Launch of "Rituals of Migration: Italians and Irish on the Move"

When people migrate, they often perform social and cultural rituals along the way. Rituals of Migration offers snapshots of Italian and Irish migrants embarking on journeys that changed their lives. The essays in this book examine particular moments, actions, sentiments, and material objects in the process of migration—at the point of departure, in transit, and in the process of return. By examining what people did, thought, felt, and packed on the eve of their departures, during their journeys, and when returning to their homelands, Rituals of Migration reveals how everyone involved in the immigration process, including the migrants themselves, the families they left behind, and those in charge of regulating their mobility, has tried to make sense of a process filled with peril, uncertainty, excitement, and opportunity.

Featuring the editors of Rituals of Migration, Kevin Kenny (NYU) and Maddalena Marinari (Gustavus Adolphus College), in conversation with seven of the authors, Jill Bender (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), Lauren Braun-Strumfels (Cedar Crest College), Hidetaka Hirota (University of California, Berkeley), Grainne McEvoy (Notre Dame University), Cian McMahon (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Linda Reeder (University of Missouri), Joseph Sciorra (Queen’s College, CUNY), and Clara Zaccagnini (independent scholar).

Kevin Kenny is Glucksman Professor of History and Director of Glucksman Ireland House at NYU and the author of The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States.

Maddalena Marinari is Professor of History at Gustavus Adolphus College and the author of Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965.

Jill C. Bender is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. The author of The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire (2016), she is currently working on a second book project, Assisted Emigrants: Irish Female Migration Projects and the British Empire.

Lauren Braun-Strumfels is Associate Professor of History at Cedar Crest College. She is the author of Partners in Gatekeeping: How Italy Shaped U.S. Immigration Policy Over Ten Pivotal Years, 1891-1901 (2023) and the co-editor, with Maddalena Marinari and Daniele Fiorentino, of Managing Migration in Italy and the United States (2024). Her work has appeared in Labor and the Journal of American Ethnic History. She is currently writing a book, The Forgotten Solution to America’s Immigration Problem: Italians, Distribution Policy, and the South in the Progressive Era.

Hidetaka Hirota is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (2017), as well as articles on US immigration history in the Journal of American History, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and American Quarterly.

Gráinne McEvoy is a historian of US immigration who manages research programming at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Students at the University of Notre Dame. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh and Trinity College, Dublin, she received her PhD in History from Boston College, where her doctoral research focused on US immigration policy and Catholic social thought.

Cian T. McMahon is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity: Race, Nation, and the Popular Press, 1840-1880 (2015) and The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (2021).

Linda Reeder is Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri. She is the author of Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women (2003) and Italy in the Modern World: Society, Culture, and Identity (2019) and co-editor with Marcelo Borges and Sonia Cansian of Emotional Landscapes: Love, Gender, and Migration (2021).

Joseph Sciorra is Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY. He researches and publishes on vernacular culture, including religious practices, cultural landscapes, and popular music. He is the author of Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City (2015) and co-editor with Laura Ruberto of New Italian Migrations to the United States, 2 vols. Vol I: Politics and History since 1945 and Vol 2: Art and Culture since 1945 (2017).

Clara Zaccagnini, an independent scholar, is currently working as a knowledge management consultant on migrants’ remittances and diaspora investment at IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) in Rome. She holds a Master’s degree in International Studies from Roma Tre University. She is the author with Lauren Braun-Strumfels of “Testing the Limits of Italian and US Migration Law: The 1904 Liguria Incident in New Orleans,” in Managing Migration in Italy and the United States, edited by Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Maddalena Marinari, and Daniele Fiorentino (2024).

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Glucksman Ireland House NYU, 1 Washington Mews, New York, United States