New Italian Migrations to the United States: Vol. 1: Politics and History since 1945
Laura E. Ruberto, Berkeley City College
Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute

Until now, Italian immigration from 1945 to the present has been an American phenomenon too little explored in our histories. In this new collection (University of Illinois Press, 2017) Laura E. Ruberto and Joseph Sciorra assemble essays by an elite roster of scholars in Italian American studies. Collectively these interdisciplinary works offer a radical rethinking of conventional histori­cal periodization about Italian migration that makes claims to a practical cessation of immigration after the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. These essays also serve to deflate the standard narrative of arrival–acclimation–assimilation from first-generation immigrants to the third generation. The editors will be joined by contributors James S. Pasto, in discussing the complex transformation of identity in Boston’s North End; and Donald Tricarico, in tracing the development of Italian American Guido youth culture in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.