about the author

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's maternal and paternal grandparents, and her father, migrated from Sicily to the United States at the turn, and first years, of the 20th century. She received the Ph.D. in the intellectual history of the United States, and early modern and modern history of Europe, from the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught U. S. history and the humanities. She has also taught U.S. history at San Francisco State University. Later, as an independent feminist scholar of cultural history, she has been affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender of Stanford University. In 2006 she is a professor in the department of Philosophy and Religion, program in Women's Spirituality, of the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.

Lucia's books include Liberazione della donna: Feminism in Italy (Wesleyan University Press, 1986, 1988, American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation, 1987). And Black Madonna: Feminism, religion, and politics in Italy (Northeastern University Press, 1993). In its italian edition (Bari, Palomar Editrice, 1997), Black Madonnas won a Premio Internazionale di Saggistica in 1998. She has lectured in a variety of venues in the United States, Europe, Australia, et al., contributed to anthologies and scholarly journals, and was inducted, in 1996, into the African American International Multicultural Educators Hall of Fame.

Lucia's professional work has developed from that of a traditional historian to the continually widening methodologies of a feminist cultural scholar concerned with submerged beliefs. Intercultural, as well as interdisciplinary, she has studied everyday and celebratory rituals, saints' stories, the lives of her sicilian grandmothers/godmothers, and other dark others, including canaanites, muslims, jews, heretics, and witches. Adopting comparative history, she has juxtaposed european and U. S. history and beliefs of the italian women's movement with beliefs of women of the world.