Fantastik Italian: Italian/Americans in Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction

What and where are peatlands? This month we sat down with conservationist Jennifer de Mooy to hear about this unique and underappreciated environment in her new book: Water, Carbon, Time: Exploring Peatlands in a Warming World. Expanding their geography from the focus on Irish histories to their global occurrence and exploring their carbon sequestration, get "bogged" down in this episode!   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA     If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded August 20, 2026 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We sat down with eco poet D. M. Gordon to discuss her new poetry collection Loosestrife for Porcupines! Full of capybaras, horses, porcupines, and countless other nonhuman beings, the poetry collection reflects the verdant area in which Gordon lives, where she is surrounded by "everybody." We are happy to have a poet on after a long stretch of academic (though still wonderful!) texts, putting into practice the same fiction/poetic/academic mesh that the ISLE journal implements.   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA     If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded May 26, 2026 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We sat down with the co-editors and one contributor to a new collection: Italian/American Fantastika: Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction from Pinocchio to Star Trek. The text looks at how Italian-Americans and also Italian-Canadians have contributed to some of the most notorious speculative stories in horror, fantasy, and science fiction in ways previously overlooked. The Ecofeminist Fantastika section and the Italian-Canadian history as non-indigenous other interacting with indigenous and settler groups will be of particular interest for our listeners!   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA     If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded May 15, 2026 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We spoke with Denise Baden to chat about her work as a sustainability professor in a business school. From developing sustainability curriculum, writing theatre to resist doom and gloom environmentalism, or championing characters in popular media that lead sustainable lives, Baden is busy. We discuss her initiatives and what's to come in this month's episode.   For more of Denise:   Website: dabaden.com Her Project: Greenstories.org.uk LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/a-jigsaw-to-save-the-world-7300475505529540608   For student and amateur theatre groups, if you'd like to perform her plays royalty free, reach out to her!   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA     If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded March 11, 2026 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We sat down with Matthew Thompson to discuss his forthcoming book: On Life Support: Eco-Dystopian Cinema in the Long 1970s. The book charts various environmentalisms in 1970s films, containment vs. contamination, that evolved out of the environmentalist work of the 1960s typified by Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich. Thompson's idea of "contamination" jockeys with the conceptual north star of recent ecocriticism: interconnectivity. This connects to an earlier episode we had with Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay on Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction.   For more of Thompson:   Website: https://matthewithompson.com   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded February 4, 2026 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month, we got to speak with Chaz Yingling and Andrew Kettler about their forthcoming book: The Once and the Future Cow. The book's aim is to show an understudied history of the cow not just in the American West, but on the islands in the Caribbean. But recentering the cow also means paying attention not to the typical unilateral framing of human-nonhuman interaction as humans impacting cows, but instead to how cows themselves are agential actors that profoundly shaped their surroundings.   For more of Yingling and Kettler:   Yingling Website: https://www.chazyingling.com/ Kettler Email: [email protected] Kettler Academic Profile: https://andrewkettler.academia.edu/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded December 11, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Kaja sat down with Lindsay and I this month to discuss how scholars typically focus on the "were" in the term werewolf, but she wants us to bring more focus to the "wolf" aspect. Why are we fascinated by the prospect of becoming a wolf, and why do coyotes captivate us when they come into cities? In her new book, The Ecogothic Werewolf in Literature: Wolves, Woods and Wilderness, she tells us what werewolves tell us about ourselves and about wolves themselves. Recorded right after Halloween, this episode is a spooky one!   For more of Kaja:   Twitter: @KajaFranck Email: [email protected]   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded November 5, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

What is ecofascism and who "is" ecofascist or "does" ecofascism? Alex Menrisky walks us through why his new book is titled "Everyday Ecofascism," or the ways that ecofascism is not solely a far-right governmental structure but a genre, a mode of storytelling. This means that ecofascism emerges through not just laws and political leaders but through quotidian acts and utterances by citizens and politicians alike. Listen in as he walks us through representations of land, food, drugs, tools, and more that often utilize both ecological visions of catastrophe and alarm with fascist thought.   For more of Alex Menrisky:   Email: [email protected] Uconn Faculty Page: https://english.uconn.edu/person/alex-menrisky/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded October 17, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month we had a fascinating conversation with Bart Welling, whose presentation at the ASLE Conference this last summer was caught by Lindsay! Bart's research was informed by his own road trip around the country, a month-long, 12,000-mile trip. This chat was particularly special as Bart is still completing his book project, and we aim to have more episodes in the future with more research-in-progress!   Bart walked us through his new book project, "Resisting Energy: The Long Struggle Against Irresponsible Power," that looks at the modern debates over fossil fuels and energy, arguing we need to rethink energy (including "clean" energy) with the laborers who are often treated as dispensable.     For more of Bart Welling:   Email: [email protected]   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded September 26nd, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

This month we sat down with Jon Pitt to discuss his new book "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan." The book spans Japanese writers and filmmakers from the 1930s to today whose works all ask a similar question: What would it mean for humans to be more like plants? Looking at the ways that this question informed critiques of colonialism and even today immigration in these works, Pitt labels how these authors take up the plasticity of plants "becoming botanical."   This episode is a great companion piece to our last episode with Rachel DiNitto on Japanese Ecocinema!   For more of Jon Pitt:   Email: [email protected]   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded August 22nd, 2025 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0