. She has lectured widely and her writing has appeared in both popular and academic publications including articles on Italian Americans in the edited volumes: Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora (University of Mississippi Press, 2014), Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives (Fordham University Press, 2011), and Global Philadelphia (Temple University Press, 2010). Previously, Saverino was the Director of Education and Outreach at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania where she was the creator and founding director of PhilaPlace (www.philaplace.org), an award winning NEH and Pew funded collaborative and interactive history and culture Web-based project. Saverino has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Folklore and Folklife and a master’s in anthropology with a museum specialization from The George Washington University.

Anthony Julian Tamburri is Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures. He is co-director of Bordighera Press, past president of the Italian American Studies Association and of the American Association of Teachers of Italian. His authored books include: Una semiotica dell’etnicità: nuove segnalature per la letteratura italiano/americana (Cesati, 2010); Re-viewing Italian Americana: Generalities and Specificities on Cinema (Bordighera, 2011); and Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities and Generalities on Literature and Criticism (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014/2015). His is co-editor for translations with Robert Viscusi and James Periconi of the English version of Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943 (Fordham UP, 2014), edited in Italian by Francesco Durante; and together with Paul Giordano and Fred Gardaphè, From The Margin: Writings in Italian Americana (Purdue UP, 1991/2000). He is the executive producer and host of the Calandra Institute’s monthly TV program, Italics, produced in collaboration with CUNY TV. He also directs the Italian Series for Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Maddalena Tirabassi, Fulbright, is the Director of the Altreitalie Center on Italian Migration, Globus et Locus and editor of the journal Altreitalie. She is vice-president of AEMI (European Migration Institutions) in the advisory Board of the MEI (National Italian Museum on Emigration, Foreign Affaire Ministry), and consultant for the exhibition “Fare gli italiani” which celebrated Italian unification in 2011. Her main publications include “Making Space for Domesticity. Household Goods in Working-Class Italian American Homes, 1900–1940,” in Simone Cinotto (ed.), Making Italian AmericaConsumer Culture and theProduction of Ethnic Identities (New York: Fordham UP, 2014); with Alvise del Prà, La meglio Italia. Le mobilità italiane nel XXI secolo (Turin: Accademia UP, 2014); I motori della memoria. Le donne piemontesi in Argentina, 2010; Itinera. Paradigmi delle migrazioni italiane, ed. (Turin: Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2005); Il Faro di Beacon Street. Social Workers e immigrate negli Stati Uniti, 1990. Ripensare la patria grande. Amy Bernardy e le migrazioni italiane, 2005; “Bourgeois Men, Peasant Women: Rethinking Domestic Work and Morality in Italy,” in Donna, Gabaccia e Franca, Iacovetta, Women, Gender and Transnational Lives (Toronto: U Toronto P, 2002) 106-29.

Special Thanks