PRIN 2022 “Getting ready for the present: new global dystopian imaginaries and public engagement. Transcultural and transmedial dialogues between Japanese, Latin American, British and Anglo American cultures” (2022ZTES8N_001)Paola Scrolavezza (University of Bologna). Financed by the European Union - NextGenerationEU through the Italian Ministry of University and Research under PNRR - Mission 4 Component 2, Investment 1.1.

Among the aims of the project is the valorisation of the dialogic relationship that links dystopian and (post)apocalyptic Japanese and Latin American narrative production with Anglo-American traditions through mutual contaminations, re-mediations, and transmedia adaptations. The project thus begins by focusing on those “peripheral” areas which, more than others, are demonstrating vitality and a capacity for renewal with respect to the 21st-century Anglo-American production, long considered canonical for the field of study both for reasons of cultural tradition and cultural (neo)imperialism. The oscillation between centre and periphery, and between advanced capitalist countries and subaltern contexts, makes it possible to embrace themes with global reverberations, including their visual and media transpositions and remediations.

In particular, within these geographies, the aim is to investigate how literature and other forms of cultural and creative imagination can become tools capable of stimulating crucial reflections on time, the post-catastrophe world, and the ongoing environmental crisis, as well as fostering greater awareness and, above all, the emergence of a culture of change. Our contribution to this project culminated in the paper Transnational Deep Ecologies: Comparative Eco-Consciousness in Le Guin’s Always Coming Home and Crvenkovska’s The House Above the Waves, presented at the final conference. This work extends the project’s dialogue by examining how deep ecological ethics travel across cultures, bridging Anglo-American speculative traditions with new ecotopian imaginaries emerging from smaller, often overlooked literary landscapes.