Author Biography

Yiorgos Anagnostou (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Yiorgos Anagnostou is Professor and the Director of the Modern Greek Program at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America.
Yiorgos D. Kalogeras (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Yiorgos D. Kalogeras is Professor Emeritus of American ethnic and minority literature. He taught until his retirement (2018) at the Department of English Aristotle at University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books.
Theodora Patrona (Edited By, Introduction and notes by)
Theodora Patrona is affiliated with the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece, as Special Teaching Fellow (EDIP). She is the author of Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature.

Table of Contents

Preface: Una faccia, una razza / μια φτσα μια ρτσα: More to It Than Meets the Eye | vii
Fred L. Gardaphé
Introduction: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation | 1
Yiorgos Anagnostou, Yiorgos Kalogeras, and Theodora Patrona
Part I: Constructing, Historicizing, and Contesting Identities
"Dirty Dagoes" Respond: A Transnational History of a Racial Slur | 23
Andonis Piperoglou
A Greek American Vice President? The View from the Italian American Community | 46
Stefano Luconi
Mediterranean Americans to Themselves | 72
Jim Cocola
Part II: Identity Construction in Two Ethnic Communities
Style and Real Estate: The Architecture of Faith among Greek and Italian Immigrants, 1870–1925 | 105
Kostis Kourelis
Ethnic Language Education:
A Comparative Study of Greek Americans and Italian Americans in New York City | 141
Angelyn Balodimas-Bartolomei and Fevronia K. Soumakis
Part III: Ethnic and Gender Identities in Literature and Music
Identity, Family, and Cultural Heritage:
Narrative Polymorphy in Let Me Explain You and Catina's Haircut | 185
Eleftheria Arapoglou
Ethnic Investigations of the American Crime Scene:
Comparing Domenic Stansberry and George Pelecanos | 210
Francesca de Lucia
Imaginative Living in Mediterranean New England | 238
Panayotis League
Part IV: Ethnic Identities and Visual Culture
An Ethnic Can't Be Like Other People?
The Construction of Greek Americans and Italian Americans in Kojak | 271
Sostene Massimo Zangari
Irrevocable or Irreversible?
Authenticating Identities in Italian and Greek Immigration Documentaries | 298
Yiorgos Kalogeras
American(ish) Rebels: Class, Gender, and Ethnicity in Moonstruck and My Big Fat Greek Wedding | 323
Michail C. Markodimitrakis
Afterword: Beyond Methodological Singularity | 351
Donna R. Gabaccia
Acknowledgments | 365
List of Contributors | 367
Index | 373

Review

Redirecting Ethnic Singularity is a major contribution to ethnic and transcultural studies and is also of interest to anyone who studies race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and education in the United States. Most of all, it opens the door for further conversations about the experiences of immigrant groups and how each, separately and in shared ways, dealt with the process of racialized incorporation.-- "Italian American Review"
Redirecting Ethnic Singularity makes an important contribution to burning questions of American Identity. It is the first to study the parallel and sometimes intersecting experiences of Greek and Italian Americans, who were racialized others when they first immigrated to the US and non-melting ethnics in the eyes of Anglophone Northern European Americans. Each article gives attention to some common aspect of the two groups' entry into white colonial settler culture in North America with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality. To view these two groups' histories comparatively is to bring out unexpected features of identity formation in the US.---Artemis Leontis, C. P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan
A major contribution to ethnic studies, this book offers a much needed comparative (transnational) approach to the investigation of Italian and Greek American ethnic groups with ties across several countries. It challenges the academy's feckless characterization of these groups as 'white, ' European, and superficially ethnic. The contributors point out the continuing vitality of Greek and Italian American cultures and most importantly, locate their affinities in a shared Mediterranean culture of origin. The book provides a rightfully dynamic view of how ethnic subjects today actually project and symbolically deploy their identitarian negotiations in a variety of media.---William Boelhower, author of Atlantic Studies, Prospects and Challenges and Immigrant Autobiography in the United States, Revised and Enlarged Edition.

Review Quote

Redirecting Ethnic Singularity makes an important contribution to burning questions of American Identity. It is the first to study the parallel and sometimes intersecting experiences of Greek and Italian Americans, who were racialized others when they first immigrated to the US and non-melting ethnics in the eyes of Anglophone Northern European Americans. Each article gives attention to some common aspect of the two groups' entry into white colonial settler culture in North America with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality. To view these two groups' histories comparatively is to bring out unexpected features of identity formation in the US. ---Artemis Leontis, C. P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan,

Feature

Multi-disciplinary collection featuring scholarship from the perspectives of architecture, ethnomusicology, education, history, cultural and literary studies, film studies as well as whiteness studies.

Description for Sales People

Multi-disciplinary collection featuring scholarship from the perspectives of architecture, ethnomusicology, education, history, cultural and literary studies, film studies as well as whiteness studies.

Details