Inaugural Essay Contest 

Francesco Durante Award for Italian American History, Literature, and Culture  

An annual prize of $1,000 will be awarded for the best article-length essay in English or Italian – published in the last two years (2018-2019), accepted for publication, or original – submitted by an emergent scholar of Italian American history, literature and culture, that honors the legacy of the journalist-scholar Francesco Durante (1952-2019).

Francesco Durante pioneered the transatlantic study of Italian American literary culture in Italian with the publication of two massive volumes of Italoamericana: storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti (Mondadori, 2001 and 2005), inspired by his decades of researches in archives in Italy and in the U.S., thereby giving the field new life. Born in Capri, raised in Friuli, Durante studied at the University of Pavia, and worked in Milan and elsewhere before becoming a life-long Neapolitan; a journalist (editor of the Corriere del Mezzogiorno), author of Scuorno and other books on Naples, he taught at the universities of Naples and Salerno, as well as commencing the highly successful annual literary festival in Salerno, Italy.

Submissions (of up to 7,500 words) are due on or before March 21, 2020; eligibility is limited to doctoral students and those with the doctorate up to five years after receipt of the degree. The prize will be awarded at a conference in New York City, on Friday, May 1, 2020, to be held at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College.

All inquiries and final submissions should be sent to the following email address: calandra@qc.edu.​