About the Authors
Salvatore Mondello was born on February 27, 1932 in the Italian American community of East Harlem in New York City, and was brought up by his maternal grandparents, immigrants from the Sicilian village of San Fratello. Mondello attended Benjamin Franklin High School and after his graduation in 1951, he entered the larger world of New York University and decided to devote most of his professional career to the study of the Italian American experience.
Professor Mondello received his Ph.D. in 1960 in American history from New York University and has been teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology since 1967, where he occupies the position of professor of history. His many articles in the areas of Italian American studies, art history, Baptist studies, and popular culture have appeared in such scholarly journals as Italian Americana, Journalism Quarterly, Social Science, the Polish Review, The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, and The Journal of Popular Culture. He contributes articles regularly to Foundations, the journal of Baptist history and theology. He is researching the history of European Baptist minority groups in America from the colonial period to the present.
Professor Mondello has received grants from the State University of New York and from the National Endowment for the Humanities; both grants were received for his work on John Vanderlyn, the New York-born artist of the early national period. He serves as a grants proposal reviewer for the NEH. Professor Mondello is a member of the American Institute for Italian Studies and has served as secretary-treasurer and one of the founders of the American Italian Historical Association.
Luciano J. Iorizzo was born on March 31, 1930 in the Park Slope section Brooklyn bordering the Italian neighborhood from which his family had recently moved. He was raised by his paternal grandmother and her children. He attended parochial schools