Serenella Iovino - Italy and the Environmental Humanities: Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies

Acknowledgments

A book is a wonderful prism. Through it, authors can see the size of their debts, the extension of their entanglements, and the length of their roots. When the book is, like this one, the outcome of so many exchanges and intersections, the prism ends up reflecting a sort of friendly reunion, and gratitude turns into a declaration of interdependence.

The first person we wish to thank is Boyd Zenner, our acquisitions editor at University of Virginia Press. Boyds professional energy, personal encouragement, and unique joie de vivre were a constant source of motivation: the image of her sitting at her desk on Sprigg Lane, amidst her landscape of books and curious objects, has been a reassuring companion during occasional moments of difficulty. At UVA, we also wish to thank to our project editor Mark Mones and Siobhan Drummond, who assisted us during the copyediting process. Our deepest appreciation also goes to the two anonymous reviewers of this volume, who provided us with encouragement, stimulating criticism, and luminous suggestions.

Unconditioned gratitude also binds us to the scholarly collectives that enabled all the human and intellectual entanglements at work in this volume: the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS), the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE). Thank you for bringing together lively communities of people who believe in the existence of reality more than in disciplinary boundaries, and for whom the whole is always something more than the sum of its parts.

Thanks go to the numerous colleagues and friends who provided useful feedback along the way, giving us the chance to test our ideas in conversations, conference presentations, e-mails, Skype meetings, lunches, dinners, and an entirely reasonable number of aperitivi: Joni Adamson, Eleonora Adorni, Deborah Amberson, Aurelio Angelini, Stefania Barca, Christina Ball, Elisa Bolchi, Antonello Borra, Paolo Chirumbolo, Jeffrey J. Cohen, Roberto Dainotto, Cristina Della Coletta, Rossella Di Rosa, Lowell Duckert, Rebecca Falkoff, Thomas Harrison, Federico Luisetti, Massimo Lollini, Serpil Oppermann, Karen Pinkus, Kate Rigby, Silvia Ross, Domenico Scarpa, Mario Salomone, Ed Slesak, Heather Sullivan, Antonella Tarpino, Maurizio Valsania, Louise Westling, Bertrand Westphal, Hubert Zapf. We also recognize those who should appear here, but who our fallible memories have forgotten: as Borges or Calvino would remind us, a complete list would be impossible in any case.

For their creativity and spirit of initiative, we also wish to thank the graduate students who organized conferences and seminars on topics related to the ones in this book: Federica Di Blasio, Marianna Nespoli, and Rebecca Rose (UC Los Angeles), Maria Pia Arpioni (Universit di Venezia Ca Foscari), Emiliano Guaraldo (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill).

Within and across the scholarly community, Salvatore Settis and Luca Mercalli deserve particular gratitude for being unique inspirational examples of cultural activism on behalf of landscape, citizenship, and environmental protection. Through their insightful work, they confirmed our conviction that Italy matters in conversations about the future of our shared planet. And grazie to Rosi Braidotti, a great philosopher who crosses countries and disciplines, for inspiring this book with her insightful address to the AAIS in Zurich, and then for completing it with her brilliant afterword.

Finally, we wish to thank all our authors for their generosity, patience, and professionalism. Contributing to a book as unusual as this one is no easy task. They all took up the challenge with cheerfulness and scholarly zeal, and we hope you will enjoy the result.

This book is dedicated to our partners and familiesacross lands, species, and spatio-temporal borders, in the dream of ever-new entanglements and prismatic visions of interdependence.

Gerardo Dottoris La Virata (1931) is reproduced by permission of the Casa Museo Boschi di Stefano, Milan, Italy. All rights reserved. Many thanks to Chiara Fabi and Martina Vigan for their invaluable help.

Gerardo Dottoris Mussolini: Anno XI (a.k.a.) Ritratto del Duce is reproduced by permission of the Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy. All rights reserved. Thank you to Maria Grazia Conti and Danka Giacon for their kindness and responsiveness to our last-minute inquiries.

Despite our best efforts, we were unable to determine the copyright owner of Alessandro Bruschettis Aeroveduta con laghi vulcanici (1933). It has been reproduced in this book following a good faith effort.

A more extended version of Serenella Iovinos Italo Calvino and the Landscapes of the Anthropocene: A Narrative Stratigraphy, titled Sedimenting Stories: Italo Calvino and the Extraordinary Strata of the Anthropocene, originally appeared in Neohelicon 44.2 (2017), DOI 10.1007/s11059-017-0396-7. Portions of that text are reproduced in reviewed form with permission of the publisher. Copyright by Akadmiai Kiad Zrt., Budapest (2017). Gratitude is due to Peter Hajdu and Nikoletta Schalbert at the Akademiai Kiad for their valuable help.

A longer version of Enrico Cesarettis Eco-Futurism? Nature, Matter, and Body in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti originally appeared in Nicols Fernndez-Medina and Maria Truglio, eds., Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in Spain and Italy (New York: Routledge, 2016), 23248. The text is reproduced in reviewed form with permission of the publisher.

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Italy and the Environmental Humanities: Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies