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9781648895739

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Damiano Benvengu and Matteo Gilebbi, both leading thinkers in ecocritical Italian studies, have convened a lively and wide-ranging collection that confirms the vital relevance of the Environmental Humanities in Italy. Their introductory essay lays out in extraordinarily clear and insightful terms the current state of the evolving interdisciplinary field, both regarding theoretical trends and in light of contemporary Italian legislation. The essays that follow, in a spiraling voyage through landscapes, materials, philosophies, and artistic practices, chart a new map of the Italian peninsula: a map of environmental atrocities but also of profoundly hopeful, creative responses. From the gritty surfaces of Turinese sidewalks to the dioxin-laced lungs of women in the Land of Fires, and from the imploring gaze of a young buffalo to the embracing arm of a land artist, the subjects are compelling, quirky, and have important lessons to impart about environmental pasts and futures. Dr. Elena Past Professor of Italian Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Wayne State University This is an eminently timely and theoretically sophisticated volume that does justice to the disciplinary and ethical complexity of the ecological impetus currently animating the Humanities. Targeting the theoretical and practical entanglements of nature and culture, the introduction sets out an engaging case for the centrality of the imagination in charting responses to our planetary crises. Nothing is taken for granted here as the editors provide lucid definitions of terms and references, from ecocriticism and the environmental humanities to the notion of Italy itself. The bi-partite division of the volume into theories and practices is a happy one, allowing for echoes to emerge across the two sections, designed, as the editors indicate, to converse and converge. The volume offers a truly impressive range as multiple forms of expression (film, literature, philosophy, sculpture, documentary) are placed in dialogue with an equally impressive range of environmental questions. In this, the volume embodies the spirit of the environmental humanities, characterized precisely by a truly transdisciplinary posture. This text will have broad appeal, attracting a readership of not only Italianists but also scholars with interests in animal studies, posthumanism, ecofeminism, and new materialism, to name just a few fields. Though rooted within Italian studies, a field central to the environmental humanities, this volume is not at all limited by its national focus. Indeed, multiple chapters explicitly broach global questions through a local Italianist lens. From this perspective, there are some truly stand-out essays, in particular, those by Iovino, Cannamela, and Saporito. The volume's appeal also lies in its activist engagement with the Anthropocene. Rejecting a posture of despair in the face of our planetary crises, the editors point to the capacity of imaginative thinking to reveal and safeguard our more-than-human planet. Prof. Dr. Deborah Amberson University of Florida

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"Damiano Benvegnù, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College (USA), an Association Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and the Creative Writing and Art Editor for Ecozon@: the European Journal of Literature, Culture and the Environment. His first book, 'Animals and Animality in Primo Levi', was published in the Animal Ethics series by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. As an environmental humanist, Dr. Benvegnù has published articles and essays ranging from critical animal studies and posthumanism to landscape theory, soundscape ecology, and ecocriticism. Currently an ACLS Fellow, Dr. Benvegnù's research lies at the intersection of digital and environmental humanities. Matteo Gilebbi holds a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently teaching courses in Italian language, literature, and culture at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on the connections between literature, cinema, and philosophy, using theories from ecocriticism, posthumanism, new-materialism, and animal studies. Dr. Gilebbi's most recent work has been published in the edited volumes 'Paolo Sorrentino's Cinema and Television' (Intellect, 2021), 'Towards the River's Mouth' (Lexington Books, 2018), 'Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies: Italy and the Environmental Humanities' (University of Virginia Press, 2018), 'The Carol J. Adams Reader: Writings and Conversations 1995-2015' (Bloomsbury, 2016), and 'Animals and the Posthuman in Italian Literature and Film' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He is also the co-founder of the ""Anthropocene Group"" at Dartmouth, whose mission is to provide a venue for faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and undergraduates from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to develop a cross-disciplinary understanding of the Anthropocene."

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