Richard N. Juliani, retired sociology professor at Villanova and pioneering expert on Philadelphia’s Little Italy, has died at 86
He studied Italian and German immigrants in detail, introduced new college courses on Italian society and immigration, and wrote three books about Little Italy and one about local German immigrants.
Richard N. Juliani, 86, of Wynnewood, retired sociology professor at Villanova University, former national president of the American Italian Historical Association, pioneering ethnic historian, award-winning researcher, author, mentor, and expert on South Philadelphia’s Little Italy, died Thursday, Feb. 20, of acute myeloid leukemia at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.
Dr. Juliani spent 34 years, from 1977 to 2011, teaching sociological theory, urban sociology, and race and ethnic relations at Villanova. He was the son of Italian immigrants, and he became an expert on the immigrant experience in Philadelphia.
He studied Italian and German immigrants in detail, introduced new courses at Villanova on Italian society and immigration, and wrote three books about Little Italy and one about local German immigrants. He taught at Temple University for a decade before Villanova and what is now Arcadia University in Cheltenham before that.
He was always interested in society, history, and people, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Notre Dame in 1960, master’s degree at Rutgers University in 1962, and doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. He documented and publicized his research on immigration to counter simplistic ethnic stereotypes and championed the benefits of a multicultural pluralistic society.
“You have people certainly who want to become Americanized in some senses,” he said in a 2019 podcast interview with the Pennsylvania Cable Network. “But they do not want to cut themselves off entirely from their past because it involves a rejection of their own parents and grandparents. … They’re asking, ‘Can’t we become something new and different but at the same time hold to what I cherish from the past?’”
Dr. Juliani taught Italian studies as a visiting professor at Penn and St. Joseph’s University. He lectured all over about immigration and urban sociology and arranged guests for Villanova’s distinguished speaker series.
“Why can’t we be a multilingual nation? What’s so threatening, what’s so detrimental, what’s so nonproductive about people having a facility in another language? I say welcome it. It’s wonderful. I envy them.”
He led waking tours of South Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Area Cultural Consortium. He earned Villanova’s Outstanding Faculty Research Award in 1999, and Millicent Gaskell, dean of Villanova’s Falvey Library, said in a recent tribute that he “brought that love of research to his presentations.”
In online tributes, friends and former colleagues praised his “passion,” “wonderful personality,” and “great sense of humor.” A former student said: “Dr. J mentored me in the art of critical thinking, analysis, and meaningful writing.”
He was a doctoral student at Penn in the late 1960s when colleagues convinced him to examine Philadelphia’s previously overlooked Italian American population. His 1971 dissertation was called: The Social Organization of Immigration: The Italians in Philadelphia. He went on to review personal papers, reconstruct family histories, examine centuries of social events in newspaper, church, and government archives, and interview immigrants wherever he found them.
His decades of research resulted in four books: Building Little Italy: Philadelphia’s Italians Before Mass Migration in 1998, Priest, Parish, and People: Saving the Faith in Philadelphia’s Little Italy in 2007, Little Italy in the Great War: Philadelphia’s Italians on the Battlefield and Home Front in 2020, and Philadelphia’s Germans: From Colonial Settlers to Enemy Aliens in 2021.
“The small contingent of Italians were components of a colorful kaleidiscope of characters and activities in the rapidly changing context provided by Philadelphia.”
Novelist Albert DiBartolomeo reviewed Building Little Italy for The Inquirer in 1998 and said it “is a serious work of scholarship that sheds considerable light on areas of history and population study where previously there were but shadows.”
He also had dozens of academic articles, book chapters, and reviews published in magazines and journals. His research and letters to the editor were featured often in The Inquirer and Daily News.
He advised other authors and researchers on their work, and was a longtime member and two-term president of the American Italian Historical Association. He and his wife, Sandra, visited Italy every summer for decades.
“His hobbies were hiking, writing, and research,” his wife said. One friend from college called him the “best human being on the face of the earth … a totally genuine person and a fun guy.”
“The placement of photographs on tombstones is a unique expression of the Italian attitude toward death. They want you to see what the person looked like in the best of times.”
Richard Nicholas Juliani was born Aug. 11, 1938, in Camden. He played baseball and basketball with his friends and two older brothers, and graduated from Camden Catholic High School.
He met Sandra Parker in a sociology class at Rutgers, and they married in 1962, and had a daughter, Alexandra, and a son, Richard. They lived in Drexelbrook and later Bala Cynwyd and Wynnewood.
“He was a friendly, warm, intelligent person,” his wife said.
Dr. Juliani was a devoted Notre Dame football and basketball fan. He and his wife hiked all over Italy. He followed the local pro sports teams, and a friend said he made “excellent cappuccino.”
“I recall him as such a nice warm person who took an interest in the lives and well-being of his students beyond our learning sociology.”
He protested for civil rights and against war. He doted for years on a Welsh Corgi he named Mr. MacGregor and told The Inquirer in a 1998 story about his first book: “Whenever he wanted to go out, I had to stop writing and walk him.”
“He was a gentle soul who led a life of service,” his son said. “He was fun loving but serious. He was great with people and quick to smile.”
In addition to his wife, children, and brothers, Dr. Juliani is survived by other relatives.
A celebration of his life was held Feb. 27.
Donations in his name may be made to Doctors Without Borders, Box 5030, Hagerstown, Md. 21741.