This Hope Sustains the Scholar

Eleven academics pay tribute to the work of Robert Viscusi (1941-2020), a poet and a scholar of Italian American culture, predominantly literature. Some of these essays deal directly with Viscusi’s research and creative work, while others are inspired by him and the topics and ideas he explored in his lifetime. Robert Viscusi’s legacy is a deep and lasting one. His written body of work challenges us to think about the historical and ongoing Italian American creative presence in the United States by engaging with the artists and the myriad characters they have conjured into existence. Viscusi was a timeless scholar, whose insightful evocations and often playful turns of phrase have helped move the field beyond the parochial to the universal.