Past Lectures
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Free and open to the public; see below for a link to register.
John F. Kennedy was a voracious reader and he put his reading to work in his speeches.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Center for Renaissance Studies Programs
Registration is closed.
“What Dante Means to Me” is the title of an essay by T.S. Eliot published in his To Criticize the Critic, originally given as a lecture. 2016 recipient of the prestigious Balzan Prize Boitani has adopted Eliot’s title to indicate that he, too, will reconstruct the story of his own relationship with Dante.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Dante Lecture
Philosophers typically attribute the foundation of modern thought to René Descartes, who in his Discours de la méthode (1637) extensively deploys metaphors of “founding” for his theory of how the edifice of knowledge is regrounded on the clear and distinct certainty of the cogito: “I think, therefore I am.” Cultural historians sometimes locate a remoter starting point for mode
Friday, March 20, 2015
Dante Lecture
2015 will mark the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri in 1265, and the 31st year since the first Lectura Dantis Newberrania.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Dante Lecture
Grave robbing, hidden bones, empty tombs, exhumation, sacred dust—Dante’s Immortal Remains assembles these and other pieces of Dante’s lively skeletal history, from his burial in 1321 to a computer-generated reconstruction of his face in 2006.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Dante Lecture
Dante is often characterized as the pioneer of a European vernacularization movement that had in fact been going on long enough for him to take his distance from it. This paper considers Dante’s engagement with antiquity against the background of the contradictory impulses of foreignization and domestication in the translating practices of his day.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Dante Lecture
What Is So New about Dante's Vita nova?
The lecture attempts to define and account for the innovative literary features of Dante’s youthful masterpiece, the Vita nova. In particular, it examines its primary sources, its structure, and its imposing metaliterary and self-reflective character.
A reception will follow the lecture.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Dante Lecture
Dante’s Grant of Safe-Conduct through Hell
This lecture explored Dante’s privilege to travel through Hell unharmed and why at certain points, namely at the gates of Dis (Inferno 8-9), this writ is not honored.
Learn more about the speaker: Justin Steinberg, University of Chicago
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Dante Lecture
Circulating Melody: A Reading of Paradiso 23
Learn more about the the speaker: Rachel Jacoff, Wellesley College
Friday, September 12, 2008
Dante Lecture
Reading Dante’s poem, one is struck by the natural images used, from the wood at the beginning to the sun and stars at the very end. Does Dante employ a “method” with these images? What do they mean? And does their meaning change from Inferno to Purgatorio and Paradiso?
Friday, February 16, 2007
Dante Lecture
The Perils of Entering Dante’s Paradise
Christian Moevs, University of Notre Dame
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Friday, February 10, 2006
Dante Lecture
Dante’s Priscian, or Grammatical Insemination
Gary Cestaro, DePaul University
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Thursday, February 10, 2005
Dante Lecture
Dante the Abolitionist: African-American Appropriations of the Italian Poet in the Nineteenth Century
Dennis Looney, University of Pittsburgh
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Saturday, February 9, 2002
Dante Lecture
Reading from Their Translation of Dante’s Inferno
Robert Hollander, Princeton University Jean Hollander, The College of New Jersey
Saturday, February 24, 2001
Dante Lecture
Phenomenology of a Strange Passion
Roberta de Monticello, University of Geneva
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Saturday, April 13, 1996
Dante Lecture
A New Source for Dante’s Ulysses
Robert Hollander, Princeton University
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Saturday, December 9, 1995
Dante Lecture
Access to Authority: Dante in the Epistle to Cangrande
Albert Russell Ascoli, Northwestern University (now at the University of California, Berkeley)
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Saturday, June 4, 1994
Dante Lecture
Du Bellay’s Olive and the Site of Petrarch in Early Modern Print
William Kennedy, Cornell University
Saturday, June 4, 1994
Dante Lecture
Fed by Fainter Flames: Pleiade Imitative Practice and the Petrarchist Canon
JoAnn DelaNeva, University of Notre Dame
Saturday, June 4, 1994
Dante Lecture
Women in the Book Trade in Italy, 1470-1620
Deborah Parker, University of Virginia
Friday, June 3, 1994
Dante Lecture
Editing Dante’s Commedia in the Renaissance
Brian Richardson, University of Leeds
Friday, June 3, 1994
Dante Lecture
The “Packaging” of New Italian Classics in the Cinquecento
Daniel Javitch, New York University
Saturday, May 14, 1994
Dante Lecture
Vernacular Literature and Printing in Renaissance Italy
Domenico De Robertis, University of Florence
Thursday, May 12, 1994
Dante Lecture
Dante in Renaissance Italy
Elissa Weaver, University of Chicago
Saturday, April 30, 1994
Dante Lecture
Canonizing Dante: Printing, Reading, Collecting
Theodore Cachey, Jr., University of Notre Dame and Paul Gehl, Newberry Library
Saturday, December 5, 1992
Dante Lecture
“Our bed is green!” Dante and Saint Bernard on the Institutional Church: “ectulus noster floridus”
Steven Botterill, University of California, Berkeley
Saturday, March 28, 1992
Dante Lecture
The First Canto of the Divine ComedyFranco Ferrucci, Rutgers University
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Saturday, November 16, 1991
Dante Lecture
Dante the Lyric Poet: The Vita Nuova, the Convivio, and the Divine ComedyRegina Psaki, University of Oregon
Saturday, March 2, 1991
Dante Lecture
Zygmunt C. Baranski, University of Reading (now at University of Notre Dame)
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Saturday, November 10, 1990
Dante Lecture
Christopher Kleinhenz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Saturday, November 10, 1990
Dante Lecture
Cristina Grau, University of Valencia
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Saturday, October 6, 1990
Dante Lecture
Lino Pertile, University of Edinburg (now at Harvard University)
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Saturday, March 3, 1990
Dante Lecture
Frank Masciandaro, Kent State University (now at the University of Connecticut)
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Saturday, March 3, 1990
Dante Lecture
Teodolinda Barolini, University of New York (now at Columbia University)
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Saturday, October 21, 1989
Dante Lecture
Ricardo Quinones, Claremont McKenna College
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Saturday, October 21, 1989
Dante Lecture
Dante Della Terza, Harvard University
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Saturday, November 12, 1988
Dante Lecture
Robert Hollander, Princeton University
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Saturday, November 12, 1988
Dante Lecture
Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, University of Padua
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Saturday, November 12, 1988
Dante Lecture
John Freccero, Stanford University (now at New York Unversity)
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Saturday, April 23, 1988
Dante Lecture
Dante in English (Translating the Comedy)
Mark Musa, Indiana University
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Saturday, February 6, 1988
Dante Lecture
Allegory and Doctrine in Inferno 8 and 9
Amilcare Iannucci, University of Toronto
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Saturday, November 7, 1987
Dante Lecture
Is “Journey to Beatrice” a Preparation for Sanctifying Grace?
Antonio C. Mastrobuono, University of Illinos at Chicago
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Saturday, March 14, 1987
Dante Lecture
Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant in Dante’s Paradiso
Louis LaFavia, Catholic University of America
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Saturday, March 14, 1987
Dante Lecture
The Hermetic Vein in Dante’s Commedia
Paolo Valesio, Yale University (now at Columbia University)
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Saturday, January 24, 1987
Dante Lecture
Dante’s Hardened Heart: The Cocito Cantos
Lawrence Baldassaro, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Saturday, January 24, 1987
Dante Lecture
The Eunoe and the Regaining of the Last Good
Dino Cervigni, University of Notre Dame (now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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Saturday, November 22, 1986
Dante Lecture
Logic and Power in Dante
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University
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Saturday, May 31, 1986
Dante Lecture
Esto visibile parlare: A Synaesthetic Approach to Purgatorio 10, 55-63Gino Casagrande, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Saturday, April 12, 1986
Dante Lecture
If the Skies Were Paper: Dante’s Cranes
Kenneth Knoespel, Georgia Institute of Technology
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Saturday, November 2, 1985
Dante Lecture
Francesca and the Language of Desire
Michelangelo Picone, McGill University
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Saturday, April 20, 1985
Dante Lecture
The Structural Leit-motif of Maturation in the Commedia
David Carozza, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Saturday, March 9, 1985
Dante Lecture
Il cantor dei bucolici carmi: The Influence of Virgilian Pastoral on Dante’s Depiction of Earthly Paradise
Caron Cioffi, University of Chicago
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Saturday, February 16, 1985
Dante Lecture
What Statius Meant for Dante
Winthrop Wetherbee, University of Chicago
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Saturday, December 1, 1984
Dante Lecture
Femmina e Donna Santa: Dante’s Second Dream
Dino Cervigni, University of Notre Dame, (now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Saturday, December 1, 1984
Dante Lecture
The Cantos of Statius
Christopher Kleinhenz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Saturday, November 3, 1984
Dante Lecture
Saint Francis and Dante
Vitorre Branca, University of Padua
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Saturday, May 26, 1984
Dante Lecture
The Roman Emperors in the Divine Comedy
Nicolae Illiescu, Harvard University
Saturday, March 3, 1984
Dante Lecture
Statius, Dante, and Virgil: an Unusual Trinity
Christopher Kleinheinz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Saturday, December 3, 1983
Dante Lecture
Dante and the Tradition of the Two Beatitudes
Mario Trovato, Northwestern University
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Saturday, October 15, 1983
Dante Lecture
Purgatorio 33.41: A darne tempo gia stele propinque
Antonio Mastrobuono, University of Illinois at Chicago
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