George De Stefano,
Excellent, critic and blogger De Stefano work has appeared in books,
magazines, academic journals, newspapers, and online. As a writer he's most interested
in culture and politics and how they intersect.
George has written about music (rock, blues, Latin, jazz, "world"), film, politics,
and sexuality.
His writing has appeared in The Nation, Newsday, The Advocate, Film Comment,
the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Cineaste, Gay City News (New York) and other
print publications.
Currently writes about music and popular culture for the leading
online publication PopMatters (popmatters.com). You can read George De Stefano
book reviews at the New York Journal of Books (nyjb.com), a lively new forum for
online criticism, and at The Italian American Review (City University of New York).
He writes about world music for Rootsworld (rootsworld.com), and about Italian/Italian American topics for I-Italy (i-italy.org).
More...
"The Boston Globe called it "a thoughtful, thorough analysis tracing the evolution of these vexing pop-culture icons, why their 'dangerous allure' remains an enduring attraction, and how they impact perceptions about Italian-Americans."
On the Board In
Bacheca
My non-fiction book, An Offer We Can't Refuse
The Mafia in the Mind of America (Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus, Giroux) examines America's enduring fascination with Italian and Italian American organized crime, as depicted in the movies, on TV, and in fiction. In the book I try to explain why the "Mafia Myth" is one of the longest-running shows in popular culture, and how the mythology relates to the actual history of not only organized crime but of Italian immigration and Italian American history and culture.
If your idea of Italian music is "O Sole Mio", opera, and the operatic pop schlock of Andrea Bocelli, you've never heard Roy Paci and Aretuska. You're in for a treat.
Rosario "Roy" Paci, 41, from Augusta, Sicily, has been tearing up European and Latin American concert stages with his ten-piece band Aretuska for the better part of the past decade. Paci, a trumpeter and vocalist, has created a hybrid yet personal sound that marries his Mediterranean roots to Latin idioms like samba and cumbia, as well as ska, reggae, R&B, and jazz.
Ignazio
Apolloni,
an author, poet, political commentator, and editor and chief
contributor to Intergruppo
Singlossie, his own contemporary journal,
is fortunate as well, but he questions himself, his island country,
and its relations with Italy, which he calls with mischief “the mother
country”.
“You must understand that there are many Sicilys”,
he says. We are in his Palermo apartment, every wall of
which is painted – a
section of Picasso’s “Guernica” reproduced on one wall,
cartoons and political caricatures in the foyer, abstracts and seashells
mural of jeans hanging
from a washline painted on his bedroom wall. More...
Il rapporto fra me e Ignazio Apolloni è stato
per moltissimi anni, giusto per agganciarmi
al titolo di una sua recente raccolta di racconti, “a maglie larghe”.
L’ho incontrato o, meglio, visto, nel 1989, in occasione di un recital
di poesie organizzato a Marausa, in quel di Trapani, dall’ormai sopravvissuto
a se stesso Antigruppo siciliano. Dall’alto di una torre Ignazio recitò una
sua poesia che mi fece una grande impressione, perchè mi giunse all’orecchio
come una fresca, scoppiettante, quanto ineffabile cascata di suoni. Continua...
Fiori di Sicilia - The Lost 1811
Herbarium
Available to the public for the first
time, Fiori di Sicilia: "Acis
Hortus Regius"--Erbario di Giuseppe Riggio, Acireale,
1811, reproduces a
recently discovered Sicilian herbarium originally consisting
of four folio volumes containing 753 richly colored hand-painted
tables. The
herbarium was commissioned by Giuseppe Riggio, an intriguing,
erudite
chemist from Acireale, near Mt. Etna; each of its watercolor
tables is a
small gem.
Enciclopedia della Sicilia
This authoritative volume represents years
of work by 220 scholars
covering the art, history, literature, music, photography,
theatre,
cinema, philosophy, science, archeology, geography, laws,
and folkways
of Sicily in 4000 detailed entries and 500 vibrant color
illustrations.
Shattering myths and exploring little-known aspects of the
island, the
Enciclopedia is a resource like no other.
Franco
Maria Ricci,
the pioneer of Italian art publishing and creator of
FMR magazine ("the black pearl of
the publishing world," according
to
Federico Fellini), commissioned these volumes for his
new imprint, Ricci
Editore. Caterina Napoleone, who edited and curated these two
projects,
is an art historian based in
Rome;
she specializes in baroque
sculpture
and antiquarian culture.
News from: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THE ITALIAN ACADEMY FOR ADVANCED STUDIES IN AMERICA
Palazzo del Carmine (Caltanissetta)
Palazzo della Provincia (Messina)
Associazione Regina di Quadri (Ragusa)
Chiesa del Collegio dei Gesuiti (Siracusa)
Convento del Carmine (Trapani)
Palazzo Riccio Di Morana (Trapani)
Empedocles (ca. 490 – 430
BC)
Was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum,
a Greek colony in Sicily. More…
Sicilian
School (XIII century)
Was a small community of Sicilian, and
to a lesser extent, mainland
Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging
to his court, the Magna Curia. More…
Luigi Pirandello (Agrigento, 1967 –
Rome,
1936).
Dramatist and novelist. Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. More...
Salvatore Quasimodo (Modica,
1901
– Naples, 1968).
Author. Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959. More...
In
Luce 
In
Bacheca 
Luigi Pirandello
Salvatore Quasimodo
