iItaly.org

Pane Amaro (Bitter Bread) brings to life pivotal events in the history of Italian Americans, including the lynching of Italian immigrants, growth of Italian Harlem and the rise of Italian political and community leaders.

Color digital prints from Franc Palaia's SX-70 Polaroid series depict landscapes, classical architecture, contemporary structures, and urban spaces from several regions of Italy. Palaia hand-colors the 3"x3" Polaroids, enabling him to blend, eradicate, and heighten the color and add visual and tactile texture to the image surfaces, making them look like miniature oil paintings. He also hand-works the imagery by scraping, cutting, and adding collage.  The transformation process continues as he scans the SX-70s and enlarges them into digital color prints.

Color digital prints from Franc Palaia's SX-70 Polaroid series depict landscapes, classical architecture, contemporary s tructures, and urban spaces from several regions of Italy. Palaia hand-colors the 3"x3" Polaroids, enabling him to blend, eradicate, and heighten the color and add visual and tactile texture to the image surfaces, making them look like miniature oil paintings. He also hand-works the imagery by scraping, cutting, and adding collage.  The transformation process continues as he scans the SX-70s and enlarges them into digital color prints.

Looking into the heart as if it were made of crystal: an ancient dream of truth and transparence, fascinating and with its dangers. To trace, with words and images, the portrait of the loved one, to capture its soul, and preserve its presence beyond any distance, and beyond death.
These are the main themes of this new book, that sets off from Pietro Bembo's Asolani dialogues about love, supplying a new point of view about many well known Renaissance portraits, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci.

 Italian Popstar RON will speak about "Music and Solidarity", together with Casa director Stefano Albertini, and journalist Letizia Airos (i-Italy.org).

Ron's latest album "Ma Quando Dici Amore" is a collection of duets with other important Italian popstars, in the name of solidarity, especially towards ASL (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) patients.

The artist will also perform a selection of songs.

In the winter of 1933, the nadir of the Great Depression, Ferdinand Pecora took control of a bumbling United States Senate investigation of the 1929 stock market crash. Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former assistant district attorney from New York City, was one of the country's few Italian-American lawyers. He put Charles Mitchell, the chairman of National City Bank (today's Citibank) on the stand, who left utterly disgraced after Pecora's relentless questioning revealed the bank's shocking financial abuses.

In the post-World War II era, dockworkers in New York fought an ongoing battle against shipping companies, local police, federal and state political authorities, and their own corrupt union leadership for workplace control. Labor studies scholar William Mello, author of New York Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Docks (University Press of Florida, 2010), reveals how labor relations were driven by radical and reform rank-and-file movements led by Communists, Catholics, and local union leaders.

For more than a century, Italian Americans in and around New York City have produced a great variety of stringed musical instruments ranging from European-style violins, mandolins, and guitars, to American instruments such as the banjo, archtop guitar and mandolin, and electric guitars. The arrival of highly skilled Italian craftsmen around the turn of the twentieth century was in large measure driven by the American fad for the Neapolitan mandolin, and a great number of makers established thriving businesses during this time.

In a world marked by increasing migration and globalization, the political and social rights of citizenship may not always be delivered along with the official documents. This is certainly the case in contemporary Italy, where citizenship is becoming ever more difficult to obtain, and everyday practices of racialization continue to exclude those who have struggled for years to integrate into Italian society.

Carnevale and Guglielmo will discuss their recent books on Italian immigrant history and discuss new directions in the field before inviting the audience to ask questions. Joanna Clapps Herman, co-author of Our Roots are Deep with Passion, will moderate.