Voce Del Popolo

This book examines the origins, development and history of the cult of Saint Catherine of Siena. Gerald Parsons argues that the cult of Catherine of Siena constitutes a remarkable example of the cult of a particular saint which, across more than six centuries, has been the vehicle for an evolving sequence of civil religious rituals and meanings. He shows how the cult of this particular saint developed, firstly, as an expression of Sienese civil religion; secondly, as a focus for Italian civil religion; and finally into an expression of European civil religion. Instead of the predominantly devotional - and frequently essentially hagiographical - approach of much of the literature on Catherine of Siena, Parsons examines the significance of her cult from the perspective of civil religion and the social history of religion.

In this book, leading historian of education Jeffrey E. Mirel retells a story we think we know, in which public schools forced a draconian Americanization on the great waves of immigration of a century ago. Ranging from the 1890s through the World War II years, Mirel argues that Americanization was a far more nuanced and negotiated process from the start, much shaped by immigrants themselves.Drawing from detailed descriptions of Americanization programs for both schoolchildren and adults in three cities (Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit) and from extensive analysis of foreign-language newspapers, Mirel shows how immigrants confronted different kinds of Americanization. When native-born citizens contemptuously tried to force them to forsake their home religions, languages, or histories, immigrants pushed back strongly. While they passionately embraced key aspects of Americanization—the English language, American history, democratic political ideas, and citizenship—they also found in American democracy a defense of their cultural differences. In seeing no conflict between their sense of themselves as Italians, or Germans, or Poles, and Americans, they helped to create a new and inclusive vision of this country.Mirel vividly retells the epic story of one of the great achievements of American education, which has profound implications for the Americanization of immigrants today.

The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino introduces one of the 20th century’s key thinkers in religious studies and demonstrates that the discipline was animated by a tension between the fear of the apocalypse and the desire for civilizational rebirth.

Arriving in America in 1904, Carlo Tresca began a nearly forty-year stretch as an active revolutionary. Nunzio Pernicone's definitive biography chronicles Tresca's larger-than-life personality, his revolutionary apprenticeship in Sulmona, Italy, and his subsequent career as fighter for liberty until his untimely death in 1943. The story of his life - as newspaper editor, labor agitator, anarchist, anti-communist, street fighter, and opponent of fascism - illuminates the lost world of Italian-American radicalism. Among friends and comrades Tresca counted revolutionary luminaries such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and countless sovversivi. From his work on behalf of the IWW, to his editorship of numerous papers, including Il Proletario and Il Martello, and his assassination on the streets of New York City, Tresca's passion left a permanent mark on the American map.

Catherine Horel has undertaken a comparative analysis of the societal, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy as represented in twelve cities: Arad, Bratislava, Brno, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Oradea, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Subotica, Timișoara, Trieste, and Zagreb. By purposely selecting these cities, the author aims to counter the disproportionate attention that the largest cities in the empire receive. With a focus on the aspects of everyday life faced by the city inhabitants (associations, schools, economy, and municipal politics) the book avoids any idealization of the monarchy as a paradise of peaceful multiculturalism, and also avoids exaggerating conflicts. The author claims that the world of the Habsburg cities was a dynamic space where many models coexisted and created vitality, emulation, and conflict. Modernization brought about the dissolution of old structures, but also mobility, the progress of education, the explosion of associative life, and constantly growing cultural offerings.

This title was first published in 2002: Perspectives on Civil Religion introduces the concept of civil religion, examines the use of the concept in recent scholarship and investigates examples of civil religion in the contemporary world. The book sets out to explore tensions and complexities in the relationship between the 'sacred' and the 'secular', and draws on two major case studies for in-depth illustration of key issues. It looks first at the development of rituals of remembrance from the American civil war, British and American responses to the two world wars and the controversial Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It then considers civil religion in the Italian city of Siena, especially in relation to the Palio of Siena and Sienese devotion to the Virgin. The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: From Sacred Text to Internet; Religion and Social Transformations; Perspectives on Civil Religion; Global Religious Movements in Regional Context; Belief Beyond Boundaries; Religion Today: A Reader