Email: mbencivenni@hostos.cuny.edu
Office Tel: 718-518-6573
Biography: A native Italian and CUNY Graduate Center alumna, Marcella Bencivenni has been teaching at Hostos since 2004. Her research focuses on the histories of immigration, labor, and social movements in the modern United States, with a particular interest in the Italian diaspora. She is the author of
Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi
in the United States, 1890-1940 (NYU Press, 2011, repr. 2014) and the co-editor of
Radical Perspectives on Immigration (Routledge, 2008), a special issue of the journal
Social and Democracy. She has also published over twenty book chapters, articles and historiographical essays on topics related to immigration and radicalism, and is currently working on a new book project tentatively titled:
Immigration, Race and Diasporic Identities: Black Italians within and outside of Italy.
Dr. Bencivenni is the recipient of numerous research awards and fellowships, including an E.P. Thompson Dissertation Fellowship (2002), a Community College Collaborative Research Grant (2010), several PSC-CUNY Research awards, a Distinguished CUNY Fellowship (2016), a Tiro a Segno Fellowship (2020) at New York University and a Faculty Fellowship at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Spring 2025). Among other professional accomplishments, she served as the editor of the Italian American Review from 2017 to 2020 and was a member of the Black, Race and Ethnic Initiative (BRESI) Planning Commission at CUNY.
Courses Typically Taught:
HIS 210 U.S. History Through the Civil War
HIS 211 U.S. History From Reconstruction to the Present
HIS 225 U.S. Immigration History
HIS 212 U.S. Women’s History