The controversial trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the two Italian immigrant anarchists found guilty and executed in 1927 for the South Braintree, Massachusetts robbery and murder, has long fascinated the public’s imagination, inspiring artists across the globe to commemorate their memory in song. Fazio’s talk will explore the significance of folk balladeer Woody Guthrie’s most underrated album, Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti—eleven new songs recorded between the years 1946-47 that were born out of his long-standing effort to promote labour solidarity and remember the struggles of these “two good men.”

Tickets are free on Eventbrite

Dr. Michele Fazio is a Professor in the English department and co-coordinator of the gender studies minor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke where she teaches courses on 20th-century American and contemporary U.S. ethnic literature. She also directs the Pembroke Mellon REACH Program—an initiative to increase participation of underrepresented students in pursuing graduate school with a focus on the humanities. She co-edited the Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies and has served as past-president of the Working-Class Studies Association. In 2021, she was selected to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “The New Deal Era’s Federal Writers’ Project: History, Politics, and Legacy,” presented her work in progress at the Library of Congress earlier this year, and is currently co-editing the book, Working through the Federal Writers’ Project: Labor, Place, Archive, and Representation. Her research on family history, community, and memory has been exhibited at Harvard University's Law School Library and at the American Labor Museum. Through the support of a BMI Woody Guthrie Research Fellowship and a Massachusetts Historical Society Fellowship, she is writing a manuscript on the cultural legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti. Fazio is also a founding member of the Teaching Woody Guthrie Collective.