Synopses & Reviews
The contributors to this volume, from a range of academic disciplines and artistic traditions, illuminate previously unexplored aspects of the internationally renowned Sacco and Vanzetti case. Rather than take up the question of whether the two Italian immigrant anarchists were guilty, the essays in this book analyze literary-, artistic-, and mass-mediated representations of Sacco and Vanzetti, linking them to stereotypes of so-called "foreigners" and "others" that prevailed in the 1920s, and interrogating those images that prevail in our own age.
Synopsis
Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested outside Boston in 1920 and charged with robbing and killing a shoe factory paymaster and his guard. Though a prosecutor insisted they would be tried for murder and 'nothing else', their radical politics remained a focus of the 1921 trial. Contributors from a range of academic disciplines and artistic traditions apply critical and interpretive methodologies, assume novel historical perspectives, and analyze overlooked primary materials to illuminate previously unexplored aspects of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The essays in this book analyze literary, artistic, and mass mediated representations of Sacco and Vanzetti, linking them to stereotypes of so-called 'foreigners' and 'others' that prevailed in the 1920s, and interrogating those images that prevail in our own age.
Synopsis
An historical overview of the cultural and political legacy of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
About the Author
Mary Anne Trasciatti is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Hofstra University.
Jerome H. Delamater is a professor in the School of Communication at Hofstra University.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Sacco and Vanzetti Case: 1920-2004--Mary Anne Trasciatti and Jerome Delamater *
Part One: History, Memory, and the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti * The Beautiful Idea: Italian Anarchism from Malatesta to Tresca--Stanislao Pugliese * The American Campaign to Save Sacco and Vanzetti--Mary Anne Trasciatti *
Part Two: (Re)Presenting Sacco and Vanzetti: The Making of a Myth * Sacco and Vanzetti: The Italian American Legacy--Fred Gardaphe * Ben Shahn and
The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti Revisited--Alejandro Anreus * "Hearts that Grow Not Cold": Structures of Feeling and Vanzetti's Beloved Anarchy--Daniel Lang * Unifying the Cultural Left: Edith Segal, Emma Goldman, and the Completion of Marc Blitzstein's
Sacco and Vanzetti--Leonard Lehrman * Historical Documentary: Problems, Purposes, Ideals: A Conversation with Peter Miller, Documentary Filmmaker *
Part Three: The Media and "the Other": From Italian Americans to Arab Americans * Lessons from Sacco and Vanzetti for a Post 9/11 World--Jane Twomey * From Sacco and Vanzetti to Mumia Abu-Jamal: Is Innocence Irrelevant?--Eliot Lee Grossman, Esq. * "The Case that Will Not Die": The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti--Howard Zinn