Built with faith : Italian American imagination and Catholic material culture in New York City / Joseph Sciorra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sciorra, Joseph, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italian American Catholics--New York (State)--New York--Religious life.

Italian American Catholics.

Italian American Catholics--New York (State)--New York--Social life.

Material culture--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Material culture.

Catholic Church--New York (State)--New York--History--21st century.

Catholic Church.

Catholic Church--New York (State)--New York--Customs and practices.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (305 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra's Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City's Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions-often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art-all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city's religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra's unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Private Devotions in Public Places: The Sacred Spaces of Yard Shrines and Sidewalk Altars

2. Imagined Places and Fragile Landscapes: Nostalgia and Utopia in Nativity Presepi

3. Festive Intensification and Place Consciousness in Christmas House Displays

4. Multivocality and Sacred Space: The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto in Rosebank, Staten Island

"We Go Where the Italians Live": Processions as Glocal Mapping in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-62190-131-9

OCLC:

966879873