Italian-American Foodways and the Making of Modern New York
Rocco Marinaccio, Manhattan College

**UPDATED** Rocco Marinaccio will discuss the foodways associated with New York’s Italian immigrants in the early twentieth century. His focus is on the ways a developing Italian-American cuisine was incorporated into broader public discussions of moral, intellectual, and physical health within the immigrant population. He will also consider both a range of institutional actions—such as the New York City pushcart-reform legislation and various public health and dietary initiatives—and representations of Italian immigrant cuisine in various media. Ultimately, mainstream responses to this cuisine comprised a program of “culinary reform,” designed to police and to assimilate the immigrant, fashioning both the citizenry and the urban landscape according to emergent conceptions of “modern” New York. (This event was rescheduled from Nov. 5, 2012, due to Hurricane Sandy.)