Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities

This volume explores Italian science fiction from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, covering literary texts, films, music and visual works by figures as diverse as Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Peter Kolosimo, Primo Levi, Antonio Margheriti, Gilda Musa and Roberto Vacca. It broadens the horizons of both Italian studies and the environmental humanities by addressing a long-neglected genre, and expands our understanding of relations between the ecological, the imaginary and the sociopolitical. The chapters draw on a variety of methodological frameworks, including animal studies, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, eco-media studies, energy humanities and posthumanism. The reader will gain insights into consequential topics such as anthropocentrism/speciesism, ecomodernist thought, environmental justice struggles at the planetary and regional level, non-human and new materialist ontologies, utopian/dystopian philosophies and prospects for transitioning beyond the crisis of petro-modernity through the construction of post-depletion futures.

Open Access versions of the introduction and six of the book chapters are available on the Liverpool University Press website.

Daniel A. Finch-Race is an Assistant Professor in Geography in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna.

Emiliano Guaraldo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at the New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice.

Marco Malvestio is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Literature in the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Padua.