Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture

Italian American studies has long been in conversation with American culture at large and is increasingly present in American universities and colleges. Yet once-celebrated works, such as Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete, have slipped from the public consciousness, and many scholars fear that representations of Italian Americans in popular culture, as in The Godfather films and the television series The Sopranos, have obscured genuine historical inquiry and understanding. This volume in the MLA Options for Teaching series aims to foster a deeper and more complex appreciation for the importance of Italian American texts in the study of American culture.