Book Presentation: Dr. Joseph Sciorra’s Built with Faith

Over the last 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a repertoire of sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These ethnic traditions have been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra spent thirty-five years interviewing these immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics and researching their community art forms. The result, Built with Faith, offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of religious material culture, written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike. It is a unique study that explores the question of how value and meaning are produced at the level of everyday life.

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