Elena Past received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, writing a dissertation on contemporary Italian crime fiction and its roots in Italian criminological thought. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on contemporary Italian literature and cinema in the interdisciplinary context of the environmental humanities. She’s written articles, books, and book chapters on topics including crime fiction, ecomafias, ecocriticism and ecomedia studies, posthumanism, and animal studies.
Elena’s first book, Methods of Murder: Beccarian Introspection and Lombrosian Vivisection in Italian Crime Fiction, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2012. It traces Italian epistemologies of crime, born in the work of philosopher Cesare Beccaria and criminologist Cesare Lombroso, in contemporary crime fiction. Her most recent book, Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human, investigates contemporary Italian cinema and its relationship (narrative, technical, historical) with locations of filming. It was awarded the Howard R. Marraro prize from the Modern Language Association.
Collaborative editorial work is important in Elena’s professional life: she and her colleague Deborah Amberson (University of Florida) published a co-edited volume titled Thinking Italian Animals: Human and Posthuman in Modern Italian Literature and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), about the important roles of nonhuman animals in the Italian literary, cinematic and philosophical traditions. Deborah and Elena are currently working on a companion volume about Italian plants and vegetal philosophies. With colleagues Serenella Iovino (University of North Carolina) and Enrico Cesaretti (University of Virginia), she co-edited Italy and the Environmental Humanities: Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies (University of Virgina Press, 2018), an engaging colletion of essays by ecocritics, environmental historians, art historians, and tree-seekers. With Danielle Hipkins and Monica Seger, she co-edits The Italianist Film Issue, a prestigious publication for Italian film scholars. She also wrote an essay on the tomato harvest and migration in contemporary Italy with her colleague Giovanna Faleschini Lerner, published in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies.
Currently, Elena is researching a book on the historic Ferrania celluloid film factory, an iconic producer of filmstock for the industry. Her work investigates the environmental history of the factory and the different ways celluloid “lives” beyond its eclipse in the digital era. She and a team of graduate students at Wayne State University are curating a blog, Analog Anthropocene, that invites photographers to collaborate in thinking about photography, media, and environmental change.
Selected Publications
Books
Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.
Methods of Murder: Beccarian Introspection and Lombrosian Vivisection in Italian Crime Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Edited Volumes and Journal Issues
Italy and the Environmental Humanities. Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies. Ed. Serenella Iovino, Enrico Cesaretti, and Elena Past. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018.
Animal Humanities. Special section of the journal Ecozon@. Ed. Elena Past and Deborah Amberson. Ecozon@ 7.1 (2016).
Thinking Italian Animals: Human and Posthuman in Modern Italian Literature and Film. Ed. Deborah Amberson and Elena Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Antonioni’s Anthropocene and Guerra’s Enchanting Gardens.” Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 11.1 (2023): 41-59.
“The Eclipse of the Godfather’s Garden: From the Agromafia to the Money Mafia.” Italian Americans on Screen. Ed. Daniele Fioretti and Fulvio Orsitto. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 195-212.
“Il buco, or Underground Language in the Anthropocene,” Aesthetica Preprint 121 (2022): 27-45.
“Petroculture, Southern Thought, and Itinerant Cinematic Resistance in Basilicata.” Basilicata and Southern Italy Between Film and Ecology. Eds. Alberto Baracco and Manuela Gieri. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 27-46.
“Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Vangelo: Ferrania Film, Industrial Heritage, Environmental Futures.” Stati Generali del Patrimonio Industriale. Ed. Edoardo Currà, Marina Docci, Claudio Menichelli, Martina Russo, Laura Severi. Venice: Marsilio, 2022. 2911-2924.
“The Ferrania Acquisition, the Cinematic Archive and the Anthropocene: Celluloid Materialities.” La valle dell’Eden 37 (2021): 147-158.
“Terra nell’Antropocene: verso un cinema rigenerativo.” Quaderni del CSCI 17 (2021): 181-190.
“Thinking across Cultures: A Conceptual Lexicon for Foreign Languages and the Environment.” Co-authored with Kate Paesani. ADFL Bulletin 46.2 (2021): 11-19.
“Itinerant Ecocriticism, Southern Thought, and Italian Cinema on Foot.” Ecozon@ 11.2 (2020): 26-33.
“Environmental Fellini: Petroculture, the Anthropocene, and the Cinematic Road.” Wiley Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini. Frank Burke, Marguerite Waller, Marita Gubareva. Wiley Blackwell, 2020. 347-360.
“Toxic Fruits: Tomatoes, Migration, and the New Italian Slavery.” Co-authored with Giovanna Faleschini Lerner. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 25.5 (2020): 592-619.
“Fire and Ice: Thinking Film, Climate Change, and (Stealth) Environmental Humanities with Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (2015).” Perspectives on Ecocriticism: Local Beginnings, Global Echoes. Ed. Ingemar Haag, Karin Molander Danielsson, Marie Ohman, and Thorsten Paplow. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. 11-30.
“Volcanic Matters: Magmatic Cinema, Ecocriticism, and Italy.” L’analisi linguistica e letteraria XXIV.2 (2016): 135-46.
“Animal Humanities, or, On Reading and Writing the Nonhuman.” Introduction to special section of Ecozon@. Co-authored with Deborah Amberson. Ecozon@ 7.1 (2016): 1-9.
“Mediterranean Ecocriticism: The Sea in the Middle.” Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. Ed. Hubert Zapf. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. 368-384.
“Documenting Ecomafia.” Nuovo Cinema Politico. Eds. Giancarlo Lombardi and Christian Uva. New York: Peter Lang (Italian Modernities), 2016.
“Gadda’s Pasticciaccio and the Knotted Posthuman Household.” Co-authored with Deborah Amberson. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism. 4.1 (2016): 63-78.
“Il cinema e il suono del silenzio: Le quattro volte.” Animal Studies: Rivista italiana di antispecismo 11 (2015): 56-71.
“(Re)membering Kinship: Living with Goats in The Wind Blows Round and Le quattro volte.” Thinking Italian Animals: Human and Posthuman in Modern Italian Literature and Film. Eds. Deborah Amberson and Elena Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 233-50.
“Island Hopping, Liquid Materiality, and the Mediterranean Cinema of Emanuele Crialese.” Ecozon@ 4.2 (2013): 49-66.
“‘Trash is Gold’: Documenting the Ecomafia and Campania’s Waste Crisis.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 20.3 (2013): 597-621.