Date: Apr 21, 2010

Stanislao Pugliese to be invested as Queensboro UNICO Foundation Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY -   Stanislao Pugliese, a professor of modern European history and Hofstra alumnus, will be installed as the Queensboro UNICO Foundation Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies on April 30, 2010 at 3 p.m. at the Hofstra University Club, Mack Hall, North Campus.

Dr. Pugliese, a specialist on the Italian anti-Fascist resistance and Italian Jews, is spending the spring 2010 semester at Harvard University as a Visiting Scholar. Earlier this year, his book, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, was a finalist for a 2009 National Book Critics Award for biography.

Dr. Pugliese has been a research fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the University of Oxford.

Dr. Pugliese taught history at City College of New York from 1989 to 1993. During this period, he also taught and lectured at Marymount Manhattan College, New York University, Hunter College, John Jay College and Mannes College of Music. He has taught at Hofstra since 1993, and has directed the Hofstra Cultural Center's Italian-American Lecture Series since 1996.

He earned a bachelor's degree in history and philosophy from Hofstra University in 1987, a certificate of study in modern Italian political history from the University of Florence in 1988, a master's degree in history from City College of New York in 1990, and a doctorate in European history from the City University of New York's Graduate School in 1995. He has received numerous honors and awards during his career, including Hofstra's Presidential Research Award seven times, the 2005 Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of Italian American Educators and the Hofstra University 2009 Alumni Achievement Award.

Queensboro UNICO Foundation is a chapter of Unico National, an Italian-American service organization with more than 125 chapters nationwide.  It is the first chapter to endow a distinguished professorship on its own. The Queensboro chapter has a membership of more than 60 business people from Brooklyn and Queens who in 2004 began an ambitious fundraising effort to endow a professorship at Hofstra as a way to preserve Italian and Italian-American culture.

The first holder of the distinguished professorship was Pellegrino D'Acierno, Ph.D, a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Hofstra.

Hofstra University is a dynamic private institution where students can choose from about 150 undergraduate and more than 160 graduate programs in liberal arts and sciences, business; engineering; communication; education, health and human services;  and honors studies, as well as a School of Law. The University also provides excellent facilities with state-of-the-art technology, extensive library resources and internship programs that match students' interests and abilities with appropriate companies and organizations.  The Hofstra community is driven, dynamic and energetic, helping students find and focus their strengths to prepare them for a successful future.
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