Ancient Astronauts in Italy. Peter Kolosimo’s PseudoArchaeology and the Mysteries of a Changing Country

Ancient Astronauts in Italy. Peter Kolosimo’s PseudoArchaeology and the Mysteries of a Changing Country

This lecture investigates the ways in which Peter Kolosimo’s pseudo-archaeological non-fiction intersects with ecological issues connected to recent Italian environmental history and the larger phenomenon of the Anthropocene. The genre poses several questions about the impact of civilizations on the environment, as highlighted by scientists Gavin A. Schmidt and Adam Frank’s recent ‘Silurian hypothesis’, namely ‘if an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today?’. Given that ideas of disaster are central to reflections on the Anthropocene, Kolosimo’s depictions of the end of civilizations and the collapse of technologically advanced societies are apt for encouraging readers to engage with the dangers facing human society.

Marco Malvestio is an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Padua and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with a project on ‘The Ecology of Italian Science Fiction’. Following a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Padua, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. His publications include The Conflict Revisited: The Second World War in Post-Postmodern Fiction (Peter Lang, 2021), and Raccontare la fine del mondo. Fantascienza e Antropocene (nottetempo, 2021).

https://unc.zoom.us/j/94190551158?pwd=SlcvdE1GSXJSekIzdnlHZGFZYzdpZz09

Meeting ID: 941 9055 1158
Passcode: 642731