Thomas J. Ferraro

Thomas J. Ferraro, Professor of English

Education:

Ph.D., Yale University, 1988
M. Phil., Yale University (with distinction), 1983
M.A., Yale University, 1983
B.A., Amherst College, 1979
Contact Info:

421 Chapel Dr., Dept of English, Durham, NC 27708-0015
(919) 684-2741
ferraro@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/web/education/~ferraro
Office Hours:

Fall 2022 Semester:

Monday 2:45-4:00 pm & Thursday 4:00-5:00 pm (323 Allen)



Comments:

Professor Ferraro is an aficionado of the great American stuff--Emily Dickinson, Edward Hopper, the Marx Brothers, and Nina Simone--who writes on literature, film, and the performing arts. Contrary by temperament, at least as a scholar-critic, he has just published his *big book*, Transgression & Redemption in American Fiction (Oxford UP, announced for February 2021): a revisionist account of the interplay among violative self-making, transgressive sexuality and redemptive sacrifice that recaptures both the aesthetic wonder and social danger of the classic mainline, from Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter to masterworks by Chopin, James, Fitzgerald, Cather, and Hemingway. For a preview of the issues in play, see his recent essay, "Transgression and Redemption in the 1930s" in William Solomon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to American Literature of the 1930s (CUP, 2018), 145-161.  Ferraro is also the author of Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America (NYU, 2005; winner of a 2006 American Book Award), 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, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Catholicism in the Movies, and The Catholic Studies Reader. 

Curriculum Vitae

Teaching (Spring 2024):

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. Ferraro, TJ. 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. Ferraro, TJ. Catholic Lives, Contemporary America. Edited by Ferraro, T. Duke University Press, 1997. 274 pages pp.  [abs]
  4. Ferraro, TJ. "Boys to Men (Salvific Masculinity in /Angels with Dirty Faces/)." Catholics in the Movies. Ed. McDannell, C. Oxford University Press, 2008. 59-82.  [abs] [author's comments]
  5. Ferraro, TJ. "At long last love; Or, literary history in the key of difference." American Literary History 15.1Oxford University Press (OUP), (December, 2003): 78-86. [doi]
  6. Ferraro, TJ. "Lorenzo’s Chrism." SAQ 103.1 (Winter, 2004): 235-63.
  7. Ferraro, TJ. "Of ’Lascivious Mysticism’ and Other Hibernian Matters." U.S. Catholic Historian 23.3 (Summer, 2005): 1-17.
  8. Ferraro, TJ. "Whole Families Shopping at Night!." New Essays on White Noise. Ed. Lentricchia, F. Cambridge UP, 1991.  15-38  [author's comments]