Lecture Sponsored by Wagner College’s DaVinci Society
February 1, 2006, Staten Island, NY… “The Staten Island Italian-American Experience,” will be the topic of a Sociology Department lecture sponsored by the college’s DaVinci Society.
This class, which began on January 24, is being held in conjunction with the society's latest fundraising effort, "The Staten Island Italian-American Experience" a unique collection of Italian-American family histories and their story of migration to America.
The Society, established in Spring of 2000, seeks to promote a greater understanding of both the historical and contemporary contributions of Italians and Italian-Americans to the formation of America’s vibrant culture and values. It is led by Ralph J. Lamberti with the assistance of Dr. Richard Guarasci, President of Wagner College, and sponsors the City-As-Text Travel Scholarship. Along with sponsoring honor students to visit some of the most historical and cultured areas of Italy, the DaVinci Society works to build mentoring relationships between students in Wagner’s Honors Program and local leaders in the Italian American community.
Dr. Jerome Krase, instructor of the class and author of the first section of the book invites the Staten Island community to join his class for his lecture entitled "New York City's Little Italies: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow?"
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Wagner College Campus, Spiro Communications Center, Room #2
Admission: FREE
More Information: New York City's Little Italies: Yesterday, Today- and Tomorrow?" by Jerome Krase -This photographic essay samples what has been happening in Italian neighborhoods in all of New York City's 5 boroughs with a special focus on Brooklyn and Staten Island. It shows how the Italian American character (Italianita) of m+any of the oldest Little Italies is also being challenged by the invasions of new and different ethnic groups. New York City's Italian America is changing, and quickly. Quantum leaps in transportation and communications technology make it almost impossible to keep up with changes in the location, structure, and function of modern communities. As old neighborhoods wax, a few others wane. It may be that the future of Italian American New York City has moved to Staten Island.
Biographical Note: Jerome Krase currently holds the titles of Murray Koppelman Professor, and Professor Emeritus, at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. After an interruption for military service (1963-66) he received a Baccalaureate of Arts in Sociology at Indiana University (1967). His New York University doctoral dissertation "The Presentation of Community in Urban Society" (1973) dealt with the problems and prospects of maintaining the viability of minority and racially integrated urban neighborhoods. Subsequently he worked as an activist-scholar in the field of community organizations, publishing articles and presenting papers while deeply involved in the neighborhood organization movements. For a time he was a columnist for the Brooklyn Free Press. He continues to serve as a consultant to public and private agencies regarding inter-group relations and other urban community issues. He twice served as chair of the Department of Sociology at Brooklyn College. During the last two decades his interests have expanded into visual, mainly photographic, studies of ethnic and other varieties of urban neighborhood communities. He has written and photographed widely on urban life and culture and has lectured and conducted research on urban and ethnic neighborhoods in the US and abroad, most recently in China and Bosnia/Herzegovina. He is also a frequent visitor, researcher, and lecturer to Italy where he has held short-term Visiting Professorships at University of Rome, La Sapienza and the University of Trento. He has also lectured or presented papers at the Universities of Genoa, Padua, Perugia, Pisa, and Trieste
Representative published works include Self and Community in the City (1982), Ethnicity and Machine Politics (1992), Italian Americans in a Multicultural Society (1994), and Race and Ethnicity in New York City (2005). He has exhibited his photographic studies in many real and virtual places and contributes to an on-line archive for visual and textual research, and teaching resources. He is active in the American Sociological Association, American Italian Historical Association, H-NET Humanities on Line, the International Visual Sociology Association, and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America.
Other Italian and Italian American Credentials: Visiting Scholar, Wagner College, The Italians of Staten Island Project ; 2005 Winner of the Monsignor Gino Baroni Award from Italian Americana; Past President and current Board Member of the American Italian Historical Association; Founding Member, Past Vice President, and current Board Member of the American Italian Coalition of Organizations (AMICO); Past Director of the Center for Italian American Studies at Brooklyn College; Associate of the John Calandra Italian American Institute of CUNY.
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