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"Fascinating insights into modern urban religious practice make Orsi's collection a must-read." -- Publishers Weekly "The essays provide insight into the cultural creativity, reinterpretation of worship and religious ingenuity of city people over the last 50 years." -- Library Journal "At last, a major dissection of the great mystery in modern Americanlife -- how religion and spirituality prospered amidst industrialization,urbanization, and rampant technological change after 1880!" -- Jon Butler, Yale University "Urban religion" strikes many as an oxymoron. How can religion thrive in the alienated, secular, fast-paced, and materialistic world of the modern, Western city? The authors in this collection believe that cities not only can provide the settings for religious expression, but also are material to the experiences which give rise to those religious expressions. In this book, they explore the distinctly urban forms of religious experience and practice that have developed in relation to the spaces, social conditions, and history of American cities.
New York City may seem to be a place where everyone is a stranger, yet transit workers provide a human presence on a late-night bus or an empty subway platform. Few of us give any thought to these invisible workers-until something goes wrong. Transit Talk takes readers into the world of MTA New York City transit employees, as they describe their lives and work, from the most visible subway conductor to the seemingly invisible mechanic. There are nearly 44,000 transit workers like those you will meet in Transit Talk , and every day they help five million of us travel to work, to school, to weddings, to funerals, to hospitals, to vacations. These workers labor daily on subway tracks inches fro...
A comprehensive survey of New York City's vibrant neighborhood art
"This book reveals contemporary vernacular religion expressed in gay Catholic spirituality, Father Divine's International Peace Mission movement, and material culture"--
Despite its innumerable tourist attractions, New York City still has many secrets, hidden in the most unlikely places. There is the Edison Hotel in Times Square, where magicians gather 'round the Magic Table to socialize and compete. There is Hua Mei Garden in the Lower East Side, where elderly Chinese men meet to display exotic birds. And there is Sahadi's in Brooklyn, where the culinary arts thrive, and New Yorkers go for just the right ingredients for a Middle Eastern meal. This book details thirty-two unusual locations such as these and enhances them by including a cluster of additional, related spots. Hidden New York shows you why these places matter and guides you through the historica...
The &“Strong Black Woman&” has been a part of mainstream culture for centuries, as a myth, a goddess, a positive role model, a stereotype, and as a burden. In Fierce Angels, Sheri Parks explores the concept of the Strong Black Woman, its influence on people of all races, and the ways in which black women respond to and are affected by this image. Originating in the ancient Sacred Dark Feminine as a nurturing and fierce goddess, the Strong Black Woman can be found in myths from every continent. Slaves and slave owners alike brought the legend to America, where the spiritual icon evolved into the secular Strong Black Woman, with examples ranging from the slave Mammy to the poet Maya Angelo...
From Saturday Night Fever to Jersey Shore, Italian American youth in New York City have appropriated—and been appropriated by—popular American culture. Here, Donald Tricarico investigates how Italian ethnicity has been used to fashion Guido as a distinct youth style that signals inclusion in popular American culture and, simultaneously, the making of a new ethnic subject. Emerging from a wave of Italian immigration after World War II in outer borough neighborhoods such as Bensonhurst, the story of the Guido is an Italian American story, symbolizing the negotiation of a negatively privileged ethnicity within American society. Tricarico takes up questions about the definition of Guido, the role of disco, and the identity politics of Jersey Shore in order to reconsider the significance of Guido for the study of Italian American ethnicity.
This edited collection explores the notion of Italianness - or Italianità – through migration history. It focuses on the interaction between Italians circulating around the world, and their relationship with Italy from a political and cultural perspective. Answering the important question of how migration affects Italianness, the authors explore the ways in which migrants retained their Italian culture, customs and practices during and after their travels. Spanning a long period from the Risorgimento up until the 1960s, the book sheds light on the institutions and social structures that contributed to the construction of cultural links between Italian migrants and their country of origin. Not only broad in its temporal scope, the volume covers a wide geographic area, examining the lives of Italian migrants in North America, South America, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Bringing together a wealth of research on Italians, alongside the different migratory routes taken by these men and women, this book provides new insights into Italian culture and seeks to strengthen our understanding of Italian migration history.
Makes the case for a distinctly Sicilian American literature. In The Heart and the Island, Chiara Mazzucchelli explores the strong bond between Sicilian American writers and the island of Sicily. Self-contained yet connected to the mainland, geographically separated from yet politically united to the rest of Italy, Sicily occupies a unique position. Throughout the twentieth century, the sense of a distinct sicilianitàor Siciliannesshas manifested itself in a corpus of texts that, although subsumed under the broader context of Italian literature, have distinguished themselves as examples of an exquisitely Sicilian literary experience. Mazzucchelli argues that a parallel phenomenonsicil...