The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil

Part of the series
Race, Migration, Italy

In collaboration with
NYU Department of Italian Studies

Book Presentation
The Italian Colony of São Paulo
Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil
(2025, Fordham University Press)

by
Giulia Riccò

The author in conversation with:
Francesca Parmeggiani, Fordham University
Zita Nunes, University of Pennsylvania

Moderated by Isabella Livorni, NYU

The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil 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.

About the Author:
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 (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. She currently co-edits the H-Net platform TransItalian Studies and co-chairs the AAIS Critical Race, Migrations, and Diasporas Caucus.

Race, Migration, Italy is a series of events (book discussions, theatrical performances, film screenings, lectures) sponsored by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò in collaboration with NYU’s Department of Italian Studies. It aims to promote conversations on the intersections of race and migration in Italy and in Italian diasporic communities. moment. Conceived in connection with courses taught in the Department of Italian Studies, Race, Migration, Italy revisits the format launched by Casa Italiana’s Virtual Salons: Discourses on Black Italia, held virtually during the pandemic, by bringing together artists and scholars in order to address questions about race and racialization across Italian history and multifaceted geography.

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
New York University
September 15, 2025