Thomas J Ferraro Professor
Office Location: 323 Allen
Office Phone: 919-684-3718
Email Address: ferraro@duke.edu
- Office Hours:
- Fall 2007
Wednesdays 3:00pm - 5:00pm, Fridays 2:00pm - 3:00pm
by appointment: ferraro@duke.edu
- Education and Interests:
- Ph.D., Yale University (Co-Winner, Field Prize for Distinguished Humanities Dissertation)
- American Literature and Culture, with special expertise in the novel and in the interplay of religion, ethnicity, and the media arts
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Professor Ferraro is an aficinado of the great American stuff--Emily Dickinson, Edward Hopper, the Marx Brothers, and Nina Simone--who writes on literature, film, and the performing arts. He is the author of Ethnic Passages: Literary Immigrants in 20th-Century America (U Chicago, 1993), the editor of Catholic Lives, Contemporary America (Duke, 1997), and a contributor to The Columbia History of the American Novel , Scribner's Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature . "Lorenzo's Chrism," concerns the sacred import of (the battle against) a very rare but fatal disease--adrenoleukodystrophy--given its genetic etiology, mysterious biochemistry, and metabolic havoc; "Of 'Lascivious Mysticism' and other Hibernian Matters" looks at the Protestant temptation to fin-de-siecle Catholic decadence in Harold Frederic. And a forthcoming essay, "Boys to Men," examines the street Catholicism of
Irish-American charisma, including the untoward and unsuspected sexual
chemistries, in the1938 Cagney gangster flick, Angels with Dirty Faces.
Prof. Ferraro's new book, Feeling Italian: the Art of Ethnicity in America (NYU, 2005), explores the Italian aesthetic seduction of the United States--from the sensational trials of murderess Maria Barbella and the eerily prescient city paintings of Joseph Stella to latter-day icons including Sinatra, Madonna, and the Corleones--yielding not the familiar tale of racial assimilation, How the Guineas Got White, but a revelatory counter-drama of ongoing ethnic enculturation, How America Gets (To Feel) Italian. Feeling Italian is a winner of a 2006 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, for making "an outstanding contribution to American literature."
- Representative Publications
(More Publications)
- Feeling Italian: the Art of Ethnicity in America. New York UP, May, 2005. (Winner, 2006 American Book Award. Choice, Recommended Book.) [abs]
- Ethnic Passages: Literary Immigrants in Twentieth-Century America. U of Chicago P, 1993. (Chapter I, "Blood in the Marketplace," was originally invited for Werner Sollors, ed., The Invention of Ethnicity [Oxford UP, 1986], and has been reprinted in reference works on Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. The introduction is to be similarly reprinted in August 2008.)
- Catholic Lives, Contemporary America. Duke UP, 1997. [abs]
- "Boys to Men." Catholics in the Movies. Ed. Colleen McDannell. Oxford University Press, 2008. 59-82. [abs] [author's comments]
- "'At Long Last Love'; or, Literary History in the Key of Difference." ALH [American Literary History] 15.1 (2003): 78-86.
- "Lorenzo's Chrism." SAQ 103.1 (Winter, 2004): 235-63.
- "Of 'Lascivious Mysticism' and Other Hibernian Matters." U.S. Catholic Historian 23.3 (Summer, 2005): 1-17.
- "Whole Families Shopping at Night!." New Essays on White Noise. Ed. Frank Lentricchia. Cambridge UP, 1991. 15-38 [author's comments]
