Simone Cinotto
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823256235
- eISBN:
- 9780823261741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256235.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
Relations between Italian Americans and African Americans have been often tense, marked by racism, competition on the labor and housing market, and occasional violence. In the 1950s and 1960s Italian ...
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Relations between Italian Americans and African Americans have been often tense, marked by racism, competition on the labor and housing market, and occasional violence. In the 1950s and 1960s Italian Americans in New York and other cities, along with other white ethnics, resisted urban change and supported residential segregation. However, in the field of popular music, the two groups have regularly exchanged mutual appreciation for the talent, style, and authenticity of the other. The chapter focus on Italian American artists’ hegemonic presence in a black musical genre (doo-wop) to show how popular and consumer culture provided the space for otherwise impossible cross-cultural exchanges at the dawn of the civil-rights era.Less
Relations between Italian Americans and African Americans have been often tense, marked by racism, competition on the labor and housing market, and occasional violence. In the 1950s and 1960s Italian Americans in New York and other cities, along with other white ethnics, resisted urban change and supported residential segregation. However, in the field of popular music, the two groups have regularly exchanged mutual appreciation for the talent, style, and authenticity of the other. The chapter focus on Italian American artists’ hegemonic presence in a black musical genre (doo-wop) to show how popular and consumer culture provided the space for otherwise impossible cross-cultural exchanges at the dawn of the civil-rights era.
Danielle Battisti
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823256235
- eISBN:
- 9780823261741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256235.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
Guido is a youth subculture originating in New York City’s Italian American neighborhoods. This chapter understands Guido as a collective ethnic subject defined by a signature consumption culture or ...
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Guido is a youth subculture originating in New York City’s Italian American neighborhoods. This chapter understands Guido as a collective ethnic subject defined by a signature consumption culture or style. The chapter traces the origin of Guido to the disco movement of the 1970s; an urban Italian American youth subculture specializing in expanded opportunities for leisure-based consumption referenced to the mass media and entertainment industries. Because stylized youth identities were embedded in lived Italian American communities, consumption became an important new site for reworking ethnic cultural differences. Just as Guido symbolizes the incorporation of commodities into a new Italian American cultural identity and status, it has become a commodity that is merchandised to wider markets. Inclusion in the media spectacle—see, in particular, the reality television show Jersey Shore (2009-2012)—brings alignment with core consumption values, although it compromises subcultural boundaries. Guido is seen as part of a larger pattern that constructs Italian American difference in relation to American consumer culture while exposing ideological divisions inside the ethnic boundary.Less
Guido is a youth subculture originating in New York City’s Italian American neighborhoods. This chapter understands Guido as a collective ethnic subject defined by a signature consumption culture or style. The chapter traces the origin of Guido to the disco movement of the 1970s; an urban Italian American youth subculture specializing in expanded opportunities for leisure-based consumption referenced to the mass media and entertainment industries. Because stylized youth identities were embedded in lived Italian American communities, consumption became an important new site for reworking ethnic cultural differences. Just as Guido symbolizes the incorporation of commodities into a new Italian American cultural identity and status, it has become a commodity that is merchandised to wider markets. Inclusion in the media spectacle—see, in particular, the reality television show Jersey Shore (2009-2012)—brings alignment with core consumption values, although it compromises subcultural boundaries. Guido is seen as part of a larger pattern that constructs Italian American difference in relation to American consumer culture while exposing ideological divisions inside the ethnic boundary.
Giorgio Bertellini
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823256235
- eISBN:
- 9780823261741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256235.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay ...
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Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay investigates whether and how 1920s Italian American film culture resonated with assertive transnational connections. In particular, it looks at how the largest Italian American newspaper, Il Progresso Italo Americano, articulated self-assured ideas of cultural dialogue and exchange through film reviews, reports about film reception and stars, and advertisements for new films or talent agencies. The evidence Il Progresso provides reveals a dense circuit of newsmaking and popular response, indeed a culture of film consumption, that positioned Italy and America not as opposed, but in dialogue with one another. For an emigrant community long accustomed to endure racial and cultural prejudice and perceived to be strenuously attached to European customs and lifestyles, the 1920s saw the emergence of a geocultural confidence that impacted ideas and practices of film consumption turning manifest and inescapable affiliation into choice.Less
Italian-produced films found a vast audience in New York City theaters, encompassing motives of emotional longing and diasporic nationalism among immigrant spectators well into the 1920s. The essay investigates whether and how 1920s Italian American film culture resonated with assertive transnational connections. In particular, it looks at how the largest Italian American newspaper, Il Progresso Italo Americano, articulated self-assured ideas of cultural dialogue and exchange through film reviews, reports about film reception and stars, and advertisements for new films or talent agencies. The evidence Il Progresso provides reveals a dense circuit of newsmaking and popular response, indeed a culture of film consumption, that positioned Italy and America not as opposed, but in dialogue with one another. For an emigrant community long accustomed to endure racial and cultural prejudice and perceived to be strenuously attached to European customs and lifestyles, the 1920s saw the emergence of a geocultural confidence that impacted ideas and practices of film consumption turning manifest and inescapable affiliation into choice.
Andrew Feffer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281169
- eISBN:
- 9780823285969
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281169.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal ...
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In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal colleges and public schools, the state legislature’s Rapp-Coudert investigation dragged hundreds of suspects before public and private tribunals to root out a perceived communist conspiracy to hijack the city’s teachers unions, subvert public education, and indoctrinate the nation’s youth. This book recounts the history of this witch-hunt, which lasted from August 1940 to March 1942. Anticipating McCarthyism and making it possible, the episode would have repercussions for decades to come. In recapturing this moment in the history of pre-war anticommunism, Bad Faith challenges assumptions about the origins of McCarthyism, the liberal political tradition, and the role of anticommunism in modern American life. With roots in the city’s political culture, Rapp-Coudert enjoyed the support of not only conservatives but also key liberal reformers and intellectuals who, well before the Cold War raised threats to national security, joined in accusing communists of “bad faith” and branded them enemies of American democracy. Exploring fundamental schisms between liberals and communists, Bad Faith uncovers a dark, “counter-subversive” side of liberalism, which involved charges of misrepresentation, lying, and deception, and led many liberals to argue that the communist left should be excluded from American educational institutions and political life.Less
In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal colleges and public schools, the state legislature’s Rapp-Coudert investigation dragged hundreds of suspects before public and private tribunals to root out a perceived communist conspiracy to hijack the city’s teachers unions, subvert public education, and indoctrinate the nation’s youth. This book recounts the history of this witch-hunt, which lasted from August 1940 to March 1942. Anticipating McCarthyism and making it possible, the episode would have repercussions for decades to come. In recapturing this moment in the history of pre-war anticommunism, Bad Faith challenges assumptions about the origins of McCarthyism, the liberal political tradition, and the role of anticommunism in modern American life. With roots in the city’s political culture, Rapp-Coudert enjoyed the support of not only conservatives but also key liberal reformers and intellectuals who, well before the Cold War raised threats to national security, joined in accusing communists of “bad faith” and branded them enemies of American democracy. Exploring fundamental schisms between liberals and communists, Bad Faith uncovers a dark, “counter-subversive” side of liberalism, which involved charges of misrepresentation, lying, and deception, and led many liberals to argue that the communist left should be excluded from American educational institutions and political life.
