Articles by: O. C.

Most of you know Anthony Julian Tamburri. For the general public he is a notable scholar, a prolific writer, and the Dean of John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, the largest university-wide institute outside of Italy dedicated to the study of the Italian diasporic experience.

For us, he is first of all a friend and the president of the Italian American Digital Project — thefirst person to believe in i-Italy seven years ago and the one who made its start possible.
 
Now, effective this past September 1, he is yet something else: a CUNY Distinguished Professor. Reserved to a handful of people, the status of Distinguished Professor is conferred by the City University of New York Board of Trustees in recognition of special scholarship merits and commitment to teaching. Tamburri is Queens College’s 15th distinguished professor, and the first in his department, European Languages and Literatures, to achieve this title.
 
We met him in his 17th-floor office at the Calandra Institute, in the very heart of Manhattan a few steps from the NY Public Library and Bryant Park.
 
What is a Distinguished Professor and why is this title so important?

The title of Distinguished Professor is the highest academic recognition that one could achieve in the university system in the United States. Within CUNY, there is the particularity, as I have understood it, that the approval of such depends mostly on the review process that is peer reviewed. One is judged at three different levels: the department, the College, and CUNY-wide, all by professors. It is, further, an anonymous process. For me, it is precisely the fact that this is a faculty-based recognition that makes it all the more prestigious; namely, my colleagues at various levels at Queens College and CUNY thought me meritorious of such a distinction.
 
Your Distinguished Professor title is important also for a few specific reasons: there are very few Distinguished Professors in Italian Studies and even fewer in Italian-American Studies (William Connell, Peter Carravetta, Teresa Fiore, Fred Gardaphe, Mario Mignone, Stanislao Pugliese, to name a few). What is the significance of this Distinguished Professorship for the field?

For the fields of both Italian and Italian-American Studies, such a distinction, first and foremost, brings attention to the fields. While my official title is “Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures,” my professional development and subsequent career have been evenly divided between Italian and, as I write it, Italian/American Studies, which is widely known. Thus, in addition to bringing attention to the fields, it also, and this is germane specifically to Italian-American Studies, offers approbation — both acceptance and endorsement by such a system that is CUNY, the largest urban university in the United States that boasts a graduate studies system that is the CUNY Graduate Center that is second to none.
 
But Italian-American Studies is not part of CUNY’s Graduate Center. Why is that?

You are correct; it is not an official component of CUNY’s Graduate Center. What I can emphatically state is that Queens College can now boast being the first college and/or university in the United States to have formalized Italian-American Studies at the graduate level. Two years ago the Queens College Academic Senate approved four graduate courses in Italian-American Studies; they are open to all and, most significant, constitute an option for at least two M.A. programs at Queens College: the MALS (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies) and the M.A. in Italian. The course titles are: ITAST 701-Problematics in Italian/American Culture; ITAST 702-Italian Americans and Ethnic Relations: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Inter-culturalism; ITAST 703-Italian American Literature; ITAST 704-Italian/American Cinema: Production and Representation. 
 
But didn’t you teach Italian-American Studies at the graduate level elsewhere?

Indeed I have. While I was at Purdue University I taught two different seminars under the auspices of Comparative Literature, which were crossed listed among four departments: American Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Italian. This always tickled me because it demonstrated how this mid-Western university was so open to making sure a course made when the students enrolled wanted and/or needed it for their respective degree programs. Dare I say, one of my Purdue students is now a full professor within the CUNY system.
I also taught seminars on Italian/American literature and cinema while I was at Florida Atlantic University. There, as both chair of Languages and Linguistics and, subsequently, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Research, and Interdisciplinary Studies, and director of the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies, I had six students taking courses in Italian Americana, three of whom wrote dissertations related to the field, two of which have been published as books.

Why do I mention all this? It is incumbent upon us professors of Italian and Italian-American Studies to make sure that our subject matters are taught in as many colleges and universities as possible. This is not as urgent with regard to Italian Studies, though some universities are looking to Italian Studies to save money in spite of the successes the programs. With regard to Italian-American Studies, we remain in an “in-between” space; we are neither Italian enough for the Italians or ethnic enough for the Americans. Hence, we fall between the cracks on both sides of the ocean. My past experiences at places not as cosmopolitan as the greater New York metropolitan area convinces me that pressure both from within — professors — and from without — the Italian-American community and elected officials — will succeed in getting programs established, even, dare I say, at the graduate level. This is an intriguing fact: in no state-supported university in New York — five possible candidates — is there a freestanding Ph.D. program in Italian Studies; there is only the Ph.D. Specialization in Italian within the Department of Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and, fortunately, the current director is most friendly to Italian Studies.
 
One of the merits that earned you the title is surely your tireless efforts to renovate and modernize the Calandra Institute. Once not held in much esteem in intellectual circles, under your leadership the Institute now publishes two book series and a peer-review social-science and cultural studies journal (Italian American Review), organizes an annual international conference and a host of events during the year, which include book and film presentations, seminars, lectures, readings. Please tell us how and why the Calandra Institute was created, and what it has become today?

The Calandra Institute is the largest institute of its kind outside of Italy that was founded as the Italian American Institute to Foster Higher Education in order to promote understanding and research of the Italian-American culture and experience, as was originally stated in 1979. At the outset, the Institute had three major components: counseling, outreach, and research. And while it went through a restructuring in 1995 — which had followed a lawsuit that saved the Institute as a Manhattan entity — it continued to carry out a mission similar to the founding goals. The Institute went through a period of stasis before I arrived, so in an uncanny way the path was paved to expand existing programs and develop new ones, especially those involving critical and analytical, peer-review quality research.
 
Your activity is not limited strictly to academia. Indeed you are the executive producer and host of Italics, a monthly TV program aired on CUNY TV, dedicated to the Italian-American experience. And, of course, you are part of the editorial board of i-Italy, that which produces a website, a magazine, and a weekly TV show (on NYCTV Channel 25). You could be defined a “public intellectual.” Why is it so important for you to get out of the academic ivory tower and communicate to larger audiences?

Your use of the term pubic intellectual in my regard flatters me. Dare I say, it was the original track of the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies that I directed at Florida Atlantic University. But public intellectualism — a clear articulation of facts and issues that may be masked or hampered by mainstream and therefore confuses instead of enlightens — is essential if we are to engage in any sort of ethnic discourse, by the very fact that discussions of ethnicity (Italian-American, for sure) may in fact involve narratives that often rely as much on imagination and embellishment as well as on historical accuracy, a common trait as stories are passed down from generation to generation. In our ivory tower, academic research we surely uncover the difference between historical fact and embellished narratives. This is surely  our task as cultural critics and historians, as professors that is. But when we wear the hat of the public intellectual as well, we need to be sure that what we say outside the hallowed halls of the academy is of the same substance of our research but that it is expressed, instead, free of the discipline-specific language, and hence communicated, in turn, through a vocabulary that is both commonplace and wide-spread.

This should be one of the basic goals of scholars of Italian-American Studies as well as of the institute and centers in which they operate. This goal of clearly articulating the difficult and complex is also what we hold as one of our goals of our public programming of various sorts: the publications, the lectures, symposia, and conferences you mentioned above, as well as the various technological methods of communication at our disposal today, from television to the Internet. In fact, we recently heard from one of our colleague friends in California that a certain individual who attends their events stated that “she has been using the Calandra website to learn about Italian American history/culture—she said basically ‘I’ve gotten an entire university education in Italian American Studies from Calandra, from their website — it has everything — I’ve watched every video, ordered books from it, etc.’ She was quite effusive and appreciated the diversity of what she had learned.”

This type of reaction is what validates not only what we do at the Calandra Institute, but it also underscores the equally indispensable value of the entire i-Italy project. The more we can inform our communities (both the Italian-American as well as the Italian community in the United States), the better off we shall be as a community, and the better our standing will be within the greater community of the United States. But all of this takes time, effort, and finances, and we need to continue to beat the drum of cultural philanthropy with the hopes that those who can will eventually understand that culture is just as important as any of the more “natural” and/or “hard” sciences.

 
What are your plans for the immediate future?

As a scholar, I am working on two major projects: one is a book-length study dedicated to the Italian writer in the United States: that person who writes in Italian but lives here; the other is dedicated to a new book on Italian-American cinema, those films that many chat about but no one really studies. The third project in the works is a research guide for non-Italian speakers on Aldo Palazzeschi.

As for the Calandra Institute, we have much work ahead of us. While it is true that we have done much in these past eight years, we shall continue to hone, develop, and modify as need fit our many programs. Not mentioned above is, for example, our Oral History Project, which to date, consists of 22-plus interviews and a 30-minute video of state-level Italian-American elected officials; we hope to have a book out by year’s end. We have also developed two new projects revolving around demographic studies of Italian Americans in the workplace. And we have resurrected a Counseling Center at the Institute, so students of the various Colleges within CUNY can have access to counseling services specifically sensitive to an Italian-American mind-set.

Also on our plate is a further development of the “Italian American Studies Network,” born out of the four-day workshop that the Calandra Institute organized and led at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy; it was a meeting between nine scholars of American Studies from Italy and nine scholars of Italian-American Studies from the United States.

On an international level, through our CUNY/Italy Exchange, we have also developed courses on Italian- American Studies at both the University for Foreigners in Perugia and the University of Calabria. In the second case, a specific course was formalized, entitled CLIA (“Cultura e Letteratura Italiana Americana”). It is the first official full course on Italian/American literature and culture in Italy. The course was established for the graduate degree of “Laurea magistrale” (a two-year level degree, similar to the U.S. Master of Arts) in Modern Languages and Literatures. 

Finally, we shall continue to work with other institutes and centers, such as, for example, New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, as well as engage people in the community who are interested in developing scholarships for graduate students who wish to continue their careers in Italian and/or Italian-American Studies.

Dozens of speakers and a very large audience crowded into the Manhattan headquarters of the Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) to attend its annual two-day conference—this year dedicated to an especially hot topic. 

We sat down with two of the organizers, Dr. Joseph Sciorra, Director of Academic Programs at the Institute, and Fred Gardaphe, Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College, and talked about the ideas behind this amazing gathering of mafia experts from all around the world. 

Joseph Sciorra: We wanted to look at organized crime from a global perspective. As we are an Italian American Institute, it is obvious that in part we would be dealing with Italian and Italian American criminality, but we wanted to expand beyond those two realms. Because organized crime is not unique to any one group or period. So we have invited people to come speak about organized crime in Japan, Sweden, India, among Polish-Americans, African-Americans, and to diversify—and thus improve—our understanding of this topic.

Are you satisfied with the results?

JS: Absolutely. I am really very pleased with the presentations we had as well as with the reaction of the audience. So many people came here and said how important this conference has been and how meaningful it has been to have this conversation here.

Fred Gardaphe: I think the way we envisioned this conference—MAFIAs in the plural—is very important. First because, although we have talked about the Italian and Sicilian Mafia, showing that organized crime is not just something that belongs to Italians provides a better understanding of the Mafia and does a great service to the  Italian-American community. Second because, as Italy’s former Interior Minister Vincenzo Scotti said in his talk at the Conference, “The only way to fight the Mafia is to fight it globally rather than locally.”

There also were some negative reactions from members of the Italian-American community who objected even to the idea of having this conference.

JS: When we sent out our call for papers in May of last year there were a number of people including scholars and colleagues of ours who began to circulate complaints about the very idea of having such a conference, given the predominance of organized crime and Mafia in Italian-American imagery in the media. It is a foolish idea that scholars should be censoring themselves! On the contrary, I believe we should be looking at this subject with all the serious rigor and interdisciplinary background that we have. There is a notion that ethnic studies should only promote the positive. I disagree with that idea. How else to unpack those negative stereotypical images if not by treating them seriously? A number of scholars here looked at the emergence of the negative image of Italian Americans coupled with organized crime. They documented it and so we learned from that. And to not have such scholarship presented publicly would be a travesty.

FG: A long time ago, when I was a member of the American Italian Historical Association [now the Italian American Studies Association] someone came up with the idea of having a conference on the Mafia. And there was a great professor, Peter Sammartino, buonanima, who said, “We are historians, can’t we just forget about the past?” It was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life. But he was dead serious. Academics at that time did not want to talk about the Mafia. Many people were just afraid. Every time the subject of having a conference on Mafia came up the reaction was: “That would be our last conference. The only conference we could have after it would be a conference on death. Because they’d kill us!”

Do you feel that Italian-American scholars are in a better position than others to investigate this topic?

JS: Yes, absolutely. Because we focus on Italian-American culture, we are in contact with a number of scholars who deal with Italian-American history and culture. So we’re in a unique position to bring to the fore all this amazing scholarly work being done.

FG: For me there is also a personal dimension to this. I was born in the streets, I became an academic because I wanted to educate the streets, I wanted to go back to the streets and tell them what I learned. But I also wanted to bring my experiences of the streets into academia, so that [people there] would study reality, not fantasies. At the conference I read parts of a book I am writing now about my life growing up within organized crime in Chicago. When people think of the Mafia, they think about what they see on TV, in films. But for me Mafia has always been something that is part of life. Some people I knew committed crimes and others did not, but everybody participated in one way or another.

You went to the podium wearing a black suit and a white tie – the stereotypical image of a gangster…

FG: Yes, I wanted to play the stereotype. But I also wanted to make people think about what it means when the Mafia is part of your life. It took me a long time before I understood that I was inside the Mafia. I didn’t understand why my father was killed. The police said it was some crazy man who came into the store and killed him and ran away…Or why my grandfather was killed, or my godfather… I was just told lies about these people. And as I grew older I realized that the very men I was working for (after my grandfather died my mother put me to work for some Men fearing I was going to get in trouble) were the men who were involved in killing Kennedy… It took me 40 years!

What about today? What is left of the power of those men today?

FG: The way it was explained to me when I was young was: “Look, we came to this country and we were not a part of the system. We had to create our system until we figured out how to get into the big system.” The system was not intended to stay a separate kingdom forever. They wanted to enter legitimate businesses, politics, the legal system, and they did. Nobody wants to be a criminal. No gangster wants to look around every day to see if someone is going to shoot him. The men I was working for became successful and sent their kids to college. They became assimilated in such a way that even their children today don’t know anything about it. Those people were fundamentally proud to be Americans because they couldn’t succeed unless America succeeded. They believed in America. And they sent their kind to fight in the army, to die for the country they were able to steal money from.

JS: And that’s another good reason why we should contribute to the knowledge of this phenomenon. To really fight the Italian-American mafia stereotype in the media we should not bury the facts under positive images. That’s omertà. We as scholars need to study, to know, to bring facts out into the open air.                                                    

Milan is a city well worth discovering and yet it is often perceived by tourists as a distant second compared to Venice, Florence and Rome. What do you think a tourist should know about Milan? Where should he or she start?
 

For the past, you might be right. But Milan is the economic capital of Italy, one of the capital cities of European culture, and it’s not in hiding anymore. The increasing number of tourists from all over the world who come here are proof of that. We’re working to make the city even more welcoming, especially given the important Expo 2015 event, for which we’re expecting 20 million visitors, a million from China alone. 

Walking around Milan is great. The center and historic suburbs, the piazzas and courtyards, the canals of Milan – they all offer surprises. But today I’d also recommend getting around the city’s neighborhoods and parks by bike. BikeMi, our bike sharing network that has also been sucessful in combatting city traffic, is available to the Milanese and tourists. I, for one, love pedaling around the city.
 

Who are today’s Milanesi? How have they changed? The late Lucio Dalla once sang, Milan “asks you a question in German and answers you in Sicilian.” It’s reminiscent of New York. Has immigration made Milan a “melting pot”? First and foremost, I’m thinking of the earlier wave of immigration from Southern Italy, and then of today’s wave of non-European immigrants.
 

Well, nowadays Milan “asks you a question in German and answers you in English, Russian, or Chinese.” Traditionally, Milan has been an open and inclusive city. The city is in the swing of transforming and developing, thanks in part to the many foreign communities that live and work in the capital of the North. In our globalized world, the integration of diverse cultures and the policies aimed at fostering them are indispensable for building the large metropolis of the future.

Which places do you love most? Where do you go to get away from it all and be alone with your thoughts?

The one that stands out is the Rotonda della Besana, which fascinated me as a kid and where I used to take my siblings’s kids to play. Today this place that combines beauty and history – the sacred and profane – is a cultural center that has been restored to the city. Before I became mayor, my law office was located nearby. To get away and reflect, how could I not be lured by the magic silence of Besana’s courtyard? And now that I steward the city, I want to transform it further; the Rotonda will become a playground for children too. A gift for them and their families.
 

Traffic, safety, pollution, car sharing, bike sharing, policies that advocate for immigrants, homosexuals, and young people – those are a lot of very different types of problems for a mayor who wants to make progressive changes to city government. And a lot of work. One of your notable slogans is “Refined Force.” That sure is very different from Giuliani’s “Zero Tolerance.” How is it going?

In times of crisis, like the one we’ve seen in recent years, it’s not easy to manage a city; insecurity is burrowed everywhere and uncertainty about the future pinions the plans of citizens, families and institutions. My motto is “participation,” because I am convinced that by working together you can escape the nightmare of a crisis that has struck the middle class and, most especially, young people. That’s another reason that, in the two years of my administration, we have sought to involve the populace in many controversial projects. Take Area C, for example, the campaign against congestion we launched to reduce traffic in the city center and make the air safer to breathe. There was resistance at first, but we forged ahead with conviction. Today the results confirm the route we took was the right one. Easy and sustainable mobility is no longer a utopian dream. As for safety, I don’t believe in “militarized” cities, but in the active collaboration between institutions that should guarantee our safety.

What places in Milan must you absolutely see, even if you only have a few hours, and why?
 

The list is long. But, if you had just a few hours, I’d suggest starting with the Piazza del Duomo, the heart of Milan that faces the Palazzo Reale with its grand art exhibits; the Museo del Novecento with its collection of contemporary art; and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan’s gateway, which leads to La Scala, the world’s temple of opera. But the very modern Piazza Gae Aulenti, with its skyscrapers, is worth a visit. It’s the symbol of where Milan is headed in the future. Another must is the Castello Sforzesco that opens out onto the green area of Parco Sempione, our version of Central Park. For those who just have to go shopping, you can’t skip a stroll around the Quadrilatero della Moda. It’s a trip into the marvels of “Made in Italy” and the “Italian Way of Life.”

One question about Expo Milan 2015. Could you briefly explain what it is for American readers? How will it transform Milan?
 

Expo Milan 2015 will be the biggest post-crisis global event. Thanks to its theme, “Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life,” we have reached a record 138 participating countries. Food safety, water as a common good, the campaign against waste, sustainable development: we can’t postpone giving concrete answers to these bonafide planetary emergencies. We must build a more sustainable and just world. In the search for a new model for development, Expo Milan signals a shift from industrial development to sustainable development in the era of consciousness. The Universal Exposition will be a window onto extremely innovative ideas and technologies. That’s why coming to Milan in 2015 will be a must for everyone: political institutions, science centers, businesses and tourists. Smart City Milan, which is being developed alongside the Expo smart site, awaits you.

As Erri De Luca says in the interview with Letizia Airos, to really see Naples you need a good friend. And there could hardly be a better friend, and guide, than Msgr. Gennaro Matino. A professor of theology and a prolific essayist, Msgr. Matino is a longtime friend and colleague of Erri De Luca himself. Sharing a deep interest in the language and symbolism of the Scriptures, they have written three books  together. So when we met Msgr. Matino in his church’s office, sitting by his computer and surrounded by so many books, and asked him to be our friend in Naples, our conversation was the natural continuation of the one we began with Erri De Luca.
 

A different approach

“Naples can be visited in so many ways,” begins Msgr. Matino. “Do you know which city has the largest number of domes and bell towers in Europe? Naples does, and it’s second only to Jerusalem in the world. Putting it this way, it would mean visiting Naples by only sight, and by looking up for most of the time. But Naples should not be seen with ‘one’s nose in the air,’ only admiring the domes, the Baroque ceilings, and the blue sky. The usual tourist itineraries in Naples include famous art work and the sea, and most guides already have those covered. It’s all well and good for those who come to Naples to visit the Capodimonte Museum, the Archaeological Museum, the treasure of San Gennaro, and the great churches of Santa Chiara, San Lorenzo, and the Duomo. And passing through the popular streets of Mezzocannone, Spaccanapoli, and San Gregorio Armeno, one will be fascinated by the street life and the nativity scenes on display throughout the year. But there is more to see, and the guides don’t often discuss it.”
 

The subterranean city

And where would our Neapolitan friend take us instead? “Naples underground. Within thecity’s bowels, there is everything from Byzantine mosaics to the ruins of ancient shops, all sorts of treasures preserved in tufo, the stone out of which Naples is made. It’s a soft stone that at the same time is very durable.”

This is a different sort of trip, with various odors, colors, and sounds that we are not used to above ground, in the realm of Naples that is sun-drenched and rowdy. “Yes, this is subterranean Naples. The Fontanelle Cemetery, for example, is the only one of its kind. It’s the place for a popular cult of the dead that goes far beyond the religious. There are hundreds of skulls and bones preserved, one on top of the other. They are the memory of ancient tragedies such as cholera and the plague that have infested Naples over the centuries.

These poor bones have been left to the mercy of a people who tell their own stores through them. Families ‘adopt’ the skulls of the unknown, care for them, clean them, and preserve them as if they were their own ancestors. There even those who interpret the future through the skulls….”Then there’s the beauty of the catacombs. Many tourists think that the catacombs are only located in Rome, where they tell the story of Christian persecution of under Nero.

“This is not the case. In pre-Christian Naples, there already existed an entire underground city that had its own centers. These ‘centers’ were the two large catacombs of San Gennaro and San Gaudioso. They are, above all, cemeteries and places of worship, but also shelters against persecution. San Gennaro died in 305 during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian.”
 
 

The scared and the profane

And here is truly the entire Neapolitan mélange, combining both the sacred and the profane. “Of course. The charm of antiquity, popular faith, and mystery all reside here. And at the same time, in the catacombs you’ll find the cult of the phallus, of fertility, worship of Priapus. These are things that, outside of Naples, I’ve only seen in India…. All this is part of the lure of subterranean Naples. Have I convinced you?”

Our Neapolitan friend has convinced us. And so we hope to have convinced our readers on their next trip to Naples.