Joseph Sciorra Receives Bishir Prize from Vernacular Architecture Forum

Folklorist Joseph Sciorra wins the 2024 Catherine W. Bishir Prize for his article “‘The Strange Artistic Genius of This People’: The Ephemeral Art and Impermanent Architecture of Italian Immigrant Catholic Feste,” published in the Spring/Fall 2023 issue of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Sciorra looks at late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, mobile shrines and street chapels—Baroque confections as tall as 60 feet or as wide as buildings, shaped like altars, towers, or even land-faring boats. Italian-American craftsmen created these for their immigrant community festes—or, as Sciorra calls them—“cultural-religious extravaganzas.” He also examines “how these transient objects of devotion…enacted and proclaimed a diasporic community of believers that challenged hegemonic notions of artistry, religion, the built environment, and the public sphere” and contextualizes them as “part of the Progressive era’s xenophobic climate and, in particular, the picturesque gaze that racialized and othered Italian immigrants.”

The Bishir Prize, named for influential scholar Catherine W. Bishir, is awarded annually to the scholarly article from a juried North American publication that has made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes. It is awarded by the Vernacular Architecture Forum, an organization established 1979 to promote appreciation and scholarship of vernacular structures.