Sabato Culturale
at Casa Italia means exciting cultural events!
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING——10 am Continental Breakfast. 10:30 am Start
Please register to help us plan for refreshments. Freewill ($5+ suggested) donations accepted and encouraged. To RSVP at https://casaitaliachicago.org/sabato-culturale/ or casalibrary@gmail.com
Your Italian American identity is hard work. Learning the language, mastering the history of Italy AND of Italians in America isn’t easy. We at the Italian Cultural Center, Casa Italia, have everything you need to recapture your Italianità. Be there or miss out on exciting opportunities to enhance your Italian American Identity. Join us for Sabato Culturale!
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Feb. 14th Don Fiore “Garibaldi: Italian Hero” Fra Noi columnist, lifelong afficionado of Italian history, will give a colorful presentation on the Italian revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the “Redshirts” volunteer army and his role in the Risorgimento. Find out why Garibaldi was the called the “Hero of Two Worlds.” |
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Simonini & Ionta Partner for Italian Language Immersion Day Dive deep into Italian on with PhD immersion veterans Carla Simonini and Anna Clara Ionta! This six-hour immersion day features a film and is strictly for intermediate/ advanced students, not beginners. Cost is $25 (just $20 for currently enrolled Casa Italia language students). Enjoy a continental breakfast and lunch while you learn. |
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March 7th: “Look what I found!” Cole Orlick Illinois State University senior history major with a minor in plitical science was chosen to be a part of an archaeological dig in southern Italy where he found an important artifact! |
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March 14th: “Divas and Godesses: Remarkable Italian Women in Chicago” Bill Dal Cerro, author, retired high school teacher and leading member of the Italic Institute of America will give a presentation on the remarkable Italian women with Chicago beginnings, Margaret Vinci, Carol Lawrence, and Vivian Della Chiesa and Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio. |
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Mar. 28th Professor Nancy Caronia, Christina Marocco and Marc DiPaolo read “Italian American Writers: Chicago-Style” Nancy Caronia is the Endowed Professor of Italian American Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She is the co-editor of Personal Effects: Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo (2015) and wrote the introduction to the reprint of DeSalvo’s novel Casting Off (2014). In 2024, she received the Working-Class Studies Association’s Russo & Linkon Award for her article, “Refusing the Sentimental Italian Immigration Story in Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven.” A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, Caronia’s creative work has appeared in The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, Don’t Tell Mama!: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, and numerous journals. Caronia co-directs the Italian Diaspora Archive Research Map (IDARM) project, which received an NEH Humanities Grant in 2024. Marc DiPaolo, a Humanities professor at Moraine Valley Community College, is the author of Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Some Tall Tales (2021). He has also written academic books about environmentalist science fiction and political symbolism in superhero stories,as well as edited Unruly Catholics from Dante to Madonna (2013). His next book (co-edited with Anthony Lioi) is Italian/American Fantastika: Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction from Pinocchio to Star Trek. Christina Marrocco is a Sicilian American author, poet, and professor. Her writing most oftencenters on working class issues and enclaves, Italian American life, and human grappling with themes of loss, grief, tenacity, and family and community dynamics. Her debut novel, Addio Love Monster (2022) won Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Association, and her second novel, The Way Beauty Comes Apart (2025) is earning high praise as well. Her poetry is widely published and her dissertation focused on the Mal’occhio in Italian American Literature. Christina has held workshops and spoken widely in the region on writing and on Italian American themes. Christina teaches Creative Writing, Women’s Literature and other courses at Elgin Community College where she inspires others to apply their sensibilities and observations, cultural and otherwise, to writing.She is the prose editor for the journal Ovunque Siamo: New Italian-American Writing.Chlristina wrote the introduction to Casa Italia’s own Italian women in Chicago vol. 2; Siamo arrivate which is soon-to-be-published in Italian.
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April 11th: Frank Di Piero Saving our Stories: From Cenetta to Podcasts to Children’s Books |
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April 18th Remembering Padre Feccia Father Augusto Feccia, founding member of the Italian Cultural Center, Casa Italia. Using photos, videos and reminiscences of his many friends, we will celebrate the cultural work of Padre Augusto Feccia of the 1970s and 1980s. Clck Here To Register For The April 18 Event
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 April 25th Judith Valente “La Dolce Vita: What Italy Can Teach Us About Living More Mindfully and Joyfully” Judith Valente worked as a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal and on-air correspondent for national PBS-TV, Chicago Public Radio and the NPR affiliate in central Illinois where she currently lives. She is the author of six spiritually titles, including The art of Pausing and How to Live, as well as three collections of poetry. Her newest book is the Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of LIfe. She has given presentation on how to live a more contemplative life in nearly every state and leads an annual cotemplative retreat/pilgrimage to lesser-known sacred sites and parts of Italy. She lives in both Normal IL and Abruzzo, Italy. Clck Here To Register For The April 25 Event |
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May 2nd Professor Martin Giesso “Italians in Argentina” Retired professor of anthropology at Northeastern University, Martin Giesso, tells us about Italians in his homeland, Argentina, with a slide lecture on Grand Hotel that greeted the thousands of Italian immigrants to Argentina which make it today the 2nd largest Italian immigrant population in the world. Clck Here To Register For The May 2 Event |
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May 16th Christ Stopped in Eboli, film screening Clck Here To Register For The May 16 Event
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May 23rd IA Literati Our annual authors conference celebrating the literary works of Chicagoland Italian American authors. Clck Here To Register For The May 23 Event
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| * Schedule subject to change |
