NEW YORK (AP) – Tony Soprano, the TV mob boss who seemed to spend as much time with his psychotherapist as his consigliere, was no stranger to analysis.

But not this kind of analysis.

Nearly a year after the finale of “The Sopranos” left fans guessing what it all meant, dozens of scholars gathered at Fordham University on Friday to parse what the smash-hit series had to say about topics such as gender roles, the justice system, race relations and health care. The conference, which is open to the public, spans four days and 60 research presentations.

It’s tempting to wonder whether any phrase has been left unturned in discussions of the HBO series that ran from 1999 until its famously oblique ending last June. It inspired exhaustive media criticism and books on psychology, criminology, cooking, even waste management. It has cropped up in some college course catalogues, and Fordham hosted a 2002 panel discussion on the show’s impact on television history.

But this weekend’s symposium, which drew researchers from as far as Australia, appears to be the biggest academic airing of Sopranos-ophy yet.

“One of the deepest issues in the academic world is the relationship between fiction and reality,” said Fordham communication and media studies chairman Paul Levinson, who helped organize the conference. As a fictional lens on the true-life phenomenon of organized crime, Levinson says, “‘The Sopranos’ typifies that fascinating intersection.”

Indeed, the conference lineup included a New York criminal defense lawyer, a Sicilian Mafia prosecutor and an Italian judge, who looked at the show’s engagement with legal issues. Participants also heard from actor Dominic Chianese, who played Tony Soprano’s wily Uncle Junior.

Their sessions mingled with headier intellectual fare, such as discussions linking “The Sopranos” with Yeats, playwright Tom Stoppard and writer Flannery O’Connor. Other researchers delved into the show’s dream sequences, use of silence and approach to epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the source and nature of knowledge. The postmodern French philosopher Michel Foucault was invoked at least three times Friday – all before 10 a.m.

The topics of the sessions included: “Episode Five, or When Does a Narrative Become What it Is?” “Carmela Soprano as Emma Bovary: European Culture, Taste, and Class in ‘The Sopranos.”‘ “Body of Evidence: Tony Soprano’s Corporeal Battle.”

Some observers sniff at the idea that the small-screen misadventures of a suburban Mafia don deserve academic attention. Candace de Russy, a State University of New York trustee who writes a blog on education issues for the conservative National Review, suggested putting “The Sopranos” on an ivy-covered pedestal smacks of “what the Bard called … ‘three-piled hyperboles.”‘

But some participants see the series as nothing short of Shakespearean in scope – a treatment of such enduring themes as family, trust and power that is no less profound for being popular.

“There are important kinds of ideological messages and values that are communicated in (television and other popular) media that are ripe for analysis,” said Marymount Manhattan College English professor Peter Naccarato. He and communications professor Kathleen LeBesco were due to give a talk Saturday on how food and meals reflected the series’ currents of loyalty and betrayal – as when Tony feels guilty about patronizing a new restaurant instead of a longtime friend’s eatery.

To Ohio State University English professor Sean O’Sullivan, complex series like “The Sopranos” are modern-day mirrors of 19th-century serial novels – a “Pickwick Papers” for the cable generation, perhaps.

O’Sullivan was scheduled to discuss the narrative structure of “The Sopranos,” as was Ilaria Bisteghi, a recent graduate of Italy’s University of Bologna who wrote her senior thesis on the show. It “demonstrates that television has arrived at its top level of maturity and understanding of what you can do with it,” she said.

AP-ES-05-23-08 1839EDT