Christian Messenger

Chris Messenger is the author of The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became “Our Gang” (2002) and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago.   He will speak on Mario Puzo’s inconsistent affiliation with the Italian American literary subject and the ways in which The Godfather, novel and films, may alternately be read through ethnic markers and less inflected traditional critical reading models.  Prof. Messenger will focus on the multiple meanings of The Godfather‘s “silences” as Italian, modernist, popular, and “American.”