Auster joined the Department of Communications and Media Studies as a visiting assistant professor in 1996. He was appointed full professor in 2015, a position he held until he retired in 2020. He served as associate chair of the department at the Rose Hill campus from 2002 to 2003, and from 2003 to 2008 at the Lincoln Center campus.

Auster was born in Brooklyn, grew up in the Bronx, and graduated from City College in 1961. He earned a Ph.D. in history from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook in 1981, and taught at Brooklyn College and SUNY College at New Paltz from 1982 to 1995 before joining the Fordham faculty.

At Fordham, he focused on film and television. He published several books, including American Film and Society Since 1945 (ABC-Clio, 2018), thirtysomething: Television, Women, Men and Work (Lexington Books, 2008), Turn On, Tune In… Television and Radio in the U.S.A. (Altair Publishing, 1994), How the War Was Remembered: Hollywood and Vietnam (Praeger, 1988), and Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theater, 1890-1920 (Praeger, 1984).

In published papers and interviews, Auster weighed in on subjects as diverse as Seinfeld, Frank Sinatra, and the differences between spies in movies and in real life.

In 1999, he was instrumental in launching the Sperber Prize, which is given to authors of biographies and autobiographies of journalists. He served as chairman of the award committee for 20 years.

Brian Rose, Ph.D., a professor of communications who was director of the award following Auster, called him a treasured colleague whose good judgment and empathy were valued on both campuses.

“He brought a tremendous sense of intellectual energy and wide historical background to his media classes, which clearly engaged several generations of students at Fordham. Al’s warmth, generosity, and good humor will be sorely missed,” he said.

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., a former professor of communications and media studies who is now dean of the School of Communication and the Arts at Marist College, echoed Rose and said that Auster was fundamental in bringing the Sperber Prize to Fordham.

“His tireless advocacy and devotion to the program was so appreciated by the Sperber family in Anne Sperber’s memory,” she said, noting that he was a charming, gentleman and devoted teacher.

“One of my favorite quotes about him from a student evaluation was “‘I wish he was my grandpa.’”

In 2008, Auster organized, along with Paul Levinson, Ph.D., a conference dedicated to the HBO show The Sopranos. Levinson called him a “one-of-a-kind professor and human being who had a heart of gold, a smile that would light up a room, and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything he taught and talked about.” Levinson recalled asking Auster at the last minute to serve as an associate chair of the department at the Lincoln Center campus. Auster didn’t hesitate, he said.

“I would call him anytime I had an issue that needed discussion, and he always took the call, including at night and weekends. I knew I’d miss him when he retired, and I did. I know now I’ll miss him very much more,” he said.

Thomas McCourt, Ph.D., a retired professor of communication and media studies, credited Auster with making him feel welcome when he first moved to New York City and was feeling out of his league.

“He had a wonderfully dry sense of humor and keen sense of the absurd. We spent hours and hours talking about jazz guitarists!” he said.

“I learned that a number of junior faculty in the department held an informal poll as to which senior colleague they would like to accompany on a cross-country road trip, and Al was the hands-down winner because he had so many great stories to tell. Al was the definition of a mensch.”

In 2016, Auster was recognized for his service at the University with a Bene Merenti medal. At the ceremony, he was lauded for being “a classic New Yorker, exemplifying the wit and heart of the city.” His citation praised him for his significant contribution to his field and to Fordham:

“Dr. Auster’s significant body of work details the history and impact of film and television on the American landscape. His wide-ranging interests are reflected in his many books and articles that have helped shape critical debates on how politics and media interact. In his studies of film and TV programming focusing on the Vietnam War, Dr. Auster has portrayed the complexities and contradictions of creators as activists in an industry typically focused on ratings and financial results,” the citation read.

“Through the years, numerous students have attested to the spirit of inquiry and openness that distinguishes his teaching. His classes provide a broad sense of context in which to address the fundamental questions of philosophy and ethics in past and present media. In both his life and work, Dr. Auster reflects the best aspects of Fordham and New York City.”

Auster’s wife Susan Hamovitch said he had recently begun working on a memoir that he called bubbenmeises, an intentionally misspelled Yiddish word that he defined as “Referring to a number of meanings: a false story, a story that is so eccentric as to be meaningless, or a story intended to divert from the real story. But are more than that because they have defined me [him]and my family.”

In the course of working on it, he’d realized that he was profoundly affected by the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of his grandmother, aunts, and uncles. After graduating from City College, he worked in radio, for the Canadian Broadcasting Company and WBAI in New York City. It didn’t pay well enough though, she said, so he reluctantly went back to school to earn a Ph.D. in history. He would become a student of Hitler, Stalin, and the Jim Crow era of the Deep South, she said in remarks she delivered in a eulogy.

“His jam though, was to probe historical themes as contemporary American culture, mainly movies, portrayed them,” she said.
“How did film portray the Holocaust?  The War in Vietnam?  Jewish mores?   For his graduate thesis, the question was, which of Hollywood’s stars were diehard suffragists?”

Auster’s life can be summed up as passionate and emotional, she said.
“He breathed the history of this country, from the Suffragist movement to race relations, from John Ford to Jerry Seinfeld, with pride, annoyance, rage and love, I suspect due to the bubbenmeises he’d lived through,” she said.
“He approached his end as he had his life, with kindness, discipline, and a sense of responsibility.  He was an extraordinary man.”

Funeral services will be held Friday, April 1, at 11 a.m. at the Kerhonkson Synagogue in Kerhonkson, New York. The service will be streamed live on Zoom. His wife Susan Hamovich will be sitting shiva on Sunday, April 3 and a shiva minyan at 3 pm. Anyone who would like to share memories of professor Auster are asked to e-mail them to Susan at [email protected]. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider making a donation to the Met Council on Housing and/or to Kolot Chayeinu. 

If you’re worried you’ve exhausted all your Netflix options, look no further. Fordham News asked faculty and staff members for updated suggestions on the best things to read, watch, and listen to for the upcoming winter months. (In case you missed it, check out our last list of faculty recommendations here.)

Films

Jennifer Moorman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media Studies

Vampires vs. The Bronx (2020), directed by Osmany Rodriguez
I know Halloween is over, but it’s always horror season for me! This one was actually recommended to me by a student in my Horror Film class, and I found it moving as well as fun. A horror-comedy focused on three boys battling vampires while simultaneously fighting off gentrification in their Bronx neighborhood (an issue that should concern all of us at Fordham), this film has so much heart. It has its share of cheesy moments and clichés, but overall it entertains while reminding us that Black lives matter, our communities are worth saving, and we are stronger together.
Available on Netflix

Bacurau (2019), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
This Brazilian riff on The Most Dangerous Game is a thrilling, powerful, anticolonial tour de force. Warning: It gets pretty graphic. But its messages about the dangers of globalization, imperialism, and white supremacy are as urgent as ever, and will hopefully inspire you to organize in your own community to fight the power. Its meditation on the ways that advanced technologies invade our lives and can hurt as much as they help is particularly relevant in this moment of ever-increasing dependency on digital (and specifically remote-learning) tech.
Available on Amazon

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma
Arguably the greatest queer love story (or any love story, for that matter) of the 21st century thus far. Exquisitely shot, each frame is a painting. The compositions are breathtaking, the characters written and portrayed with unusual depth, and the story is incredibly moving and all too relatable for anyone who has a “one that got away.”
Available on Hulu

The Lighthouse (2019), directed by Robert Eggers
This is a great companion piece to Robert Eggers’ previous feature, The Witch (which I also highly recommend). It’s darker and more challenging, but also funnier. Its exploration of the horrors of isolation feels all the more relevant now than at the time of its release, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll find a biting critique of capitalism and toxic masculinity (and some would say, also a homoerotic love story).
Available on Amazon

Beth Knobel, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Broadcast News (1987), directed by James L. Brooks
This is one of my favorite films about television news. It’s also filled with classic moments that speak to the nature of friendship, success, and love. I’ve shown it numerous times to my Fordham students to illustrate the power and limitations of broadcast journalism.
Available on Amazon

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (1987)
Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985 (1990)
Produced by Henry Hampton
Everyone who wants to understand the roots of the American civil rights movement should spend the time to watch Henry Hampton’s monumental, prize-winning documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Its 14 parts, produced as two series, explore the major moments of the movement, from school desegregation, to the fight for voting rights, to the elections of Black politicians in major cities like Chicago. It’s engrossing and important.
Available on Amazon

Brandy Monk-Payton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Time (2020), directed by Garrett Bradley
This award-winning experimental documentary by Garrett Bradley is a beautiful and intimate portrait of a Black family that follows Sybil “Fox Rich” Richardson as she fights for over 20 years to free her husband from his prison sentence. Using interviews as well as Rich’s own homemade videos, the film is a brilliant love story in an era of mass incarceration.
Available on Amazon

Television Shows

Brandy Monk-Payton

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
Based on a 1983 novel of the same name, this limited series is a coming-of-age story about Beth Harmon, an orphan who also happens to be a chess prodigy. Set during the Cold War, Beth defies the odds as a female player who gains widespread public attention winning in a male-dominated sport, while also privately battling addiction. Watch for the mesmerizing scenes of chess play.
Available on Netflix

Grand Army (2020)
This gritty young adult drama series is set in Brooklyn and follows a multicultural ensemble of teenagers as they confront issues of identity at their prestigious public high school. At times difficult to watch due to its themes, the film has vivid characters and stellar performances by the young cast.
Available on Netflix

Jacqueline Reich, Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

My Brilliant Friend (2018-present)
There are two seasons available of this amazing adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s four novel series set in Naples beginning in 1945. Most of the actors are non-professional, and there are wonderful echoes to Italian neorealism and other film traditions. It is compelling storytelling at its best, and when we can’t travel to Italy, the series transports us there.
Available on HBO

Borgen (2010-2013)
Borgen is probably one of the most highly praised international television series in recent memory, and Netflix subscribers can now see it for the first time. It revolves around the first Danish female prime minister and her family as she adapts to her new role. You will be riveted. Also along these lines on Netflix is The Crown, with Season 4 having just been released.
Available on Netflix

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977)
One of the pioneering television series of the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore plays Mary Richards, a single career woman living in Minneapolis. It was one of the first shows to feature work life and home life (modeled after The Dick Van Dyke Show, also starring Moore), and spawned several spinoffs (Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou Grant). I watched all seven seasons during the worst of the quarantine, and Mary’s sunny disposition and optimism were just what I needed. For a great companion read, I recommend the book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Kieshin Armstrong, which tells the background story behind the scenes.
Available on Hulu

Clint Ramos, Assistant Professor of Design and Head of Design and Production

Alone (2015-present)I love it because it shows you how we really need socialization.
Available on Netflix

Street Food (2019)
It’s set both in Asia and Latin America. I love it because it’s not about the food, it’s about the people who make the food.
Available on Netflix: Asia and Latin America

Beth Knobel

Occupied (2015-2017)
This multilingual Norwegian three-season television series revolves around a Russian invasion of Norway over energy resources. As someone who spent 14 years living in Moscow, working as a journalist, I was glued to the edge of my seat by the portrayal of the Russians and the twists and turns in this biting political thriller.
Available on Netflix

Books

Heather Dubrow, Professor of English; John D. Boyd, S.J. Chair in the Poetic Imagination; and Director, Reading Series, Poets Out Loud

Detective fiction and crime fiction in general! Long-standing favorites include Sherlock Holmes and Ed McBain, especially the ones about the 87th precinct, which I enjoy not least because they are set in New York. 

Michael Connelly has been another favorite for some years—partly because of how the values of the detective are represented (he repeatedly evokes police work as a “mission”) and also because of how the relationship with his daughter has developed in the course of the series. But OK, I’ll let the cat out of the bag: I’m writing a critical article on Connelly, which demonstrates that I need to try harder to follow the advice I give my students about getting away completely from academic work occasionally. 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
What an extraordinary eye and ear he has for English culture.

Seamus Heaney
Not surprisingly, I keep returning to Heaney, virtually any of his poetry books and prose too. 

Why I Am Not a Toddler by Cooper Bennett Burt
Given our troubled times I’d recommend for light reading, especially to people who enjoy some of the originals, the parodies of golden oldie poems Stephanie Burt claims were written by her infant son. One of my favorites there is in fact a riff on the Bishop poem that is itself one of my favorites, “One Art.” [Bishop’s compelling lament, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” becomes the kid’s “The art of mouthing isn’t hard to master . . . And look! my last, or / next to last, of three big crayons…”] 

Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America by Robert Bruegmann (Editor)
I love reopening and flipping through art books, including catalogues of exhibits to which I’ve gone. Art deco means a lot to me, and right now that bedside table also includes a book on deco mailboxes, a sub-sub genre of art deco design no doubt. And I often revisit a couple of books I have on the lacquer creations and other work of Zeshin—wow.

Music

Chuck Singleton, General Manager, WFUV

WFUV’s The Joni Project, which features artists covering songs by iconic singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell

Our Stress-Free Soundtrack pandemic playlist

The EQFM “Album ReCue” series, on landmark albums from women, which includes Spotify playlists of every album and Alisa Ali’s conversation with WFUV DJs

George Bodarky, News Director, WFUV

Everyone should have Nina Simone’s “O-o-h Child” on their playlist, especially now.

But really tapping into ’70s R&B has been uplifting, including “Shining Star” from Earth, Wind & Fire. 

Anne Fernald, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Every summer, my family and I make a summer playlist. The rule is that it has to be brief enough to fit on a CD (so 100 minutes or so) and that it should capture the mood of the summer. We spend our summers up on the New York side of the Canadian border, listening to a lot of CBC 2. Their smooth-voiced nighttime DJ is a musician called Odario Williams, and his “Low Light (In This Space)” is a song that captures the hopes and aspirations coming out of #BlackLivesMatter.

Also on that playlist was Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto,” which is both heart-breaking and inspiring and just grows and grows on me. 

And I am always charmed by the Swedish song “Snooza” by Säkert! It’s (apparently) about urging your lover to hang out and snooze a little longer. It’s a very cheerful pop song in a language I don’t speak and one of those gifts from the algorithm: a “you might like” song that I love. 

On Aug. 26., in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the state restrictions on mass gatherings, fall classes at the University commenced under the auspices of a brand-new flexible hybrid learning model.

The model, which was laid out in May by Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., Fordham’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, is designed to be both safe and academically rigorous. After being forced to pivot to remote learning in March, professors and instructors, aided by Fordham’s IT department, spent many hours this summer preparing to use this model for the fall.

Today, some classes are offered remotely, some are offered in-person—indoors and outdoors—with protective measures, and still others are a blend of both. Whatever the method, professors are engaging students with innovative lessons and challenging coursework.

Rethinking an Old Course for New Times

Barbara Mundy, Ph.D., a professor of art history, said the pandemic spurred her department to reimagine one of its hallmark courses, Introduction to Art History. The course, which covers the period from 1200 B.C. to the present day, is being taught both in-person and in remote settings to 327 students in what’s known as a “flipped” format.

Before classes are held, students are provided with pre-recorded lectures, reading material, and videos, such as Art of the Olmec, which Mundy created with the assistance of Digital and Visual Resources Curator Katherina Fostano and her staff. When students meet in person or via live video, they then discuss the material at length. The content was changed as well; it now also addresses the representation of Black people throughout history and showcases artists who tackle themes of racism.

“Because we were looking at a situation where we couldn’t just do business as usual, I proposed that we take this moment to really rethink our intro class, which we’ve been teaching for decades,” Mundy said, noting that the department has expanded in recent years to include experts in art from more diverse sections of the world.

Contemplating the Bard

Before the COVID crisis, Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of English, presented materials to students in her Shakespeare & Pop Culture class and encouraged them to generate their own ideas on them during live discussions. Now she breaks her students up into pairs, and later “pods,” of about six students on Zoom, to form a thoughtful argument about a particular work of art, video, film, or theater.

“An argument is not a description,” said Bly. “It has to have some evidence or context to make their argument, say, for example, ‘This film is a racist portrayal of the play for the following reasons,’ or, ‘The director of this film pits the values of pop culture against Shakespeare and the British canon.”

To propel the conversations, she created a series of video-taped lectures with Daniel Camou, FCLC ’20. In some cases, students are expected to respond with a video of their own.

Embracing New Technologies

Paul Lynch, Ph.D., an associate professor of accounting and taxation at the Gabelli School of Businesses, is teaching Advanced Accounting to undergraduates and Accounting for Derivatives to graduate students this semester. Of the five classes, four are exclusively online, and one is exclusively in person. For his remote classes, he’s turned to Lightboard, which allows him to “write” on the screen. He jokingly refers to it as his Manhattan Project.

“I love being in the class with the students. I enjoy the interaction, and I thought that was missing,” he said. “This gives me the ability to let the students see me as if I was in class writing onto a transparent whiteboard.”

He said he hasn’t had to change much of the content. The only major difference now is that instead of passing out equations on printed paper, he emails students custom-made problems in PDF format, and then edits within that document after they’re sent back.

“I’ve always given them take-home exams, and always worked off Blackboard, so it’s just a natural extension of what I used to do in class,” he said.

In Jacqueline Reich’s class Films of Moral Struggle, students are using the platform Perusall to examine how films portray moral and ethical issues. They watch and analyze films like Scarface, a 1932 movie about a powerful Cuban drug lord, and The Cheat, which shows the early representation of Asians in American films, said Reich, a professor of communication and media studies.

Among other things, students can use Perusall to annotate scenes from movie clips, such as the classic film Casablanca, where they identified shots ranging from “establishing” and “reaction” to “shot/reverse shot.”

“It’s a really good exercise to do in class when you’re teaching film language or talking about editing or lighting, because students can pause and comment on a particular frame,” Reich said.

She meets with 11 students on Zoom on Thursdays and another eight in person at the Rose Hill campus on Mondays.

In another virtual classroom, Peggy Andover, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, is teaching undergraduates at Rose Hill how the laws of the environment shape behavior in an asynchronous class called Learning Laboratory. Andover said that platforms like Panopto, which transcribe her lessons, can make it easier for students to look for specific information.

“Let’s say you’re studying for an exam, and you see the word ‘contiguity’ in your notes, and you don’t remember what it means. You don’t have to watch the entire lecture again—you can search for ‘contiguity’ and see the slides and the portion of the lecture where we were talking about it,” Andover said.

Graduate students teaching in the psychology program are also using Pear Deck to make their virtual classrooms more engaging on Google Slides, she said.

“You have this PowerPoint that’s being watched or engaged in asynchronously, but [Pear Deck] allows you to put in interactive features,” including polls and student commentary, she said.

“Our grad students found it’s a way to really get that engagement that they would potentially be missing when we went to online learning.”

Learning from Classmates

Aaron Saiger, a professor at the Law School, made several adjustments to Property Law, a required class for all first-year law students. Instead of meeting in person twice a week for two hours, his class of 45 students meets on Zoom three times a week for 90 minutes, an acknowledgment that attention spans are harder to maintain on Zoom.

The content is the same, but the way he teaches it had to change. While he was able to record four classes’ worth of lectures to share asynchronously, that wasn’t an option for everything.

“I’m spending less time talking to students one-on-one while everyone else listens, which is the classic law school teaching mode; we call it the Socratic method,” he said. “Everyone else is supposed to imagine that they’re the person being called on.”

Saiger’s solution is having students share two-sentence answers to questions in the Zoom chat function to gauge what everyone’s thinking about a topic, having them do more group work, and leaning more on visual material.

“The difficulties are not insubstantial, but I think we are meeting the challenges and finding a few offsetting advantages that will make it a good semester for everyone.”

Getting Creative with Lab Work

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, holds most of his experimentation class in person, with a few students attending remotely.

The in-person group is working on a hands-on solar project that allows them to learn about the material, electric, programming, and optical components of physics.

Students who are attending the class remotely are doing related mathematical work as a part of their semester-long project.

“One student is studying interference coding in optics, so I have him looking at designs in a paper,” he said. “He’s learning all the underlying physics for what goes into a portion of these mirrors that are used in laser systems.”

Christopher Koenigsmann, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, is sending lab kits to the students in his general chemistry class so they can conduct experiments from home.

“We were between a rock and hard place—you can’t have the kids in the lab, and at the same time, we can’t not have some kind of hands-on,” he said.

The kits will allow students to participate in labs virtually through a Zoom webinar with their professor, as well as in breakout rooms with their lab teams.

“We adapted as many of our experiments as we could to just use simple household chemicals that are all completely safe,” he said.

Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physical and biophysical chemistry, likewise sent a kit to students that they can use to build a spectrometer. Students can build it out of Legos, using a DVD and a light source to create different wavelengths of light. They capture them using their computer’s webcam which processes the data. They will then design an experiment that everyone in the class will conduct.

“Designing an experiment so that you learn something, that answers the question you set out to answer, and gives a protocol that someone else can follow so they can get the same results that you got, is really at the heart of what it is to do scientific research,” she said.

—Taylor Ha, Kelly Kultys, and Tom Stoelker contributed reporting.

“The idea is to inspire people to stay home, but also get to know more about the community that they’re situated within, and also to provoke a response from people and invite them to share their own experiences,” said Desislava Stoeva, a BIAHI graduate project assistant who spearheaded the campaign. 

The Bronx Italian American History Initiative is an oral history research project that documents the lives of Italian and Italian American residents of the Bronx. Over the past four years, BIAHI project staff have pored over cataloged video and audio interviews throughout the 20th century and preserved their stories. They interviewed more than 40 members of the Bronx community and documented their stories in their digital archives, similar to what Fordham’s Bronx African American History Project has done for the Bronx’s black community. BIAHI staff, from faculty to undergraduate researchers, have presented their research in the U.S., Italy, and the United Kingdom. 

Now that people are spending most of their time at home, BIAHI is sharing more of its stories with participants and donors online. In late March, the initiative launched the new social media campaign, marked by the hashtags #stayathomewithBIAHI and #restaacasaconBIAHI (the latter is the Italian translation of the first hashtag). Through its weekly content on Facebook and Instagram, the campaign ties together people from two countries that bore the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic—Italy and the U.S., said Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., co-director of BIAHI. 

“We’re really trying, even in these difficult times, to engage with multiple publics as we do our outreach from home,” said Reich, who is also chair and professor of the department of communication and media studies. 

Full of personal and historical details, the social media campaign’s stories evoke nostalgia about the old Bronx and its residents. There’s Robert Menillo, born in 1923, who recalls when there were no cars on the street and Arthur Avenue vendors sold produce from streetside carts. There’s Joanna Bonaro, who remembers attending Easter Mass with her parents and “how big of a deal” it was to get the coveted chocolate egg. There’s a trio of cousins who reminisce over a restaurant meal that tasted just like their grandmother’s. 

“I was eating in a restaurant in Buffalo, my son lives in Buffalo, and it was an Italian restaurant, I tasted the sauce and it was my grandmother’s sauce, I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t had that taste and that feel in like 50 years … It’s funny the memories that food brings you,” Carl Calò said in a BIAHI social media post. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

We greet the rainy Monday with a great storytelling trio. Carl Calò, his brother Frank Calò, and their cousin Salvatore Civitello recount their vivid memories from the rich food traditions in their family to their experiences with stereotypes about Italian-Americans from the Bronx. #stayhomewithBIAHI #restaacasaconBIAHI #BIAHI #BronxItalianAmericanHistoryInitiative #stayathome View the full interview on BIAHI’s website at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/video-interviews/#section-group-gduJjZQUKTwzQrHZbEvGp6-5 The full video and transcript are also available at Fordham University Libraries Digital Collections at : https://www.library.fordham.edu/digital/item/collection/bronxitalian/id/4 Archive photos by our interviewees can be explored in our digital photo archive at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/archive-images/

A post shared by BIAHI (@biahifordham) on Apr 13, 2020 at 8:33am PDT

In the full interview, Calò talks about growing up in the Edenwald Houses, a housing project in the Bronx, and what it was like to be the son of a Sicilian immigrant who was a sanitation worker. Eventually, his family left the projects and moved to Long Island. But one family member made his way back to where their American roots began. 

“There’s this story of return in that interview where the cousin talks about how he went back to Edenwald when he was a New York City firefighter in the ’80s or ’90s. He knocked on his old apartment door, and he got to go in and see the little hole where he used to keep his box of army men hidden in his bedroom floor,” said Kathleen LaPenta, Ph.D., co-director of BIAHI and a senior lecturer in the modern languages and literatures department. “This kind of attachment that they have … I remember being affected by that [while conducting]the interview.” 

In addition to posting on social media, BIAHI shares audio versions of its interviews on its SoundCloud podcast channel and the complete set of video interviews on its new digital archive website. In early May, BIAHI staff will talk about its initiative at a faculty webinar for Fordham’s development and university relations team. 

In the meantime, strangers across social media are responding to BIAHI’s new campaign. 

“It was nice to see people not just liking a post, but responding to it. One of our participants shared that his parents would talk to him in Italian, but he would always respond in English,” said Stoeva, a Fordham public media master’s student who plans on becoming a communications strategist. “It was interesting seeing people saying, ‘Yes, that was exactly my experience with that’ or ‘I resonate with that.’”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

For our first #stayhomewithBIAHI or #restaacasaconBIAHI video day, we are sharing the story of Anthony Rosco. He talks about his parents’ journey from Italy to America on the Cristoforo Colombo ship in the 1920s and his own childhood memories of growing up on Belmont Avenue and visiting the old Arthur Avenue Market as a child. Anthony recalls his favorite hangout spots, his first job and the different Italian regions that immigrants in the Belmont at the time came from. View the full interview on BIAHI’s website at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/video-interviews/?customize_changeset_uuid=9b5305ec-2cd8-4292-97f6-124890eacec3#section-group-gduJjZQUKTwzQrHZbEvGp6-2 The full video and transcript are also available at Fordham University Libraries Digital Collections at : https://digital.library.fordham.edu/digital/collection/bronxitalian/id/0/rec/2 And if you want to listen to it in the background while doing something at home, it is available in audio format on BIAHI’s podcast channel on SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/biahipodcast/biahi-podcast-episode-1-anthony-rosco-march-27-2020 #BIAHI #BronxItalianAmericanHistoryInitiative #stayathome

A post shared by BIAHI (@biahifordham) on Mar 27, 2020 at 8:58am PDT

The film “MASK,” produced by Yang Xu, FCLC ’21, and Mengxuan Annie Du, FCLC ’20, portrays a private phone call between an Asian mother and daughter who live on opposite sides of the world. In their conversation, they ruminate on the coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia that many people have been experiencing. 

“The film speaks to the racial prejudice so many Asians are experiencing in real life, and it does so in such an intimate and personal way,” said Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of communication and media studies. 

Xu and Du’s film won “Best Drama” in Fordham’s inaugural One-Minute Film Festival, a student competition sponsored by the Department of Communication and Media Studies and Fordham’s chapter of the New York Film and Television Student Alliance. Their film was among six award-winning videos that were screened at the Story 2020 Summit on March 7. The all-day summit at the Lincoln Center campus featured panels and Q&A sessions with leading entertainment industry professionals.

“It was an accomplished film that showed real storytelling talent as well as a passion for speaking out against social injustice,” said screenwriter James Jennewein, a senior lecturer in Fordham’s communication and media studies department who helped spearhead the conference. “At times like these, we must be more vigilant about racial and ethnic bias than ever.”

“The U.S.-Mexico borderlands is a place where the Earth just swallows up bodies,” says Leo Guardado, Ph.D.

He doesn’t mince words about the humanitarian crisis at the border. In May, 144,278 migrants were taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol, the highest monthly total in more than a decade. And each year, the agency finds hundreds of corpses—the remains of men, women, and children who died traversing the vast desert and mountain regions on both sides of the dividing line.

The Trump administration’s efforts—separating migrant parents and children, deploying U.S. troops to the border, sending asylum-seekers to Mexico to await immigration court hearings—have not reduced the number of people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America to enter the U.S. without authorization.

Guardado knows all too well the pain and fear that families suffer when making the dangerous decision to migrate to the U.S. He was just 9 years old in 1991 when he and his mother made the nearly 3,000-mile trek from their mountain town in El Salvador.

Today, he is an assistant professor of theology at Fordham. And while the federal government remains deeply divided on how to handle the crisis, he views it not as a political abstraction but as a theological issue.

A Migrant’s Journey

Guardado was born in a rural town in northern El Salvador during the country’s civil war. As he approached his 10th birthday, his mother feared that he would soon be conscripted by the army or the guerrillas.

She was determined to move him from harm’s way. Family in the U.S. loaned them money, and Guardado said his grandfather probably sold what little cattle the family had to help pay for his and his mother’s journey. He remembers crying with his grandfather as they said their goodbyes, both of them knowing they might never see each other again. And they never did.

“We got on a bus, and I counted palm trees,” Guardado said. He learned two English phrases from his mother—“‘Thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry’—how to be grateful and how to ask for forgiveness,” he said. “These were the only two phrases that I had in my English vocabulary leaving El Salvador.”

He thinks he counted palm trees as a way of remembering his country. By the time he reached the hundreds, he fell asleep. He awoke in Guatemala, and from there his memory skips through a series of glimpses, mostly involving walking: “A lot. Many days. Under the moonlight.” He traveled with a group of about 15 migrants who followed a “coyote,” a paid guide, for the length of the journey.

He remembers being crammed into false compartments of trailers, packed together “like sardines” for five hours at a time. In Tijuana, they crossed beneath a barbed-wired fence patrolled by jeeps, and in darkness jammed into a small taxi like a “clown car,” which took them over back roads to a white van that ultimately brought them to San Diego.

He and his mother eventually connected with family in Los Angeles, where Guardado was educated by the De La Salle Christian Brothers at Cathedral High School. He earned a full scholarship to attend Saint Mary’s College of California, and it was in his first year there that he finally received legal residency status. He became a U.S. citizen in 2010.

Religion, Politics, and Sanctuary

Saint Mary’s is not far from a Trappist monastery, where Guardado spent a year before earning a master’s degree in theology at the University of Notre Dame. For two years, he directed the social justice ministry at a Catholic church in Tucson, Arizona. Then he returned to the monastery for what he thought would be the rest of his life. But there, in isolation, ideas began to “percolate,” he said, and he returned to Notre Dame, where he earned a doctorate in theology.

He initially studied early church history, but his focus changed after he took a course with Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the father of liberation theology, which emphasizes the perspective of the poor.

“I began to crack open the possibility that my own experience, my community’s experience, and the historical reality of Latin America—poverty, oppression, war, violence—that all of this was raw material out of which I could do theological reflection,” Guardado said.

In his dissertation, he wrote about the 1980s sanctuary movement, when hundreds of Catholic churches provided a safe haven for refugees from Central America. Today, he said, only a handful of churches in the U.S. are willing to take that risk. He said bishops will often say providing sanctuary is illegal or too political.

“The term sanctuary often mistakenly gets reduced to politics,” he said. “In light of human displacement worldwide and 11 million undocumented here in the U.S., if we’re to be a church of and for the poor, then you can’t just say ‘no.’ You have to engage with the question theologically. Otherwise, one can argue that it’s an ecclesial sin of omission.”

Guardado said the point of theology is not just to “do religious metaphysics” but to deal with contemporary issues head-on. He is developing a course on migration and theology that will include a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I want my students to ask: How does theological thinking change the world? How does it change history? How does it leave an impact so that it’s not just thinking about God but actually aims to transform the world?”

Bearing Witness at the Border

Guardado is far from being the only Fordham professor engaging with the humanitarian crisis at the border.

During spring break in March, a group of 10 faculty members went to see it for themselves. They visited the Kino Border Initiative, a consortium of six Catholic organizations in the border city of Nogales—both on the Arizona side and the Sonora, Mexico, side—that serves deportees and asylum-seekers and promotes a spirit of international solidarity.

Faculty members raised $13,000 to buy toiletries and necessities for the migrants, and Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning funded the trip. Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning, said it was a necessity, given how migration is now a major global challenge.

“Because this is such a major social issue and it impacts questions of justice, what we want to be as a society, and how a place like Fordham, as a Jesuit university, tries to develop students, we decided the border would be a great site for this immersion experience for a diverse group of faculty members,” he said.

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies, and theology professor James McCartin, Ph.D., acting associate provost of the University, co-led the trip.

It was the second time Reich went to Nogales, having worked with the Kino Initiative in January 2018. Although only 14 months had passed, the experience was very different, she said. As before, the group stayed overnight in Arizona and crossed the border to work in a comedor, or cafeteria, in Mexico, that provided meals to people waiting for asylum claims to be heard in the United States.

In 2018, she said, they would typically have one seating of 40 to 50 people—mostly men, a few women, and very few unaccompanied minors. This time, there were multiple seatings with 300 people per meal.

“We spent a lot of time holding babies while people could eat, or entertaining children, or sitting and talking to groups of families that had left Honduras, Guatemala, or regions of Mexico that were affected by gang violence and poverty,” she said.

In addition to serving meals, the group hosted a party at a women’s shelter, met with Border Patrol agents, and hiked along the border to understand the conditions there.

They also attended an “Operation Streamline” hearing in Tucson, Arizona, where immigrants appeared in a group before a judge, who often deported them for being in the U.S. illegally after asking two quick questions.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., a professor of English and American studies and acting chair of the English department, said he was surprised to learn that a wall was constructed through the middle of the city of Nogales in 1994, long before President Donald Trump made building a border wall his signature campaign promise.

Although he does not speak Spanish, he was able to connect with a 6-year-old girl at the comedor whose father was washing dishes nearby.

“It was an incredible joy to make a child who was going through a horrific experience laugh,” he said. “The next day, we were serving a meal, and I heard a little girl yelling ‘hola, hola,’ and it was the same little girl again. She was happy to see me, and I was happy to see her. But there were so many people there that they just got rushed out, so I never got to say goodbye to this little girl. For some reason, that just broke my heart.”

Speaking with the Border Patrol complicated the picture for Hendler because it showed how difficult the job is, he said. But it did not change his mind about the moral implications of the situation. In fact, he said that by then he felt more emotionally connected to what had previously been an abstract concept.

‘Accompany, Humanize, Complicate’

Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, was moved by learning specific details of the migrants’ experience, like why black water bottles are a must for those crossing the border at night. (They don’t reflect moonlight.) “We were told to accompany, humanize, and complicate,” she said. “To see those real items that our guide had collected on hikes through the desert, and also to see people get out of a van who’d been deported and go into the soup kitchen we were working in [in Mexico], was something that really stood out.”

McCartin, the theology professor who co-led the trip, recalled a conversation with a man from Honduras who asked if all Americans consider him and his fellow migrants to be criminals. “I said, ‘Oh gosh, no, I have no problem with you.’ This guy was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe that.’ I said, ‘No, I can see how you have a sense that that’s how Americans talk about you, and there are plenty of them that do, but there are also a lot of us that don’t really begrudge you trying to have a better life,’” he said.

“This moment of his being surprised that we’re not unified in our attitudes toward people at the border—a lightbulb went on for this guy, and I’ll remember that.”

—Story co-author: Patrick Verel

This spring, a group of 10 Fordham faculty members traveled there to see it for themselves. From March 17 to 22, they visited the Kino Border Initiative, a consortium of six Catholic organizations in the border city of Nogales—both on the Arizona side and the Sonora, Mexico side. Kino aims to promote border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of binational solidarity.

The trip was funded by Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning and featured faculty from arts and sciences, the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Education, the Gabelli School of Business, and the Law School. The group raised $13,000 to purchase toiletries and necessities for the migrants and documented their time on a blog.

Big Changes in Just One Year

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor of communications and chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies, co-led the trip along with Associate Professor of Theology and Acting Associate Provost James McCartin, Ph.D. It was Reich’s second time in Nogales, having worked with Kino in January 2018. Although only 14 months had passed since her last visit, the experience was very different, she said. As before, the group stayed overnight in Arizona and crossed the border to work in a comedor, or cafeteria, in Mexico, that provided meals to people waiting for asylum claims to be heard in the United States.

In 2018, she said, they would typically have one seating of 40 to 50 people—mostly men, a few women, and very few unaccompanied minors. This time, there were multiple seatings with 300 people per meal.

“We spent a lot of time holding babies while people could eat, or entertaining children, or sitting and talking to groups of families that had left Honduras, Guatemala, or regions of Mexico that were affected by gang violence and poverty,” she said.

In addition to serving meals, the group hosted a party at a women’s shelter, met with border patrol agents, and hiked along the border to understand the conditions there. They also attended an “Operation Streamline” hearing in Tuscon, Arizona, where immigrants appear in a group before a judge, who often deported them for being here illegally after two quick questions.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., a professor of English and American studies and acting chair of the English department, said he knew a little about the crisis at the border before heading there, but learned a lot from the trip. He was surprised to learn, for instance, that a wall was constructed through the middle of the Nogales in 1994, long before President Donald Trump made building a border wall his signature campaign promise.

‘Never Got to Say Goodbye’

Although he does not speak Spanish, he was able to connect with a 6-year old girl at the comedor whose father was washing dishes nearby.

“It was an incredible joy to make a child who was going through a horrific experience laugh,” he said.

“The next day, we were serving a meal, and I heard a little girl yelling ‘hola, hola,’ and it was the same little girl again. She was happy to see me, and I was happy to see her. But there were so many people there, that they just got rushed out. So, I never got to say goodbye to this little girl. For some reason, that just broke my heart.”

Speaking with the border patrol complicated the picture for Hendler because it showed how difficult the job is, but it did not change his mind about the moral implications of the situation. In fact, he said he now felt more emotionally connected to what had previously been an abstract concept. He also said that the bonding experience he had with the other nine faculty was “very powerful.”

Accompany, Humanize, Complicate

Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, echoed this, saying she was moved by the possibility of future projects at Fordham. Her scholarship touches on issues related to the border, so she was familiar with the situation. But she was moved to learn things like why black water bottles are a must for those crossing the border at night. (They don’t reflect moonlight).

“We were told to accompany, humanize, and complicate. To see those real items that our guide had collected on hikes through the desert, and also to see people get out of a van who’d been deported and go into the soup kitchen we were working in, was something that really stood out,” she said.

She was also shocked at the level of needless suffering taking place. When people are deported to Mexico for instance, they are given back any cash they had on them when they were apprehended in the form of a check. But the checks are only cashable in the United States, so once a week, a nonprofit group called No More Deaths visits the comedor to help people cash them. She also wasn’t impressed with the judge who spoke to them after presiding over the deportation proceedings.

“He said, ‘I’m just carrying out my marching orders.’ And I thought, ‘You’re a lawyer. You could leave and get a different job.’”

She felt more empathy toward border patrol agents. “They have fewer choices, and their job sounds really hard,” she said. “I found it really complicated to parse it all.”

McCartin said the goal of the trip was to give faculty members an experience different from their everyday work life that would also then affect their work life. The group will reunite soon for debriefing and discussion of possible future plans.

One conversation that will always stay with him happened when a man from Honduras asked him if Americans all thought they were criminals.

“I said ‘Oh gosh, no, I have no problem with you.’ This guy was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe that.’ I said ‘No, I can see how you have a sense that that’s how Americans talk about you, and there are plenty of them that do, but there are also a lot of us that don’t really begrudge you trying to have a better life,’” he said.

“This moment of his being surprised that we’re not unified in our attitudes toward people at the border—a lightbulb went on for this guy, and I’ll remember that.”

Carrying Their Stories Back Home

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president and presidential assistant for planning in the Office of Mission Integration and Planning, said the trip was a necessity, given how immigration is now a major global challenge.

“Because this is such a major social issue and it impacts questions of justice, what we want to be as a society, and how a place like Fordham, as a Jesuit university, tries to develop students, we decided the border would be a great site for this immersion experience for a diverse group of faculty members,” he said.

Reich is making sure the issue lives on, having structured the syllabus of one of her spring classes, Films of Moral Struggle, to include representations of borders and migration. The class is also sending Easter cards to people in detention at the border to bring a little color and humanity into their lives, she said.

Above all, she said she’ll hold onto memories of conversations with the migrants she met, like one with a man at the comedor who was sporting a University of Michigan hat. He’d lived in the U.S. for 22 years before being deported after being stopped for a traffic violation.

“I will always carry their stories with me,” Reich said.

Photos courtesy of Fordham faculty.

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor and chair of Fordham’s department of communication and media studies, is a scholar in the subject of masculinity. In addition to Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema, (Indiana University Press, 2004), she co-wrote, with Catherine O’Rawe,  Divi. La mascolinità nel cinema italiano (Stars: Masculinity in Italian Cinema), (Donzelli, 2015).

We sat down with her to talk about how shifting attitudes in both the United States and Italy have affected her own work. Spoiler alert: Stear clear if you don’t want to know how the television shows Friday Night Lights and The Sopranos end.

Listen here:

And in a bonus track, Reich talks about her involvement with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, and how she’s embraced community-based scholarship.

Complete transcription below:

Jacqueline Reich: One of the things that being in a Jesuit university has taught me is that you have to have tough conversations. Because you’re never, ever going to go anywhere if you don’t have them. We’re just going to be caught in a kind of cycle of what you would call, what a lot of people are calling toxic masculinity.

Patrick Verel: In the last year, the phrase Me Too has become shorthand for survivors of sexual assault and harassment speaking out against their assailants. At the same time, the term toxic masculinity has also entered the public conversation as a potential culprit for unrestrained, unresolved hostility towards women. Jacqueline Reich, a professor and Chair of Fordham’s Department of Communications and Media Studies was one of the first scholars to explore the subject of masculinity, most recently through a 2015 book, Stars, Masculinity in Italian Cinema. We sat down with her to talk about how shifting attitudes in both the United States and Italy have affected her work.

I’m Patrick Verel. And this is Fordham News.

What is masculinity studies and how does studying masculinity differ from the ways in which one studies feminism?

Jacqueline Reich: Well, masculinity studies grew out of feminist criticism. At least the way I practice it. I’ll tell you sort of how I got involved in it. I was a graduate student and I was working on my dissertation, which was on the representation of women in films during the fascist period. I started thinking to myself, well, I’m looking at female representations. Shouldn’t I be looking at the representation of men? So, at the same time that I’m starting to think about this, Marcello Mastroianni passes away, in 1996. And all of the obituaries in the United States started talking about him as this Latin lover and this great icon of style on the Italian screen. Italian ones focused on his overall star persona, his contributions, his work with actresses, his works with Federico Fellini. Not that the American ones didn’t mention that as well. But still, it was a different sort of paradigm.

So, the kind of way that I look at masculinity studies, in particular reference to cinema, is obviously about representation. We know that what we see on the screen is not real. We know we believe it is a representation of something. But when we interrogate this notion of masculinity, what we need to think about is that all gender is constructed. It’s also changeable. It’s negotiable. And it fluctuates from culture to culture. So we’re talking about a cultural construction here.

And this particular cultural construction of the Latin lover, I discovered, emerged more from American constructs of what Italian-ness meant in a masculine perspective, rather than what actually appears on screen. But if we’re going back to masculinity studies and its reference to and how it grew out of feminist criticism, we have to think about the ideas of the feminist critic and philosopher, Judith Butler, who talks about the whole performative of nature, of gender. It’s so much of our own identities are performative anyway, right? So if you are a daughter, you are expected to behave in a certain way. If you are a wife, you are expected to behave in a certain way.

In many ways, what you see in the films of Mastroianni is him performing certain types of masculine roles. And at the same time, undermining them. And if you look deeper, you see there’s just a lot of conflict going on there. There’s someone, as opposed to being this very cool, suave, debonair, ideal, is stylish as well, is really kind of a schlemiel, a guy who can’t get anything right.

Patrick Verel: Now, your area of research touches on depictions of masculinity on the screen. Has it changed in appreciable ways since you first started studying it?

Jacqueline Reich: I would say in Hollywood cinema, not so much. Hollywood films are written, the standard is this kind of three-act structure. The three-act structure has a status quo ethos built into it. Because it’s about conflict and resolution. Not that you necessarily have to have a happy ending of a film. But you can have a satisfactory ending of a film. When you see it changing, what we might call quality TV, which started the Sopranos, you see men who are imperfect, who are conflicted. Even so, another spoiler alert, you get to the end of the Sopranos, and the screen goes black. There is no resolution.

I just finished binge-watching Friday Night Lights, for instance. Now there’s an interesting representation. Football aside, I think what’s really brilliant about the series is the way in which the wife and the husband interact. She has a career and again, you’ve got … your listeners are going to hate me because I’m giving them all these spoiler alerts. I’m going to spoil everything for them. And mostly she has supported his career. At the end, in the last episode, she gets a really great job as dean of admissions at a college. And, it would require him leaving Texas and leaving his job. And he does. And that’s something, probably, we would have never seen.

Patrick Verel: Now a key aspect of your book about Italian actors, such as Marcello Mastroianni is this masculine anxiety, which is when masculinity manifests itself as an anger that is reactionary and defensive and destructive rather than productive. Tell me a little bit more about this anxiety.

Jacqueline Reich: I think everyone is resistant to change. In Italy, the post-war, and post-fascist, we have to remember, period was a time of reconstruction and rebuilding. But it was also a profound time of change. After the Marshall Plan, after the end of World War II, Italy’s economy started booming. What’s fueling this? New industry. You can’t just have men doing it all. Women go into the workforce. Also Italy, like the United States in the mid to late ’60s, it was a period of radical social and political change and political and social activism. That produces a lot of anxiety.

So naturally, some of this anxiety comes out in the roles that are represented on screen.

Patrick Verel: Where do you see it manifest itself today? And what do you think we should do to stop it?

Jacqueline Reich: I don’t know that we necessarily have to do anything to stop different kinds of representations of anxiety. But, I do see a real shift. And I think that this anxiety that we saw onscreen and a kind of general cultural anxiety is now shifting into anger. And so here I’m kind of referencing the work of Susan Faludi in her book Stiffed, and Michael Kimmel in Angry White Men. And their main thesis is that white men are angry. And what Kimmel has called this kind of anger, and he did a very interesting sociological study of it. He’s called it aggrieved entitlement. And he defines aggrieved entitlement as the sense that those benefits to which you believe yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unforeseen forces larger and more powerful. He concludes that the social cure for angry white men involves challenging the ideology of masculinity that’s passed on from father to son.

What I think history has shown us, unfortunately, is that dialogue and understanding aren’t enough. That we kind of have to question the structures, the institutions, and the economic powers that not just perpetuate aggrieved entitlement, but entitlement itself. So you’ve got to ask yourself why is one person entitled to something anything other than another? I think in this case, I’ve been affected by my time at Fordham and thinking … and some of my experiences with Ignatian pedagogy. Ignatius would say that we are all human beings who deserve God’s love. Why did they feel entitled to begin with?

Patrick Verel: I mean, to me, that’s easy. As a white man, you say, well, white men have always had control of everything here.

Jacqueline Reich: Why? Right? And that’s the question. One of the things that being in a Jesuit university has taught me is that you have to have tough conversations. Because you’re never, ever going to go anywhere if you don’t have them. We’re just going to be caught in a kind of cycle of what you would call … what a lot of people are calling toxic masculinity. So you have to have these tough conversations that not only address why people are angry and why people are anxious but why people are entitled.

Bonus Track

Patrick Verel: In 2016, you joined the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, which traces the history of Italians and Italian Americans in the Bronx in the 20th century. Can you tell me a little bit more about, how does this work?

Jacqueline Reich: On the one hand, it’s an example of what we would call community-engaged research, which is something the university is really prioritizing right now. And basically, what that means is that you go outside the university walls, and you engage with the local community. What we aim to do is collect stories from Italians and Italian Americans who grew up in the Bronx. But eventually, we’re going to involve them in the design of the project. It used to be, you would talk to them, and that would be it. But this whole idea of participatory design, and reaching out to the community, and engaging with the community, brings them back into the project.

So, we’re going to reach out to them as we figure out the larger architecture of how we’re going to design this archive. But we do want to think about their experiences and their memories and contextualize them in the racial and the big fabric of the Bronx and look at how their experiences compare with African Americans, with Latinas, and with other white ethnic populations. We’re also thinking about different experiences of men and women, of northern and southern Italians, of different generations.

Patrick Verel: So, how did you make the leap from being a film historian to community-engaged research?

Jacqueline Reich: I saw that my colleague, Kathleen LaPenta, in Modern Languages, was beginning this Italian American History Initiative. I teach a class on Italian Americans on American Screens, so I’ve done a lot of work in this area. I also wrote an article on Charles Atlas, who was originally named Angelo Siciliano, and how he, kind of, used bodybuilding to achieve not only success but whiteness, at a time when Italians were discriminated against.

But I really think I was profoundly influenced by two things. One, are my colleagues at Fordham, particularly, in the Communication and Media Studies department, who are all, in some ways, involved in civic engagement. So, I taught this class on Italian Americans on American Screens, taught it so many times at multiple institutions, but this is my third time teaching it here. So, we read an article about Little Italys, from a kind of anthropological and sociological point of view, and then we went to Ferragosto, which is the big festival here the weekend after Labor Day. But, we all went out, and we looked at how the neighborhood, through the festival, inscribes Italianness, and a kind of tension that exists between the sort of image, that it wishes to present, and the actual residential population of the area, which is much more ethnically diverse than Italians.

The other aspect is that I’ve recently been involved in a leadership program sponsored by The Association Of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. It’s called the Ignatian Colleagues Program. You attend different seminars and workshops, but you also do a service immersion trip, and I went down to the border. I worked with the Kino Border Initiative for a week, as a kind of witness, right? We worked five mornings a week in the comedor, the cafeteria, where they serve meals to recently deported migrants, people about to try to get through, people seeking asylum, and it was a profoundly moving experience, and I came back from that trip saying, “Okay. You know, am I just going to go back into the archive, and deal with my papers? Or am I going to try to somehow shift my work, so that it engages with contemporary issues, but also gets me and students and scholars, thinking about how we can do scholarship that’s needed.”

So, for instance, right? A lot of NGOs … I was just at a conference recently about refugee and migrant education and the relationship to universities, and how you can establish partnerships. What we’re doing with the Bronx project, is much more historical, but so many parallels exist between the way immigrants and migrants were treated during the major wave of immigration in the United States between 1880 and 1924, to what’s going on now. And so, can we learn from our mistakes? Right? I can bring, I hope, a historical perspective, and then with that historical knowledge, help to empower students and scholars, as well, to think about what it means to be an academic in the 21st century.

I think that it’s about choosing an issue that matters to you and trying to effect change with that issue. So, I’m dealing with a historical project on immigration. Shouldn’t I be working on immigration issues right now? Shouldn’t I be out there in the field? Shouldn’t I be working with migrant communities? Shouldn’t I be working to bring attention to these issues, so that we don’t make the same mistakes again? So that we don’t block a ship of immigrants like we did during World War II, right, a ship of Jewish immigrants, who had no place to go. Because again, right? It goes back to this issue of entitlement. What makes these people less entitled to safety, to human dignity? And I think that’s really the core issue for me, is preserving human dignity, and that’s both a human issue, but it’s also a Jesuit and Catholic issue.

Instead of one major with five concentrations—film, media culture & society, new media/participatory media, journalism, and TV & radio—the department has created four distinct majors:

-Communication and Culture;
-Digital Technologies and Emerging Media;
-Film and Television; and
-Journalism.

These majors can also be chosen as minors, and an additional minor in Sports Journalism is also being offered.

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., chair of the department, said the media industry has changed significantly since the former curriculum was instituted. The department surveyed 79 peer, aspirant, local, and Jesuit universities to get a sense of how other communications departments were structured, and of their curriculum offerings. They also reached out to students, faculty outside the department, and administrators for input.

Reich said the change from concentrations to majors reflects a desire to give students a better balance between theory and practice. The two introductory courses that all communications majors had been required to take have been combined into one course. Students can now take up to nine courses in their area of specialization, instead of three.

For example, said Reich, a student who wants to concentrate on film has to take courses on understanding film, the history of film until 1950, and film theory and criticism. In addition, they’d have a practical requirement, consisting of a course on screenwriting or digital video production. If they want to be film historians, they can concentrate heavily on film history courses; if they want to focus on filmmaking, they can take more hands-on courses.

To make such specializations possible, said Reich, the department is debuting several new courses, including Data Visualization, Hacker Culture, Political Communication in the Digital Era, Writing the Original TV Pilot, and Social Media for Journalists.

Reich said that what makes the program stand out from other universities is an emphasis on ethics, and promoting “media with a mission.”

“One thing we looked for in our survey was, how many of communications programs have ethics requirements, and the only ones that did were journalism programs,” she said.

All students have to take a course in ethics, law and policy; this semester, for instance, Cameron Russell, executive director of Fordham Law’s Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP) will teach a required course on privacy and surveillance.

“For us to have an ethics, law and policy requirement for the entire program is very unique, and draws on Fordham’s Jesuit tradition of ethics and social justice,” Reich said.

“We’re very proud of that, because I think that’s what sets us apart. This is our niche. I believe we are the go-to program in New York for students who want to become communication and media professionals who make a difference in the world, and who work for the public good.”

Recently established by America Media, the Joseph A. O’Hare, SJ, Post Graduate Writing Fellowship is awarded to recent graduates of Jesuit colleges and universities. The fellows will be housed at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus while producing stories across town at the offices of America Media, and will also be invited to take part in events of the master’s program in public media being launched at Fordham in the fall.

Funded by a gift from William J. Loschert, GABELLI ’61, the fellowship will help meet the need for journalists who can creatively combine traditional reporting and new media skills while skillfully covering church-related issues, said Matt Malone, SJ, America Media’s president and editor in chief.

“It is hard to imagine a more appropriate honor for Father O’Hare than this fellowship program, created at the confluence of Jesuit, Catholic education and journalism, and of course created by generosity of Bill Loschert, a distinguished Fordham alumnus,” said Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham. “We are pleased to welcome the inaugural fellows, and proud to support them in a program that places journalism in the context of our Jesuit identity.”

At America Media, “we tend to write about issues that are at the intersection of the church and the world,” Malone said. “Cultivating a group of young people who can actually stand at that intersection and who can understand both in some fundamental way I think will serve both the church and the larger media world very well.”

It made “perfect sense” to name the fellowship for Father O’Hare, president emeritus of Fordham, since he served as editor in chief of America Media’s America magazine before becoming president of Fordham in 1984, Malone said.

Announced by America Media on May 16, the three inaugural fellows are Wyatt Massey, Teresa Donnellan, and Nicholas Genovese, graduates of Marquette and Georgetown universities and Boston College, respectively.

During the yearlong fellowship, recipients will be prepared to write for either Catholic media or other professional outlets. They’ll produce content for print, web, digital, social media, and events; learn from America’s editorial staff members including James Martin, SJ, the bestselling author; and engage with high-profile members of the New York communications community and build their professional networks.

At Fordham, the fellows will be invited to lectures, workshops, and extracurricular activities of the master’s program in public media, and they’ll have access to the library and other facilities, said Jacqueline Reich, PhD, chairwoman of the Department of Communication and Media Studies.

The master’s in public media also involves Fordham’s public radio station, WFUV (90.7 FM, wfuv.org), and WNET/Channel 13 public television. Its focus is multiplatform journalism and strategic communication with an eye toward civic and social engagement, Reich said.

The department is checking out other possibilities for collaborating with America Media, like creating a series of lectures and workshops by America correspondents, she said.

“We’re basically exploring ways that we can collaborate with both the fellows and America Media in general,” she said. “We see a lot of synergy between America Media and our department.”

The fellowship includes health coverage and a stipend. More information about eligibility and applying is available online.

“As an academic institution we’re all about educating students who will be lights for the world,” said Michael McCarthy, SJ, vice president for Mission Integration and Planning. “We dedicate this building to education, to the progress of the sciences and of the arts, and to all forms of learning… I think that’s the most important way we can honor Joseph Martino.”

An industry leader and longtime supporter of Fordham, the late Martino was the president and chairman of the National Lead Company and vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Guided by his firm belief that industry should support higher education, Martino was integral to securing the land for Fordham’s Manhattan campus in 1955 and led the campaign to raise funds to develop the site.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws in 1956, and in 1963, the University presented him with its prestigious Insignis Medal for extraordinary distinction in the service of God and humanity.

Martino Hall houses faculty and administrators from 18 University departments, offices, and centers that were previously scattered among various buildings around Columbus Circle. The nine-story building on Columbus Avenue is located across the street from the campus that Martino helped grow.

“We had community members in three different locations on nine different floors,” said Brian Byrne, vice president for Lincoln Center. “We wanted to bring everyone closer to home.”

The building bearing Martino’s name comes with a storied past. Built in 1929, the structure was home to one of the first automatic parking garages in New York City. The Kent Automatic Garage used an electrical “parking machine,” which hooked cars by the rear axle and towed them from the elevator platform to a parking spot.

The structure remained a garage until 1943, when it was sold and converted to the Sofia Brothers Warehouse. It served as headquarters to the College Board before becoming part of the Lincoln Center campus.

The exterior’s unique Art Deco style—designed by the architectural firm Jardine, Hill & Murdock—was meant to evoke the garage’s innovation and modernity. In 1982, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a landmark, calling it a “notable example of the Art Deco style in New York City.”

“It’s a great space, and it has allowed us to be a little unconventional with our workspace,” said Jacqueline Reich, PhD, chair of the communication and media studies department, which occupies the seventh floor of Martino Hall.

“Students and faculty can have meetings or work on projects together… it [allows us]to have an open, collaborative environment to foster innovation.”