Italian/American Fantastika

Delves into Italian contributions to these genres and what those contributions mean to global Italian cultural and political identity.Diverse and minority populations worldwide have often embraced horror, science fiction, and fantasy narratives as a means of coming to terms with the multigenerational processes of migration and enculturation and of acting in opposition to totalitarian forces everywhere. Italian/American Fantastika explores how works in these genres by and about Italians from Italy, Canada, and the United States provide models for rethinking and refashioning what it means to be Italian in the twenty-first century. This is the first book to examine how Italian ethnic identity intersects with the whole universe of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, from the literary to the popular, and from print to visual media. Written by experts in multiple fields, from art history to film studies, and in an array of writing styles—scholarly, journalistic, personal, activist—this is a book for scholars and general readers interested in genre storytelling, ethnic studies, or the arts and humanities as a whole.

Marc DiPaolo is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the author of several books, including Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones, also published by SUNY Press. Anthony Lioi is Professor of English at the Juilliard School, where he teaches composition, American literature, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of Nerd Ecology.