Louis Gesualdi

Professor
As a sociologist, as a teacher and as a person I am dedicated to contributing to the areas of learning and knowledge within an ethic of truth and objectivity. This involves extensive reading, interacting with other scholars, conducting research, acquiring funding when necessary to support my research and disseminating the findings of my research. With these standards in mind, four of my achievements stand as particularly significant and distinguished. They are: 1.) The publication of my book The Bad Things You Have Heard about Italian Americans Are Wrong by The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014. 2.) The publication of my book The Italian Immigrants of Connecticut, 1880 to 1940 by The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1997. The Academy is the third oldest learned society in America, and is affiliated with Yale University. The research of the thousands of pages in the WPA files which form the basis of this book was funded in part by a Summer Grant from St. John’s University. 3.) The publication of my revised thesis The Religious Acculturation of the Italian American Catholics: Cultural and Socioeconomic Factors by the John D. Calandra Institute of the City University of New York, 1997. This manuscript began while I was a fellow at Fordham University. 4.) The grant I received from The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism in the form of the Hibernian Research Award to study Irish American Catholics in Connecticut. These achievements are recognition of my scholarship and add to the knowledge base. Furthermore, in the classroom, I am able to cite firsthand from my own research and publications. I have found this to be one of many useful tools towards generating keen interest on the part of the students. In addition, these citations of my own thinking and writing processes are part of the motivation and guidance to the students’ thinking and writing. Incidentally, in this time period when college graduates are said to be lacking in thinking and writing skills I consider it a significant achievement to be able to state that the students in my classes are not only required to write a short paper and answer test questions in essay form but that they successfully complete these requirements after receiving instruction and guidance in my classes. This reinforces the writing skills taught in other classes. In closing, my achievements, as delineated here, are significant and distinguished because they satisfy the goals of contributing to learning and knowledge, they show evidence of doing so and have been recognized as serious scholarship.

Teaching Interests

Sociology of Race, Class and Ethnicity, Peacemaking Criminology, Ethics

Research Interests

Sociology of Race, Class and Ethnicity, Peacemaking Criminology, Ethics

Courses Taught

HHS
3000
INTRO TO HEALTH & HUM SERVICES
PSY
1021
PERSON-CENTERED PSYCHOLOGY
SOC
1001
GENERAL SOCIOLOGY
SOC
1021
SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNITY
SOC
1029
THE ITALIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENC