Bücher der Reihe Critical Studies in Italian America

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.

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.

Napoli/New York/Hollywood investigates the work of Italian immigrant performers and the impact of the traditions of the Italian stage within the history of Hollywood cinema and of American media from 1895 to today.

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.