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9780823261185

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This is an important volume contributing to the diachronic study of Italian American culture and identity and their intersections with symbolic and material consumption in a transnational framework. The sociological analysis advances an understanding of ethnicity beyond the ideology of easily disposable symbolic identities, opening new venues for thinking about European Americans. -Yiorgos Anagnostou, Ohio State University Wherever you turn in Simone Cinotto's chock-full volume of essays, Italian-American identity is revealed as Consumer-Made, Consumer-Making, Commodity-Using, Commodity-Abusing: from fashion consciousness upon arrival to late-generation Armani mafiosi, from Valentino and Caruso to Guido-and-Guidette, and from Charles Atlas' dynamic tension to the Calipari-Izzo split in sideline schtick. The resultant history is as rigorous as it is capacious, the sociology diversely insightful and at times inspired, and the critical intelligence almost always that of hardball dagotude--that form of intellectual witness, swapped and reswapped across the Mediterranean Atlantic, at once fiercely loving and deeply suspicious. Wednesday is once again Prince Spaghetti Day, L'America! --Thomas J. Ferraro, Duke University This compelling and innovative volume captures the complexities of the pivotal role of consumption in the historical formation of transnational Italian American taste, positing a distinctive diasporic consumer culture that continues its importance today. Richly interdisciplinary, the collection represents an exciting new resource for scholars and students alike. --Marilyn Halter, Boston University Through its attentiveness to Italian-American consumers and the U.S. consumption of Italianness, this collection of essays makes a compelling case for taste as a leading determinant of ethnic identity. Ranging from nineteenth-century immigration to twenty-first century popular culture, from fashion to Italian-themed restaurants, from one side of the Atlantic to the other and back across again, this volume casts ethnicity as more a matter of style than of tradition, due to its ever-changing nature. Like the very best lasagnes--layered, multi-textured, the whole a transcendent blending of the constituent parts-- iMaking Italian Americar reveals how we have all come to be at least partly Italian and what this Italianness means. --Kristin Hoganson, author of iConsumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920

This is an important volume contributing to the diachronic study of Italian American culture and identity and their intersections with symbolic and material consumption in a transnational framework. The sociological analysis advances an understanding of ethnicity beyond the ideology of easily disposable symbolic identities, opening new venues for thinking about European Americans. -Yiorgos Anagnostou, Ohio State University Wherever you turn in Simone Cinotto's chock-full volume of essays, Italian-American identity is revealed as Consumer-Made, Consumer-Making, Commodity-Using, Commodity-Abusing: from fashion consciousness upon arrival to late-generation Armani mafiosi, from Valentino and Caruso to Guido-and-Guidette, and from Charles Atlas' dynamic tension to the Calipari-Izzo split in sideline schtick. The resultant history is as rigorous as it is capacious, the sociology diversely insightful and at times inspired, and the critical intelligence almost always that of hardball dagotude--that form of intellectual witness, swapped and reswapped across the Mediterranean Atlantic, at once fiercely loving and deeply suspicious. Wednesday is once again Prince Spaghetti Day, L'America! --Thomas J. Ferraro, Duke University This compelling and innovative volume captures the complexities of the pivotal role of consumption in the historical formation of transnational Italian American taste, positing a distinctive diasporic consumer culture that continues its importance today. Richly interdisciplinary, the collection represents an exciting new resource for scholars and students alike. --Marilyn Halter, Boston University Through its attentiveness to Italian-American consumers and the U.S. consumption of Italianness, this collection of essays makes a compelling case for taste as a leading determinant of ethnic identity. Ranging from nineteenth-century immigration to twenty-first century popular culture, from fashion to Italian-themed restaurants, from one

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Simone Cinotto teaches history at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy. He is the author of The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City and Soft Soil, Black Grapes: The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California.

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