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2013

April 10, 2013

Prostitutes and Lemon Trees: John Dickie’s ‘New Mafia Historiography’ Fails Without Social Science –The Class Character of Crime

Tom Verso
Future Mafiosi – Evil Incarnate

With ‘friends’ like the new Mafia historiographers, Terroni don’t need ‘enemies’. ----Donna Gabaccia, the Keynote Speaker at the 2012 Italian American Studies...

March 22, 2013

Why was John Dickie the "Keynote Speaker" at the 2012 American Association Italian Studies Conference?...Is it a WOMEN's THING"?

Tom Verso
John Dickie and the Women of AAIS

How is it that one of the primer English language south of Rome historians was invited to be the Keynote Speaker for an organization of Italian American scholars and teachers who...

March 12, 2013

Frank Lentricchia follows DeLillo back to Little Italy Home – but not Domini to Southern Italy Homeland

Tom Verso

The recent forty-fifth Conference of the Italian American Studies Association, like the previous forty-four, was largely devoid of southern Italy or Sicily presentations (note...

March 1, 2013

Palermo - Ancient Walls and Modern Streets

Tom Verso
From the amazing Kevin Flude collection - see link below
Remnant of Palermo Medieval wall located at intersection of Via dei Benedettini, Via Albergheria, and Via Carlo Forianini. Note pointed arch, which implies it was built during or after Norman period. Pointed Arches, the structural and aesthetic essence of Gothic, invented by the Turks and came to Europe via Sicily

One can hardly read a journalistic or scholarly article about Palermo without coming across references to the ‘Old City Walls.’ For example, “Toward the end of the...

February 26, 2013

Why Monti Lost – "Don’t be mess’n wit de peoples bro!"

Tom Verso

If a Gangster stops you on the street, puts a gun into your face and demands the money in your wallet; it is a crime punishable by imprisonment ... If, on the other hand,...

February 15, 2013

Exploring American Southern-Italianitá (fa bella figura) – 1950s Street Corner Doo-wop singers.

Tom Verso

Is there such a thing as southern-Italian American culture beyond Little Italy nostalgia and misplaced Renaissance adoration? Is there something more to southern-Italian American...

February 9, 2013

Mafia – the Origins and Meaning of the ‘Word’ – Do Scholars Misrepresent and Denigrate Giuseppe Pitré???

Tom Verso
Left: Alleged Sicilian Mafiosi. Right: Giuseppe Pitré

The notable and seminal University of Palermo historian Salvatore Lupo wrote: “Among the growing mass of printed material concerning the Mafia, it is rare to find history books..

January 27, 2013

Global Warming - “Fall of Man” and Birth of Mediterranean (Primordial Southern Italian) Culture

Tom Verso
Top: What north Africa probably looked like during Ice Age. Bottom: Today

After the northern Italian Piedmontese conquest of southern Italy and Sicily (aka Risorgimento), the obvious disparities between the Italian North and South were often explained...

January 1, 2013

“2013 Year of (north) Italian Culture in the United States”... Northern Italian Cultural Hegemony foisted on American Terroni

Tom Verso

Neapolitan Pino Aprile wrote, in his ground breaking cultural history of southern Italy “Terroni” ....“Through a cultural lobotomy, the South was deprived of its...