A New Book for the Pagan Studies Series on Pagan Aspects of Pizzica in Southern Italy

A year ago I photographed Jefferson Calico (r.), author of Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America with Giovanna Parmigiani, a visitor to the Equinox Publishing booth at the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature joint book show at their annual meetings in Denver, Colorado.

I am happy to say that Giovanna has now signed a contract with us in the Contemporary and Historical Paganism series for her new book, which has a working title of The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy. A little piece of it is in the current issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies as “Spiritual Pizzica: A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism.”((If you do not want to buy access to the article, have you talked to your friendly inter-library loan librarian?))

Q:  Two books is a “series”?

A: It is more complicated than that. The series was originally published by AltaMira Press, a division of Roman & Littlefield, an American publisher. The first book in the series was Barbara Davy’s (a Canadian scholar) Introduction to Pagan Studies (2007), followed by my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (2006).((Wait, you say, those numbers are out of sequence. All I can say is that Barb’s was actually printed first.)) There were others in the series, some acquired by my first co-editor, Wendy Griffin.

Wendy stepped down, and was replaced by the late Nikki Bado. Meanwhile, editorial changes at Rowman left Nikki and me looking for another home. We quickly found one at Equinox, which was already publishing The Pomegranate. Nikki and I brought in more books, including Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music and Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, whose co-editor, Scott Simpson, stepped up to replace Nikki after her death and continues as series co-editor now.

Meanwhile, there was a merger, a de-merger, and a sale, and those books in the “Series in Contemporary and Historical Paganism” ended up with Routledge, who discontinued the series. Meanwhile, we carried on with Equinox, starting over from scratch, more or less.

Q: What does pizzica sound like?

A: Try this (it’s kind of a formal performance):

Drummers might like this one:

This one is fun too. Remember that this part of the Italian peninsula was settled by Greeks way back.

One last thing: if you order from the links, I do get a small commission, which helps with the Web-hosting bill. Thanks.

7 thoughts on “A New Book for the Pagan Studies Series on Pagan Aspects of Pizzica in Southern Italy

  1. Very interesting. The drumwork reminds me a lot of the Irish bohdran except he’s not using a stick to beat the drum. It also reminds me of the drums used by Mongolian shamans.

  2. I’d love to pick up a copy of Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, but even the Kindle version at $57 is way beyond my budget. As far as getting my local library to stock a copy? Ha! Ha! Ha! I live in the Bible belt and they would never buy something like this. I’m shocked that the local library even has the Harry Potter books considering.

    • You can use interlibrary loan. It might come with a fee depending on your library’s resourcing structure (academic libraries usually make ILL free, but public ones have a plethora of policies), but almost all US libraries are members of consortia that have this service. Your library would place a request, and a copy would be shipped to it from a partner if one of them holds it and consents to the request.

      • I’ve tried doing that in the past with absolutely no luck whatsoever. I don’t know whether there was a breakdown in the pipeline or someone in the local library decided the book was “not suitable” or it was “out of their network” or what, but I never got the book I asked for.
        I used to be able to go to the local university and take out books from their library, but the rules changed and now you can’t do that unless you can prove your a student or go their physically and sit there and read the book.

        • Let me add that the only place that had the book I was looking for was at the Library of Congress. My suspicion is that the person(s) responsible for doing the ILL didn’t know how to do that. ::shrugs::

          • Most (many?) state-supported colleges and universities have a “local patron” option, since your taxes help the school. If there is such an institution near you, it is worth asking a circulation librarian about that.

            • The local University was part of the local network of libraries in the tri-county area, and I had managed to get many books from them for a while there, especially since I had been a part-time student, but they pulled out a few years ago. I’m not sure why.

Comments are closed.