The Italian Diaspora Canon Curated by Retrofuturista/WeirdItaly Authors

In February 2026, SUNY Press will consolidate a decade of research into the Mediterranean “weird” with the release of Italian/American Fantastika. Edited by Marc DiPaolo and Anthony Lioi, this volume moves beyond mere genre mapping to investigate how the Italian imagination has responded to major technological and social shifts through the lens of speculative art. The book tracks the transition from medieval eschatological visions to the mechanical utopias of the last century, identifying a cultural identity that expresses itself through cinema, comics, and transnational literature.

The content ranges from the dark, etched geometries of Dino Battaglia to the bio-mechanical obsessions of Futurism, and into contemporary depictions of Italian-descended “mutants” in American pop culture, such as the Petrelli family in Heroes. The work contrasts the rigid structures of the colonial and fascist past with new themes of ecofeminism and climate fiction, proving that for the Italian diaspora, the “fantastic” has functioned as a language to decode the present and anticipate the tomorrow.

The Retrofuturista and Weird Italy team, represented by Dominique Musorrafiti and Matteo Damiani, contributed two primary components to the volume. In the essay Dante and Italian Genre Fiction, Dominique Musorrafiti and Matteo Damiani analyze the Divine Comedy as the first true system of speculative world-building, capable of influencing the narrative structures of modern horror and fantasy. Complementing the volume, the appendix The Canon of Speculative Fiction of the Italian Diaspora offers an extensive mapping that catalogs over two millennia of creativity—from early Roman chronicles of the supernatural to modern sci-fi productions on digital streaming platforms.

Now officially archived within the Library of Congress, this volume serves as a compass for those seeking to explore the roots of an aesthetic that has always blended the ancient with the avant-garde.

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