Built with Faith

Built with Faith PDF Author: Joseph Sciorra
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781621903833
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra’s Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City’s Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions—often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art—all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city’s religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra’s unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life. Joseph Sciorra is the director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is the editor of Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives and co-editor of Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora.

Built with Faith

Built with Faith PDF Author: Joseph Sciorra
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781621903833
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra’s Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City’s Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions—often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art—all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city’s religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra’s unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life. Joseph Sciorra is the director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is the editor of Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives and co-editor of Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora.

Italian Americans and Religion

Italian Americans and Religion PDF Author: Silvano M. Tomasi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description


Religious Festive Practices in Boston's North End

Religious Festive Practices in Boston's North End PDF Author: Augusto Ferraiuolo
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438428146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
A comprehensive cultural and historical portrait of Italian American identities in Boston’s North End.

The Madonna of 115th Street

The Madonna of 115th Street PDF Author: Robert A. Orsi
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300157525
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Robert A. Orsi's classic study of popular religion in Italian Harlem. In a new preface, Orsi discusses significant shifts in the field of religious history and calls for new ways of empirically studying divine presences in human life. "The Madonna of 115th Street has over the last quarter century become a classic of American religious history. There are few books that I have enjoyed teaching more over the years and even fewer that have taught me as much about American Catholic history."—Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

An Unlikely Union

An Unlikely Union PDF Author: Paul Moses
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479871303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
They came from the poorest parts of Ireland and Italy, and met as rivals on the sidewalks of New York. In the nineteenth century and for long after, the Irish and Italians fought in the Catholic Church, on the waterfront, at construction sites, and in the streets. Then they made peace through romance, marrying each other on a large scale in the years after World War II. An Unlikely Union unfolds the dramatic story of how two of America's largest ethnic groups learned to love and laugh with each other in the wake of decades of animosity. The vibrant cast of characters features saints such as

Priest, Parish, and People

Priest, Parish, and People PDF Author: Richard N. Juliani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
From the perspective of historical sociology, Richard N. Juliani traces the role of religion in the lives and communities of Italian immigrants in Philadelphia from the 1850s to the early 1930s. By the end of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia had one of the largest Italian populations in the country. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia eventually established twenty-three parishes for the exclusive use of Italians. Juliani describes the role these parishes played in developing and anchoring an ethnic community and in shaping its members' new identity as Italian Americans during the years of mass migration from Italy to America. Priest, Parish, and People blends the history of Monsignor Antonio Isoleri--pastor from 1870 to 1926 of St. Mary Magdalen dePazzi, the first Italian parish founded in the country--with that of the Italian immigrant community in Philadelphia. Relying on parish and archdiocesan records, secular and church newspapers, archives of religious orders, and Father Isoleri's personal papers, Juliani chronicles the history of St. Mary Magdalen dePazzi as it grew from immigrant refuge to a large, stable, ethnic community that anchored "Little Italy" in South Philadelphia. In charting that growth, Juliani also examines conflicts between laity and clergy and between clergy and church hierarchy, as well as the remarkable fifty-six-year career of Isoleri as a spiritual and secular leader. Priest, Parish, and People provides both the details of parish history in Philadelphia and the larger context of Italian-American Catholic history.

The Routledge History of Italian Americans

The Routledge History of Italian Americans PDF Author: William Connell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135046700
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 915

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Book Description
The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

American Catholics in the Protestant Imagination

American Catholics in the Protestant Imagination PDF Author: Michael P. Carroll
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421401991
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Michael P. Carroll argues that the academic study of religion in the United States continues to be shaped by a "Protestant imagination" that has warped our perception of the American religious experience and its written history and analysis. In this provocative study, Carroll explores a number of historiographical puzzles that emerge from the American Catholic story as it has been understood through the Protestant tradition. Reexamining the experience of Catholicism among Irish immigrants, Italian Americans, Acadians and Cajuns, and Hispanics, Carroll debunks the myths that have informed much of this history. Shedding new light on lived religion in America, Carroll moves an entire academic field in new, exciting directions and challenges his fellow scholars to open their minds and eyes to develop fresh interpretations of American religious history.

Immigration and Religion in America

Immigration and Religion in America PDF Author: Richard Alba
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814705049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Religion has played a crucial role in American immigration history as an institutional resource for migrants' social adaptation, as a map of meaning for interpreting immigration experiences, and as a continuous force for expanding the national ideal of pluralism. To explain these processes the editors of this volume brought together the perspectives of leading scholars of migration and religion. The resulting essays present salient patterns in American immigrants' religious lives, past and present. In comparing the religious experiences of Mexicans and Italians, Japanese and Koreans, Eastern European Jews and Arab Muslims, and African Americans and Haitians, the book clarifies how such processes as incorporation into existing religions, introduction of new faiths, conversion, and diversification have contributed to America's extraordinary religious diversity and add a comprehensive religious dimension to our understanding of America as a nation of immigrants.

Italian-Americans and Religion

Italian-Americans and Religion PDF Author: Silvano M. Tomasi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description