Joseph Sciorra died, anthropologist, folklorist and for over twenty-five years one of the central figures of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College, CUNY. It was the Calandra Institute itself.
Sciorra was Director for Academic and Cultural Programs of the Institute and one of the most attentive scholars of Italian culture in the United States. His work has gone through for decades the history of Italian immigration, popular and religious traditions, music, art and above all those forms of daily culture through which generations of Italians have built their identity in America.
A research deeply linked to New York. Sciorra told the Italian presence in the city starting from its neighborhoods, religious festivals, votive news, houses, music and stories often left outside the official narrative.
Graduated in anthropology at Brooklyn College, with a master’s degree at New York University and a PhD in Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania, he entered the Calandra Institute in 1999. Here he had contributed to building cultural programs, conferences, exhibitions and research activities, as well as playing a key role in the Italian American Review.
Among his most important works is Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City, dedicated to the relationship between Italian immigration, faith and material culture in the city.
His commitment went beyond the academic world. Sciorra considered memory something to look for and preserve even outside universities. Over the years he has taken care of the protection of places and testimonies of the Italian presence in New York and has promoted, among other initiatives, the campaign to finally give a stone to the tomb of Pietro “Pete” Panto, the Italian American harbour murdered in 1939 after opposing the corruption on the waterfront of Brooklyn.
Just a few days ago, on September 30, Sciorra was still the protagonist of a public meeting at the Calandra Institute dedicated to studies on folklore and the Italian diaspora.
His disappearance leaves an important void in the world of Italian American studies, but especially in the community that for many years he had observed, studied and told.
L’articolo Joseph Sciorra died, voice and memory of Italian culture in New York proviene da IlNewyorkese.
