"This encyclopedia, the first book of its kind, presents the totality of the Italian American experience. The coverage includes such broad topics as the influence of Italian Americans on politics and society and their contributions to art and to the development of American Catholicism; anti-Italian discrimination in the United States; Italian American organizations, groups, and archival depositories; the role and status of Italian American women; issues of assimilation; and Italian Americans in the media."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

More than 5,000,000 Italians have immigrated to the United States.  Although most came in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, Italians have played a long and enduring role in American History.  The documentation, photos, and images presented by DeMichele provide a pictorial history of Italians in America.

Spotlights the uniquely Italian in American Life This rich legacy is examined in a collection of original essays that range from portrayals of Italian characters in the films of Francis Coppola to Italian American poetry, from the art of Frank Stella to the music of Frank Zappa, from a survey of Italian folk customs to an analysis of the evolutionof Italian American biography. Comprising 22 lengthy essays written specifically for this volume, the book identifies what is uniquely Italian in American life and examines how Italian customs, traditions, social mores, and cultural antecedents have wrought their influence on the American character. Includes an Extensive Lexicon of Important Terms This informative lexicon provides definitions of Italian terms that are central to the Italian American experience and that serve as indexes of the Italian American worldview.

"Through its collection of interpretive essays on folk culture, this book attains a depth of analysis rarely achieved in Italian American folklore scholarship. The folklife of Italian Americans is not evolving in a vacuum; it draws from dynamic specific and local as well as regional and national Italian cultural expressions. The interplay of these variables, in tension with American and Canadian society, contextualizes New World traditions - from the archvillas of Toronto, Canada, to the festival foods of Italians in Indiana, the sung villanella of Calabrians in New York, cultural stereotypes of Italians in Northern California, the "invention" of Italy by 1920s Philadelphians, and the multiple meanings of a grotto shrine on Staten Island. These essays will set a new standard for Italian American folklore scholarship." "An introduction to Studies in Italian American Folklore analyzes the recently controversial figure of Christopher Columbus in Italian folk culture and considers the meaning of his commemoration. The collection includes the first comprehensive bibliography of Italian American and Canadian folklore scholarship."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Italian American studies has long been in conversation with American culture at large and is increasingly present in American universities and colleges. Yet once-celebrated works, such as Pietro di Donato'sChrist in Concrete, have slipped from the public consciousness, and many scholars fear that representations of Italian Americans in popular culture, as in The Godfather films and the television series The Sopranos, have obscured genuine historical inquiry and understanding. This volume aims to foster a deeper and more complex appreciation for the importance of Italian American texts in the study of American culture. The editors open the volume by outlining the history of Italians in the United States and exploring the potential of literature and the arts to enable the recovery of a forgotten, even repressed, historical past. Over thirty scholars and teachers then present innovative ways of teaching Italian American texts and integrating them with other texts in courses ranging from American literature and history to multiethnic and women's studies. Contributors discuss Italian American fiction, poetry, memoir, oral history, and theater and performance. A section on film and television provides an overview of popular as well as lesser-known works and interrogates the stereotyped portrayals of Italian Americans. Other contributors offer historical and interdisciplinary approaches to Italian American texts that revolve around themes of race and gender politics, work and social class, and historical intersections. The volume concludes with a review of anthologies that can be used in teaching Italian American studies.

Philadelphia was second only to New York City in the number of Italian immigrants who settled in the city. Italians from the north have been in Philadelphia since Colonial times, but it was not until mass immigration from the south during the 1870s and 1880s that Italians began to make their mark on the city. Immigrating from small towns in the Italian regions of Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia, and Sicily, they faced discrimination, language barriers, the separation of family by thousands of miles, and work in unfamiliar trades. Facing such drastic changes in their lives head on, they persevered, establishing Italian neighborhoods and churches while weaving their customs into their new American lifestyles. Through the use of historic photographs, Italians of Philadelphia conveys the influence Italian immigrants had on the development of Philadelphia and how that spirit remains in the city today.