Office Location: 323 Allen
Office Phone: 919-684-3718
Email Address: ferraro@duke.edu

Teaching (Fall, 2009):

• English 169e.02, Sp topics in american lit iv Synopsis

  Social sciences 119, WF 01:15 PM-02:30 PM

• English 271es.02, Sp top seminar iv Synopsis

  Soc/psych 128, WF 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

Office Hours:

Fall 2009--Tuesday 4:30-6pm; Wednesday 2:45-4pm
and Friday 2:45-4pm

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

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."

Curriculum Vitae

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1.  Feeling Italian: the Art of Ethnicity in America. New York UP, May, 2005. (Winner, 2006 American Book Award. Choice, Recommended Book.)  [abs]
2.  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.)
3.  Catholic Lives, Contemporary America.  Duke UP, 1997.  [abs]
4. "Boys to Men (Salvific Masculinity in /Angels with Dirty Faces/)." Catholics in the Movies. Ed. Colleen McDannell. Oxford University Press, 2008. 59-82.  [abs] [author's comments]
5. "'At Long Last Love'; or, Literary History in the Key of Difference." ALH [American Literary History] 15.1 (2003): 78-86.
6. "Lorenzo's Chrism." SAQ 103.1 (Winter, 2004): 235-63.
7. "Of 'Lascivious Mysticism' and Other Hibernian Matters." U.S. Catholic Historian 23.3 (Summer, 2005): 1-17.
8. "Whole Families Shopping at Night!." New Essays on White Noise. Ed. Frank Lentricchia. Cambridge UP, 1991.  15-38  [author's comments]

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