Widely acclaimed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and...

Widely acclaimed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and...

Italy has been imagined and re-imagined by Western civilization from the latter part of the Renaissance to the present day. The Italian in Modernity provides a comprehensive overview of this conceptualization, in a volume that promises to become the leading introduction to current research in the field.

In this study, Robert Casillo and John Paul Russo look at both Italy and Italian America to explore the paradoxical representation of Italy as the originator of modernity that has resisted many modern tendencies. Covering topics that include travel writing, gender,...