Italian/American Fantastika : Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction from Pinocchio to Star Trek.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Di Paolo, Marc.

Contributor:

Di Paolo, Marc.

Lioi, Anthony

Series:

SUNY Series in Italian/American Culture Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction.

Fantasy fiction, American.

Horror tales, American.

Italian Americans in literature.

Science fiction, American.

Speculative fiction, American.

Genre:

Literary criticism

Essays

Physical Description:

1 online resource (414 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, 2026.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword: Science Fiction, Fantastika, and Italian American Identity

Works Cited

Preface: Are Italians Welcome on the Starship Enterprise? A Personal Essay on Witches, Starships, and a Little Wooden Boy

What Is at Stake for Me in My Quest to Build a Canon of Italian American Fantastika?

Note

Introduction: "Is Italian American Speculative Fiction a Thing?"

Part 1: Defining a Field

1. Mutants in La Merica: The Whiteness of the Petrellis in NBC's Heroes

Mutation as Metaphor

Same Face, Same Race? Phenotypic Transformation

Mutant Affects: Empathy versus Sociopathy

Genocide, We've All Been There

The Mutant Savior

Conclusion: The Egg in the Castle

Notes Toward a New Mutation

2. Robots, Witches, and Paisani: Settler Colonial Systems and Intercultural Relation Building in Indigenous and Italian Canadian Fantastic Literature

Settler Colonialism, the Italian Diaspora, and Fantastika

The Settler and Its Non-Indigenous Others

Life Beyond Settlers and Others

Notes

3. Vampires, Metaphysics, and Italian American Identity in Abel Ferrara's The Addiction

The Addiction and the Critique of Vampire Capitalism

Beyond the Literal and Structural Meaning of the Filmic Text: The Addiction and Italian American Identity

Part 2: Case Studies in Italy's Fantasies, Futurisms, and Gothic Horror

4. An Italian Nightmare: Gianni Montanari's La sepoltura Between Dystopia and Science Fiction

5. Fascism and Pheromones: Futurist Fantasies of Domination in Bruce Sterling's Fantascienza

6. Italians of the Caribbean: Piracy and History in Salgari, Sabatini, and Pratt's Adventure Narratives

Pirates

Salgari's Parallel Caribbean Worlds.

Sabatini and the Slave's Point of View

Pratt and the Postcolonial Pirates

Conclusion

7. Genealogies of Horror: Dario Argento's Do You Like Hitchcock? Or, Reading National Horror Against the Local

Horror Cinema: The Local, the Transnational, and the Supranational

The Hitchcock Connection

The German Flux

Return to the Italian Locale

Conclusions

8. "That Ghastly Whiteness": Dino Battaglia Adapts Poe and Melville to Comics

Interlude: Weird Italy: Dante and Italian Genre Fiction

Consolidation of Italian Identity Through Cinema and TV

Inferno

Dante and the Church

Christianity and the Synthesis of Paganism

Dante's Legacy: Between the Sacred and the Profane

Recipe for Success

The Hero's Journey

Fantastic Journeys, Bureaucracy, Demons, and the Supernatural

The Folklore of Horror

Part 3 Reimagining Italian America: Artifacts of Anti-fascist and Ecofeminist Fantastika

9. "The Ocean Inside Her": C. L. Herman's The Drowning Summer as Italian American Young Adult Speculative Fiction

The Drowning Summer as Young Adult Speculative Fiction

The Drowning Summer and Italian American Women's Writing

Food and/as Identity

Environmentalism and The Drowning Summer

The Ocean and Mina's Identity

Bisexual Identity in The Drowning Summer

Sustainable Fashion and Identity in The Drowning Summer

Integrating Identity in The Drowning Summer

10. "True Blue" Humanities: Madonna's EcoFantastika

Fantasy, Fantastika, and EcoFantastika

Reimagining Madonna's Material World

Madonna's World Storm

Four Minutes to Save the Planet?

11. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: Reconceptualizing Italia, Italian Americans, and Fantastika Through a Wooden Boy's Questions

Works Cited.

12. Race and Italian/American Identity in Dorothy Bryant's Miss Giardino and The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You

Africanism and the Madwoman Trope in Miss Giardino

Italians and Africans as Spiritual Kin

Reimagining Columbus

Reimagining Black Diaspora

13. Dorothy Fontana: The New Jersey "Secretary" Who Cocreated Star Trek

"Family Is Sacred": How Fontana and Spock Hungered for Their Absent Fathers

The Animated Series, The Next Generation, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship

We All Deserve to Live in D. C. Fontana's Socialist Utopia

Appendix: The Canon of Speculative Fiction of the Italian Diaspora

Children's Books

Comics and Graphic Novels

Fantasy Novels and Short Stories

Film

Folklore and Oral Literature

Histories, Historical Figures, and Documents

Horror Novels and Short Stories

Literature

Music

Painting, Sculpture, and Illustration

Science Fiction Novels, Short Stories, and Periodicals

Television and Streaming Series and Miniseries

Theater

Video Games

Web Resources

List of Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

979-88-558-0706-6

979-88-558-0565-9

OCLC:

1568053529