Religious Festive Practices in Boston's North End

Religious Festive Practices in Boston's North End PDF

Author: Augusto Ferraiuolo

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 9781441620576

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In this lively and accessible book, Augusto Ferraiuolo examines the many religious festivals in the Italian American community of Boston's North End. Using interviews, participant observation, and visual data, Ferraiuolo creates a vivid picture of how, over the course of a summer season, a number of religious festive practices are organized by multiple, overlapping, and, to some extent, competing voluntary organizations. The central argument that emerges is that the community uses these festivals, in part, to help maintain and establish a variety of identities, and that these identities are multistranded, complex, shifting, and negotiated--and thus ephemeral. In addition, Ferraiuolo shows in detail how individuals negotiate and construct identities as Italian Americans, Scaccianesi, Neapolitans, Catholics, and others, within the context of these celebrations. He also introduces a creative and original metaphor for understanding the ways in which selfhood is constructed, arguing that contemporary identities function as hypertext, in the manner of web-based technologies, linking to one another and building upon each other as constantly evolving "technologies of the self."

Italian Americans

Italian Americans PDF

Author: Eric Martone

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-12-12

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 1610699955

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The entire Italian American experience—from America's earliest days through the present—is now available in a single volume. This wide-ranging work relates the entire saga of the Italian-American experience from immigration through assimilation to achievement. The book highlights the enormous contributions that Italian Americans—the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States—have made to the professions, politics, academy, arts, and popular culture of America. Going beyond familiar names and stories, it also captures the essence of everyday life for Italian Americans as they established communities and interacted with other ethnic groups. In this single volume, readers will be able to explore why Italians came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive identity was formed. A diverse array of entries that highlight the breadth of this experience, as well as the multitude of ways in which Italian Americans have influenced U.S. history and culture, are presented in five thematic sections. Featured primary documents range from a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his discovery to excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2011 speech to the National Italian American Foundation. Readers will come away from this book with a broader understanding of and greater appreciation for Italian Americans' contributions to the United States.

Global Tarantella

Global Tarantella PDF

Author: Incoronata Inserra

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0252099893

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Tarantella, a genre of Southern Italian folk music and dance, is an international phenomenon--seen and heard in popular festivals, performed across the Italian diaspora, even adapted for New Age spiritual practices. The boom in popularity has diversified tarantella in practice while setting it within a host of new, unexpected contexts. Incoronata Inserra ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of this fascinating genre. Examining tarantella's changing image and role among Italians and Italian Americans, Inserra illuminates how factors like tourism, translation, and world music venues have shifted the ethics of place embedded in the tarantella cultural tradition. Once rural, religious, and rooted, tarantella now thrives in settings urban, secular, migrant, and ethnic. Inserra reveals how the genre's changing dynamics contribute to reimagining Southern Italian identity. At the same time, they translate tarantella into a different kind of performance that serves new social and cultural groups and purposes. Indeed, as Inserra shows, tarantella's global growth promotes a reassessment of gender relations in the Italian South and helps create space for Italian and Italian-American women to reclaim gendered aspects of the genre.

Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry

Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry PDF

Author: Derek C. Hatch

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1498202802

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Concerned that American Catholic theology has struggled to find its own voice for much of its history, William Portier has spent virtually his entire scholarly career recovering a usable past for Catholics on the U.S. landscape. This work of ressourcement has stood at the intersection of several disciplines and has unlocked the beauty of American Catholic life and thought. These essays, which are offered in honor of Portier's life and work, emerge from his vision for American Catholicism, where Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are distinct, but interwoven and inextricably linked with one another. As this volume details, such a path is not merely about scholarly endeavors but involves the pursuit of holiness in the "real" world.

The Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Religion and Popular Culture

The Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Religion and Popular Culture PDF

Author: Lisle W. Dalton

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1472586255

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This is the first anthology to trace broader themes of religion and popular culture across time and theoretical methods. It provides key readings, encouraging a broader methodological and historical understanding. With a combined experience of over 30 years dedicated to teaching undergraduates, Lisle W. Dalton, Eric Michael Mazur, and Richard J. Callahan, Jr. have ensured that the pedagogical features and structure of the volume are valuable to both students and their professors. Features include: - A number of units based on common semester syllabi - A blend of materials focused on method with materials focused on subject - An introduction to the texts for each unit - Questions designed to encourage and enhance post-reading reflection and classroom discussion - A glossary of terms from the unit's readings, as well as suggestions for further reading and investigation. The Reader is suitable as the foundational textbook for any undergraduate course on religion and popular culture, as well as theory in the study of religion.

Daily Life in Colonial New England

Daily Life in Colonial New England PDF

Author: Claudia Durst Johnson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-04-17

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13:

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This book presents a unique perspective on life in Colonial England, exposing many misconceptions and depicting how elements of its culture that are typically regarded as marginal—such as the activities of pirates—actually had an extensive impact of the populace. The daily lives of most colonial New Englanders were much more colorful and exotic than the drab, pious picture many of us have in mind. Daily Life in Colonial New England exposes as myth much of what we might believe about this era and reveals surprising truths—for example, that sex was openly discussed in Colonial times and was regarded as a welcome necessity of married life, and that women had more legal and marital rights than they did in the 19th century. The book describes topics such as the legal and sexual rights of women, the extent of infant mortality; the lives of underclass citizens who formed the majority in New England, such as indentured servants, African slaves, debtors, and criminals; and the integral role that pirates played in business and employment during the Colonial period. Readers will gain deeper insight into what life during this period was like through accounts of the real terror of being one of the accused in witch hunts and the sympathy that the general population had for dissidents who were questioned and arrested by the government. Primary materials that range from legal documents to sermons, letters, and diaries are used as sources that verify historical ideas and events.

A Sound of Strangers

A Sound of Strangers PDF

Author: Nicholas E. Tawa

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780810815049

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Tawa examines the musical traditions brought to America by the peasants and urban workers of southern Italy, the Middle East , and eastern Europe, and by the Chinese, Japanese, and East European Jews, and describes their survival within the American context, in often hostile surroundings.