The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino introduces one of the 20th century’s key thinkers in religious studies and demonstrates that the discipline was animated by a tension between the fear of the apocalypse and the desire for civilizational rebirth.

Ernesto de Martino was a major critical thinker in the study of vernacular religions, producing innovative analyses of key concepts such as 'folklore', 'magic' and 'ritual'. His methodology stemmed from his training under the philosopher Benedetto Croce whilst his philosophical approach to anthropology borrowed from Marx and Gramsci. Widely celebrated

Portelli offers a new and challenging approach to oral history, with an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective. Examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies, he identifies the way individuals strive to create memories in order to make sense of their lives, and evaluates the impact

This book foregrounds the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini to study the Roman periphery and examine the relevance of Pasolini’s vision in the construction of subaltern identity and experience. It analyses the contemporary Italian society to understand the problem of social exclusion of marginal communities. Narrative studies are at the

This volume comprises papers presented at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Joachim Wach's death, and the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth. Its purpose is to reconsider both the problematic, separate legacies of these two major twentieth-century historians of religions, and the bearing of these two legacies upon each