The Lagvanec Lecture

Cyril Lagvanec, PhD, the curator of the American-Italian Research Library located on the second floor of the East Bank Regional Library, will give a lecture on the “Many People of Sicily,” at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and open to the public.

Sicilians are a diverse people, having had contact with a great variety of ethnicities and physical types through the centuries. Despite its position at the crossroads of many Mediterranean civilizations, it retains many characteristics of more rural regions bred of its isolation and distance from mainland Italy. 

Sicily was inhabited 10,000 years ago. Its strategic location at the center of the Mediterranean has made the island a crossroads of history, and a melting pot for a dozen or more ethnic groups whose warriors or merchants sought its shores. At the coming of the Greeks, three peoples occupied Sicily: in the east the Siculi who gave their name to the island.

To the west of the Gelas River were the Sicani; and in the extreme west the Elymians, a people to whom a Trojan origin was assigned. There were also Phoenician settlements on the island. The Greeks settled Sicilian towns between the 8th and 6th centuries bce. The mountainous center remained in the hands of Siculi and Sicani

In the 3rd century BCE, the island became the first Roman province.

The Byzantine general Belisarius occupied Sicily in 535 ce, at the start of hostilities with the Ostrogoths in Italy, and after a short time, Sicily came under Byzantine rule. In 965, the island fell to Arab conquest from North America, in 1060 to Normans, who progressively Latinized the island.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, the island formed a part of the Kingdome of the Two Sicilies, and in the 18th century, Sicily was ruled by the Bourbons. During the 19th century, the island was a major center of revolutionary movements: in 1860, as a result of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s revolt, it was liberated from the Bourbons and in the following year was incorporated into the united kingdom of Italy. In 1947, Sicily gained regional autonomy.

Cyril Lagvanec earned his undergraduate degree in history from Baylor University, his master’s degree in British and European History from Tulane University, and his doctoral degree in American History from Texas A&M University. Through his long career, Dr. Lagvanec has taught at Jesuit High School, Tulane, Loyola, Delgado, Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, East Carolina University, and Texas A&M. 

For more information regarding this event, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.