Alessandro Portelli

Alessandro Portelli has taught American Literature at the Universities of Rome and Siena, Italy, and has served as Advisor on Historical Memory to the Mayor of Rome. He has authored numerous works on folk and rock music, Woody Guthrie, Mark Twain, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison. His publications include The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Form and Meaning in Oral History (1991); The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking and Democracy in American Literature (1994); The Battle of Valle Giulia. Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (1997); The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (2003; winner of the Viareggio Book Prize and the Oral History Association Prize); They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (2011); and Biography of an Industrial Town (2017).