A volume of essays that examine more than 2,000 years of Italian Jewish history, from ancient Rome to contemporary developments concerning assimilation, literature, and the recent trial of a former SS captain implicated in crimes against humanity.

The essays make clear that the Italian Jews have a unique history in Europe. A Jewish colony existed in Rome 200 years before the birth of Christ; the Eternal City therefore represents the oldest Jewish community in the Western world. Successive waves of immigrants created dozens of Jewish communities on the peninsula. Depending on the time and the place, Italian Jews could expect tolerance, discrimination, persecution, or outright violence. Still, they fared better than their brethren in other parts of Europe. Because of their long history on the peninsula, the volume covers an astonishing variety of subjects: from legal discrimination and historical sources to Jewish dancing masters in the Renaissance; from architecture to contradictory interpretations of the Holocaust; from the special section on the linguistic and moral power of Primo Levi to child-rearing manuals of 17th-century Livorno. In addition, two Holocaust survivors recount their experiences in an extraordinary section, The Language of the Witness. Engaging essays for scholars, students, and other researchers interested in Italian Studies and the roles the peninsula's Jewish population played through history.

The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation's largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

A unique work that collections, for the first time, a wide variety of materials on both Italian fascism and antifascism. When the historical significance of fascism and antifascism is still being debated in Italy and across Europe, this anthology offers an uncommon and unusually wide-ranging collection of documents. Specialists will appreciate the comprehensive range and concern with historiographical debates; students will benefit from a long introductory essay as well as notes to each selection, a glossary and an extensive 'guide to further reading'. Instructors will appreciate its effectiveness in describing and depicting a wide range of voices - political, literary, popular - that will illuminate the twenty year period of fascism and antifascism in Italy. The general reader will marvel at previously unavailable documents, including letters from women to Mussolini and antifascist graffiti from a Nazi prison in Rome. -- .

The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation's largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

As Ida Susser writes in reference to Belmonte's "Broken Fountain," "good ethnographies have long lives." This classic of urban anthropology, one of the most acclaimed ethnographies of recent years, offers vivid, literary descriptions of Fontana del Re, an impoverished Neapolitan neighborhood. Belmonte documents the struggles of Neapolitans surrounded by crumbling buildings and economic insecurity. He details family dynamics as well as the working of Naples's informal economy, the day-to-day struggle for economic subsistence, and the intermittent begging and thieving of the young. Taking us from the bustling, vibrant, and gritty streets and alleyways of Naples to the kitchen tables of poor Neapolitan homes, Belmonte resists simplistic depictions of the poor. Instead, he presents subtle, compelling portraits and analyses that capture the emotional, social, and economic lives of his subjects.

In addition to the continuing relevance of his insights into the effects of poverty, Belmonte's willingness to reflect on his own reactions and emotions while in the field has influenced a generation of scholars. In "The Broken Fountain," he poignantly describes the experience of living alone in a strange urban environment and his interactions with the residents of Fontana del Re.

This edition includes a foreword by Ida Susser and an afterword by Pellegrino D'Acierno and Stanislao G. Pugliese.

Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian from a Jewish family, and his political activism forced him into exile for most of the Second World War. While in exile, he wrote "Christ Stopped at Eboli," a memoir, and "Fear of Freedom," a philosophical meditation on humanity's flight from moral and spiritual autonomy and our resulting loss of self and creativity. Brooding on what surely appeared to be the decline, if not the fall of Europe, Levi locates the human abdication of responsibility in organized religion and its ability to turn the sacred into the sacrificial. In doing so, he references the entire intellectual and cultural estate of Western civilization, from the Bible and Greek mythology to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This edition features newly published pieces of Levi's artwork and the first English translation of his essay "Fear of Painting," which was appended to a later publication of the work. It also includes an introduction that discusses Levi's life and enduring legacy. Written as war clouds were gathering over Europe, "Fear of Freedom" not only addresses a specific moment in history and a universal, timeless condition, but it is also a powerful indictment of our contemporary moral and political failures.

Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian from a Jewish family, and his political activism forced him into exile for most of the Second World War. While in exile, he wrote "Christ Stopped at Eboli," a memoir, and "Fear of Freedom," a philosophical meditation on humanity's flight from moral and spiritual autonomy and our resulting loss of self and creativity. Brooding on what surely appeared to be the decline, if not the fall of Europe, Levi locates the human abdication of responsibility in organized religion and its ability to turn the sacred into the sacrificial. In doing so, he references the entire intellectual and cultural estate of Western civilization, from the Bible and Greek mythology to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This edition features newly published pieces of Levi's artwork and the first English translation of his essay "Fear of Painting," which was appended to a later publication of the work. It also includes an introduction that discusses Levi's life and enduring legacy. Written as war clouds were gathering over Europe, "Fear of Freedom" not only addresses a specific moment in history and a universal, timeless condition, but it is also a powerful indictment of our contemporary moral and political failures.