Printed Matter
Centro Primo Levi's online monthly on the work of Primo Levi, Italian Jewish history, culture and current affairs. 
Fascism and Italian American Culture

September 14
5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marim�
24 West 12th Street

Seminar in Italian Jewish Culture. Presented by Centro Primo Levi - NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marim� and Department of History

Introduction: Ruth Ben Ghiat (New York University), Fraser Ottanelli (University of South Florida), Matteo Pretelli (Visiting professor at New York University), Discussant: Marcella Bencivenni (Hostos Community College, CUNY)

Literature on the Fascist regime's reaches in the Americas has a distinguished history going back to Gaetano Salvemini, whose recording of, and sharp commentary, provides today's scholars with an invaluable source. In the 1970s, John P. Diggins began groundbreaking research in this field, followed in the next decades by Phillip V. Cannistraro and other international scholars.
In the past two decades, with a large amount of primary sources still untapped, research has began to investigate the modalities through which Fascism sought to control Italians abroad and, through them, maintain relations with countries that were not under totalitarian rule.

Italian Americans' self-images during those years were shaped by propaganda, foreign press reports, economic interests, and the establishment of the Fascist League of North America on the one hand, and by the Regime's cultural and educational showcases along with a network of local police informants, on the other

Fascism, however, was forced to adapt its methods to the requirements and style of the American society and values producing ambiguous cultural and political categories that continued to operate after Mussolini's fall and the end of World War II.

How did the Italian American community and their leadership negotiate their position and role within the larger horizon of the relations between the US and Italy and the US and the Catholic Church? How did ethnic leaders and intellectuals of Italian background interpret the relation between dictatorship and democracy within the Italian communities in the US? To what extent were Italian American radicals also antifascists? How did they respond to Fascism and what relations did they develop with the mainstream Italian American population, by and large supportive of Fascism, and with various factions of Italian antifascist in exile? Read more
Printed Matter
 
Italy and the Voice of America 

Sandro Gerbi

On the evening of January 20, 1944, in Lima, Peru, my father Antonello sat down to write a long letter to his two brothers living in New York - Giuliano, a journalist with the Voice of America, and Claudio, a doctor - giving them a detailed account of the last hours of their father Edmo. Edmo, himself a refugee to Peru, had died of a cerebral aneurism the day before. Antonello had sent his brothers a cable but wasn't sure if the news had reached them or not.  During the evening he turned on the radio to try and listen to Giuliano's daily broadcast under the pseudonym Mario Verdi.  But he heard an anonymous speaker say,  "Instead of Mario Verdi's usual commentary...," and go on to announce another program. That was how my father knew for sure that Giuliano and Claudio had received his telegram and, as a sign of mourning, had suspended his own broadcast. Read more
Printed Matter
 
We Were Outsiders in All Possible Ways 

Alessandro Cassin interviews Judge Guido Calabresi

In this conversation Judge Guido Calabresi, a long time friend of Centro Primo Levi, shares stories of his family's flight from Fascist Italy -from Milan to Yale- and the ways his childhood experiences have shaped his personal and professional life in the USA.

This spring, Calabresi has appeared as a panelist in our presentation of Giana Pontecorboli's Americordo.The Italian Jewish Exiles in America, and of Patrizia Guarnieri's Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism.

Guido Calabresi is a legal scholar and senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A former Dean of Yale Laws School where he has been teaching since 1959, he is now Sterling Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer in Law. He has been awarded some fifty honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad, and has published widely on the Law and related subjects. Read more



THANKS
Centro Primo Levi is the recipient of the endowment fund established by the Viterbi Family in memory of Achille and Maria Viterbi. CPL's activities are supported by the Cahnman Foundation, Peter S. Kalikow, Claude Ghez, David Berg Foundation, John Elkann, Charles Hallac z'l & Sarah Keil Wolf, Jeffrey Keil & Danielle Pinet.