Etta’s experiences teaching Italian university students as a William J. Fulbright scholar, teaching US university students abroad, and her onsite research in Italian archives feed her love for All Things Italy. Gain a taste by subscribing to her newsletter and blog and following on social media.
Savory Bites
"Savory Bites: Books on Eating in Early America," appeared in Early American Literature 50.2 (2015). On the hot topic of food and literature, it considers three books on American literature and culture from colonial exploration...
Eliza Leslie: Fun & Food
Selections from Eliza Leslie collects stories, recipes and other works by the nineteenth-century cookbook author and humor writer from Philadelphia. In addition to providing a biographical sketch, my introduction to the volume describes Eliza Leslie's early...
Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias
Drawing from our interests in utopian communities and religious history, my co-editor Martha Finch and I highlight in Eating in Eden (U Nebraska 2006) American food practices that range from those of colonial English Puritans and...
Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies
In Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies, I examine the roles of reading and writing in the celibate, religious communities known popularly as Shaker villages. Questions driving the project emerge from the widely held belief...
Damanhur: An Italian Earth-Centered Community
"Damanhur: Sustaining Changes in an Intentional Community," is the first chapter in the book Spiritual and Visionary Communities: Out to Save the World. In it I probe the question of how a community in the mountains of...
Famous American Vegetarians
Vegetarianism is not a recent American trend, influenced by immigrant cultures and travel abroad. Waves of interest in meatless diets have surged and ebbed through the centuries. In fact, even 18th-century American “founding father” Benjamin...
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf 2016)
Jhumpa Lahiri begins her memoir of two years in Italy with a water metaphor. Rather than thirst in Rome’s heat or a watery rebirth, the imagery of swimming around a lake seduced me. So starts...
Italy: A Recent Group Experience
In the spring of 2016 I met several times with a group of adults in preparation for a pilgrimage to Italy. With a theme of syncretism, or the blending of faith traditions, I shared with them...
Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Native Tales
“Science in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie (1827)” zooms in on a novel about Puritan New England that contributed to Sedgwick’s position as a rival of James Fenimore Cooper, author of Last of the Mohicans. The...
- « Previous
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6