For an interview with Yale News, Francesco Casetti speaks with Lisa Prevost about his new book, Screening Fears: On Protective Media. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full interview. An excerpt appears below:

“‘There is a category of media that performs this double operation,’ Casetti said. ‘First, they protect individuals against the possible threats of the milieu, the environment. And then they safely project them toward the reality again, enabling them to understand and manage the world better.’

Screening Fears examines the ways in which that theory applies throughout time with a focus on three specific forms of media: the Phantasmagoria theater, a popular form of entertainment that emerged in France during the late 18th century, which used projectors known as ‘magic lanterns’ and other technologies to immerse viewers in a transcendent, ghostly experience; the lavish cinema palaces of the early-to-mid-20th century; and the electronic bubbles of the modern world.”