The book launch of The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil
Thu Sep 11, 2025 5:30 p.m.—6:30 p.m.
The Diversity & Italian Studies Working Group invites you to join us for the book launch of Giulia Riccò’s The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil (Fordham University Press, 2025)
This new work argues that, contrary to what one might expect, Italians first became racialized as white in São Paulo, Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century. Whereas Italians in the United States struggled with xenophobia and were often not fully acknowledged as white, in São Paulo, due to a series of social, economic, and cultural factors, Italians became closely associated with ideas of whiteness, modernization, and civilization. This book brings to light how the overlooked experiences of Italians in Brazil complicate conventional narratives about the racial ambiguity and oppression of Italians in the Americas, on the one hand, and the conflation of Italians with cultural and economic backwardness in Europe, on the other.
Giulia Riccò is an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research and teaching focus on modern Italian and Brazilian literature and culture, with particular attention to nationalism and migration. She is the author of The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil(Link is external) (Fordham University Press, 2025), part of the Critical Studies in Italian Migrations series and winner of the 2024 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies. Her work has appeared in Cultural Dynamics, Forum Italicum, Radical History Review, Literature and (Im)migration in Brazil, Italian Culture, Altreitalie, and Public Books(Link is external) (Link opens in new window). She currently co-edits the H-Net platform TransItalian Studies(Link is external) (Link opens in new window) and co-chairs the AAIS Critical Race, Migrations, and Diasporas Caucus.
The Italian Colony of São Paolo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil(Link is external) (Link opens in new window) is also available in Open Access via Fordham Commons(Link is external) (Link opens in new window)!
Location: Humanities Quadrangle, Room 276, 320 York Street