Philip Cannistraro, Queens College, and Gerald Meyer, Hostos Community College Radicalism has had a powerful but largely unacknowledged influence in the Italian American community. The…

Gina M. Miele, The Coccia Institute, Montclair State University In recent years literary folktales have become regarded, as they were at their inception, as a…

Heather Hartley, Pennsylvania State University Heather Hartley will present and discuss Linciati, her video about the story of prejudice and violence against Italian immigrants and…

John Cicala, Mount Saint Mary College Silvio Barile immigrated to Detroit from his native village of Ausonia (Campania) in the early 1950s. As a self-styled…

Thomas J. Ferraro, Duke University On the cover of Thomas Ferraro’s new book Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America (New York University Press),…

David Aliano, CUNY Graduate Center In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some Italians perceived São Paulo, Brazil as a vast land of the future promising wealth and…

Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota Although most folklorists are aware of the significance of the Brothers Grimm collection of German folk and fairy tales that…

George De Stefano, Independent Scholar As evidenced in countless novels, films, and television portrayals, the mafia has maintained an enduring hold on the American cultural…

Nunzio Pernicone, Drexel University Carlo Tresca was one of the most fascinating figures of the American left, a charismatic Italian anarchist who became a folk-hero…

Jennifer Caputo, Wesleyan University Italy experienced its first folk music revival in the 1970s, when field recordings of the tammurriata or ballo sul tamburo (dance…

Diane Vecchio, Furman University Challenging long-held patriarchal assumptions about Italian women’s work in the United States, Diane Vecchio discusses the regional variation of Italian women’s…