Our series of commemorative events to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante Alighieri continued on a very special day: Dantedì.
Established in 2020, Dantedì is the national day dedicated to Dante Alighieri. March 25th was chosen as it is recognized by scholars as the day the poet started his journey in the afterlife in the Divine Comedy.
On “Dantedì: a day with Dante” we explored how his work was received worldwide. Through the lecture “Radical Dante”, Prof. Dennis Looney (Modern Language Association) argued how a world that initially appears so properly ordered – cosmologically, morally, and aesthetically – made the poet raise questions on the notion of order itself. In the second part of the webinar, “Dante in the World”, Prof. Deborah Parker (University of Virginia) discussed adaptations of Dante by writers, artists, and politicians from China, Japan, Africa, South America and the US.
CONFERENCE (via YouTube)
(originally broadcast on March 25, 2021)
This program is presented in collaboration with the Department of Italian at Georgetown University and the Georgetown University Doyle Seminar
DENNIS LOONEY
From 1986 to 2013, he taught Italian at the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary appointments in classics and philosophy. He was chair of the Department of French and Italian for eleven years and assistant dean of the humanities for three years at Pitt. Publications include Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance (1996), which received honorable mention in the judging for the 1996–97 joint Howard R. Marraro Prize and Scaglione Award in Italian Studies from the MLA, and Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy (2011), which received the American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize (general category) in 2011. With D. Mark Possanza, he is co-editor and translator of Ludovico Ariosto’s Latin Poetry (2018).
Looney holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a BA in classical Greek from Boston University.
DEBORAH PARKER
Deborah Parker is Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Duke UP 1993), the General Editor of the World of Dante, and co-author of Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Director of an NEH seminar for high school teachers on Reinventing Dante: Influence, Adaptation and Appropriation in 2014, and has published numerous articles on Dante’s reception in art and literature. Recent articles includes “Bronzino’s Dante” and “JFK’s Dante.” She has taught courses on Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory for over 25 years.