Monday, June 06 2022. 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm. John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. 25 W 43rd St Suite 1700, New York, NY. Alyssa J. Maldonado-Estrada (Kalamazoo College). Every Saturday, a group of men can be found in the basement of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, busily measuring, hammering, and painting.

Each year the parish hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. Its crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, where men lift and carry a seventy-foot-tall, four-ton tower through the streets, bearing its weight on their shoulders. Drawing on six years of research, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada tells the story of how this Italian American tower comes into being.