The music of memory: conversation with Alessandro Portelli

Abstract

The interviewee Alessandro Portelli, is a renowned Italian academic of American Literature and culture, oral historian and musicologist. He was Professor of Anglo-American Literature at La Sapienza University in Rome. In the United States he is known for his oral history research on industrial conflicts from the perspective of workers in Harlan, Kenctuky, and also in Terni, Italy. He is the author of the best study on the Nazi repression in Rome, in the event of the Ardeatine pits, with his book The Order Has Been Carried Out. From the Casa della memoria e la Storia in Rome he encourages research in Oral History. He writes in the newspaper Il Manifesto.