Episode Details

Robert Viscusi, author of the book Buried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing, joins Doug in this episode to discuss how the culture of Italian Americans affects their writing and story telling. Also discussed is the reasoning behind why Italians came to inhabit America, why so many Italian-Americans can't speak Italian and where the cinematic depiction of the Italian mafia is derived from. Robert Viscusi, who received a doctorate in English from NYU, is a professor of English at Brooklyn College and specializes in cultural studies and Italian American writing. He is the founding president of the Italian American Writers Association and the executive director of the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for Humanities.