Books in the Critical Studies in Italian America series

Why do so many people around the world associate people with origins in Italy with family life, romantic love and the pleasures of eating? This title focuses on the intimate relations in the construction of national identities among international migrants.

This volume gathers groundbreaking critical essays on Sabato (Simon) Rodia's renowned Watts Towers (Los Angeles, California) from diverse disciplinary perspectives, extensively highlighting his migration context as never before, as well as the Towers in the context of human and community development within the "Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative."

This volume gathers groundbreaking critical essays on Sabato (Simon) Rodia's renowned Watts Towers (Los Angeles, California) from diverse disciplinary perspectives, extensively highlighting his migration context as never before, as well as the Towers in the context of human and community development within the "Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative."

Offers a collection of essays that adds a dimension to our understanding of nation-building through its examination of the role of intimate cultural processes. In this book, the editors and contributors share with previous works on the Italian diaspora a keen interest in the imagining of nations across national borders.

Sunday dinners, basement kitchens, and backyard gardens are everyday cultural entities long associated with Italian Americans, yet the general perception of them remains superficial and stereotypical at best.

Sunday dinners, basement kitchens, and backyard gardens are everyday cultural entities long associated with Italian Americans, yet the general perception of them remains superficial and stereotypical at best.

This book rethinks Italy's formation and development on a trans-national map through cultural analysis of travel, living and work spaces as depicted in literary, filmic and musical texts. By demonstrating how today's immigration in Italy is pre-occupied by its past emigration and colonialism, the book stresses commonalities and dispels preoccupations.

The two editors and eighteen scholars and creative nonfiction writers offer a lucid view of a writer who has produced one of the most provocative bodies of memoir writing in contemporary US literature, a scholar who has enriched our understanding of Virginia Woolf, and a teacher who has transformed countless lives.

The two editors and eighteen scholars and creative nonfiction writers offer a lucid view of a writer who has produced one of the most provocative bodies of memoir writing in contemporary US literature, a scholar who has enriched our understanding of Virginia Woolf, and a teacher who has transformed countless lives.

This collection gathers a diverse set of critical, personal, and artistic reflections on the trials and epiphanies of Fante's bio-fictive hero, Arturo Bandini, as he makes his way through the dust and dread of 1939 Los Angeles. As his quest for love and compassion turns to ethnic questioning and scorn, Fante's protagonist comes alive for new audiences who see now what Fante saw then: the "sad flower in the sand" that resides within us all.

This collection gathers a diverse set of critical, personal, and artistic reflections on the trials and epiphanies of Fante's bio-fictive hero, Arturo Bandini, as he makes his way through the dust and dread of 1939 Los Angeles. As his quest for love and compassion turns to ethnic questioning and scorn, Fante's protagonist comes alive for new audiences who see now what Fante saw then: the "sad flower in the sand" that resides within us all.

"Promotes the understanding of Italian Americans and Greek Americans through the study of their interactions and juxtapositions. Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation contributes to U.S. ethnic and immigration studies by bringing into conversation scholars working in the fields of Italian American and Greek American studies in the United States, Europe and Australia. The work moves beyond the "single group approach"--an approach that privileges the study of ethnic singularity--to explore instead two ethnic groups in relation to each other in the broader context of the United States. The chapters bring into focus transcultural interfaces and inquire comparatively about similarities and differences in cultural representations associated with these two groups. This co-edited volume contributes to the fields of transcultural and comparative studies. The book is multi-disciplinary. It features scholarship from the perspectives of architecture, ethnomusicology, education, history, cultural and literary studies, film studies as well as whiteness studies. It examines the production of ethnicity in the context of American political culture as well as popular culture, including visual representations (documentary, film, TV series) and "low brow" crime fiction. It includes analysis of literature. It involves comparative work on religious architecture, transoceanic circulation of racialized categories, translocal interconnections in the formation of pan-Mediterranean identities, and the making of the immigrant past in documentaries from Italian and Greek filmmakers. This volume is the first of its kind in initiating a multidisciplinary transcultural and comparative study across European Americans"--

"Promotes the understanding of Italian Americans and Greek Americans through the study of their interactions and juxtapositions. Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation contributes to U.S. ethnic and immigration studies by bringing into conversation scholars working in the fields of Italian American and Greek American studies in the United States, Europe and Australia. The work moves beyond the "single group approach"--an approach that privileges the study of ethnic singularity--to explore instead two ethnic groups in relation to each other in the broader context of the United States. The chapters bring into focus transcultural interfaces and inquire comparatively about similarities and differences in cultural representations associated with these two groups. This co-edited volume contributes to the fields of transcultural and comparative studies. The book is multi-disciplinary. It features scholarship from the perspectives of architecture, ethnomusicology, education, history, cultural and literary studies, film studies as well as whiteness studies. It examines the production of ethnicity in the context of American political culture as well as popular culture, including visual representations (documentary, film, TV series) and "low brow" crime fiction. It includes analysis of literature. It involves comparative work on religious architecture, transoceanic circulation of racialized categories, translocal interconnections in the formation of pan-Mediterranean identities, and the making of the immigrant past in documentaries from Italian and Greek filmmakers. This volume is the first of its kind in initiating a multidisciplinary transcultural and comparative study across European Americans"--