Food, festival and religion: materiality and place in Italy

'Food, Festival and Religion' explores how communities in northern Italy find a restorative sense of place through foodways, costuming and other forms of materiality.

Festivals examined by the author vary geographically from the northern rural corners of Italy to the fashionable heart of urban Milan.

The origins of these lived religious events range from Christian to vernacular Italian witchcraft and contemporary Paganism, which is rapidly growing in Italy.

Francesca Ciancimino Howell demonstrates that during ritualized occasions the sacred is located within the mundane.

She argues that communal feasting, pilgrimage, rituals and costumed events can represent forms of lived religious materiality.