Both groups will welcome Margherita Ganeri, Ph.D., an award-winning visiting scholar from Italy, this April. Ganeri is a professor at the University of Calabria, where she teaches contemporary Italian literature. She has been awarded two Fulbrights and one DAAD Scholarship and has served as a visiting professor at schools worldwide.
On April 17 at the Lincoln Center campus, Ganeri will discuss the Italian Diaspora with two scholars: poet and SUNY Binghamton professor emerita Maria Mazziotti Gillan and poet, essayist, and photographer Mark Hillringhouse. Gillan and Hillringhouse have participated and published through the Italian Diaspora Studies Seminar, a residential program directed by Ganeri, where they explored a southern region of Italy known as Calabria and documented their experiences. The event, “Celebrating Calabria: Writing Heritage and Memory,” will be held from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. in Lowenstein, Room 524.
On April 19 at the Rose Hill campus, Ganeri will join Kathleen LaPenta, Ph.D., a senior Italian studies lecturer and co-director of Fordham’s Bronx Italian American History Initiative, an oral history research project documenting the history of Italians and Italian Americans in the Bronx in the 20th century. Ganeri and LaPenta will reflect on memories of Italy as told by Italian immigrants themselves. LaPenta will present research from the BIAHI oral history project and Ganeri will discuss the annual writing retreat of the Italian Diaspora Seminar. The event, “From Italy to the Bronx and Back,” will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the O’Hare Special Collections, located on the fourth floor of the Walsh Library.
“I am delighted to welcome Dr. Ganeri to Fordham to continue our collaboration, to bring the living memories of Italy into dialogue with Dr. Ganeri’s seminar, and to offer a glimpse of the creative and humanistic potential of oral histories and cultural exchange,” LaPenta said.
