Meetings and Events

The Dante Society of America regularly organizes panel sessions at various academic conferences, and holds its own annual meeting and conference.

Upcoming Events

Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 5-8 January 2023

The Dante Society of America has organized two sessions for the 2023 Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Both sessions will be held in person and are open to registered attendees only; they will not be livestreamed or recorded. The convention will be held in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023. The deadline for the call for papers was March 25, 2022.

Confession and Penance in Dante
Session 8: Thursday, 5 January 2023, 12:00pm - 1:15pm, Marriott Marquis - Nob Hill D
This session includes presentations that explore issues relating to confession and penance across Dante’s works and in the medieval Italian context. It was organized and will be chaired by Anne Leone (Syracuse University).

  • “Dante, Falsembiante: False Confessions from the Fiore to the Commedia,” Max Matukhin (Princeton University)
  • “Dante’s Totus Christus? Augustine and the Communality of Penance in the Earthly Paradise,” Thomas Graff (University of Cambridge)
  • “Classical Rhetoric and Minos’s Trial in Inferno 5,” Paolo Scartoni (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)

Ecocritical Approaches to Dante
Session 490: Saturday, 7 January 2023, 12:00pm - 1:15pm, Marriott Marquis - Pacific Suite A
This session includes presentations that approach Dante’s works from ecocritical perspectives, interrogating the boundaries between the natural, non-natural, unnatural, supernatural, or investigating particular issues such as nature as a theoretical concern, natural imagery, meteorology, etc. The session was organized and will be chaired by Anne Leone (Syracuse University). It is co-sponsored by the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS).

  • “From the ‘Selva Oscura’ to the ‘Bel Giardino’: Dante, Humans, and the Natural World(s) in the Comedy,” Mattia Boccuti (University of Notre Dame)
  • “‘Quell’è Natura’: Revisiting the Lyric Tradition of Nature at the Core of the Comedy,” Leonardo Chiarantini (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
  • “Pastoral Crossovers: Dante and Boccaccio Stay in the Countryside,” Filippo Gianferrari (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Renaissance Society of America Annual Convention, 9-11 March 2023

The Dante Society of America will sponsor five panel sessions at the 2023 Annual Convention of the Renaissance Society of America, which will be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 9–11 March 2023. Descriptions of each panel follow below.

Women, Authority, and Will: Dante's Multifaceted Beatrice and Her Legacy
Friday, March 10, 2023, 9:00am-10:30am
Caribe Hilton - Tropical C - Beach Wing 2nd Floor
Chair: Filippo Gianferrari (University of California, Santa Cruz)

  • Mattia Boccuti (University of Notre Dame), "Two 'Beatrices' for Two 'Dantes': The Duality of the Vita nova"
  • Francesco Giusti (University of Oxford), "What is Beatrice Asking for? Dante and the Poetics of Martyrdom"
  • Alyssa Madeline Granacki (Duke University), "Reason and Desire: Echoes of Dante in Tullia d'Aragona's Dialogo della infinità d'amore"

"Le donne antiche e' cavalieri": Dante and the Renaissance Epic Romance I
Friday, March 10, 2023, 2:30pm-4:00pm
Caribe Hilton - Guayacán Suite - Wave Wing 2nd Floor
Chair: Albert Russell Ascoli (University of California, Berkeley)

  • Heloísa Abreu De Lima (Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"), "The Sententiae of the Commedia as an Expression of Dante's Authorial Voice"
  • Francesco Brenna (Towson University), "Dante and Sixteenth-Century Theoretical Reflections on Epic: The Case of Mazzoni and Tasso"
  • Leah Schwebel (Texas State University) "Allusive Rivalry in the Poetic Triumph"
  • Kate Driscoll (Duke University), "Loss and its Reverberance: Lament and Polyvocality in Dante and Ariosto"

"Le donne antiche e' cavalieri": Dante and the Renaissance Epic Romance II
Friday, March 10, 2023, 4:30pm-6:00pm
Caribe Hilton - Guayacán Suite - Wave Wing 2nd Floor
Chair: Eleonora Stoppino (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Laura Ingallinella (University of Toronto), "Carlo del Nero's Dante: Mediating Courtly Romance and Mercantile Culture in Fifteenth-Century Montpellier"
  • Giulia Maria Cipriani (Johns Hopkins University), "Dante's Demons and the Renaissance Epic Poems (Boiardo, Ariosto, and Folengo)"
  • Alexander Eliot Schmid (Louisiana State University), "Dante and Milton's Respective Usuries: Difference and Uniformity in The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost"

Dante's Echoing Woods in Renaissance Pastoral
Saturday, March 11, 2023, 2:30pm-4:00pm
Caribe Hilton - Magüey Suite - Wave Wing 2nd Floor
Chair: Jonathan Combs-Schilling (The Ohio State University)

  • Victoria Pipas (Harvard University), "''l mondo aver cangiata facia': Iconoclasm and Virgilian Pastoral in Dante's Inferno"
  • Rino Modonutti (Università degli Studi di Padova), "Epic, Pastoral, and the Role of Poets: Albertino Mussato's Reading of Dante's Eclogues?"
  • Hannah Newburn (University of California Santa Cruz), "Pastoral, Enclosed: Versions of Pastoral in Bocaccio's Decameron"

The Renaissance of Dante's Vita nuova
Saturday, March 11, 2023, 4:30pm-6:00pm
Caribe Hilton - Magüey Suite - Wave Wing 2nd Floor
Chair: Martin Eisner (Duke University)

  • Laura Banella (University of Oxford), "Magistra Beatrice: Constructing Female Cultural Authority Between the Commedia and Its Visualizations"
  • Filippo Gianferrari (University of California, Santa Cruz), "Donne & Divisioni: A Poetics of Vernacular Instruction"

DSA Annual Symposium (April 29, 2023)

The Dante Society of America will hold its annual symposium titled "Cosmic Visions" at Johns Hopkins University on Saturday, April 29, 2023. The symposium is being organized by Virginia Jewiss and Arielle Saiber with support from JHU's Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. Please check back here in December for further details.

International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 11-13, 2023

The 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 11-13, 2023. The Dante Society of America has organized the three panel sessions; session times and locations will be posted closer to the conference:

Dante I
Presider: Akash Kumar (UC Berkeley)

  • Alejandro Cuadrado (Columbia University), "Dante’s Work Ethics, or, a Poet’s Guide to Career and Retirement"
  • Paolo Scartoni (Rutgers University), "'L’abito dell’arte e della scientia”: Rhetoric and Ethics in Purgatorio"
  • Wuming Chang (Independent Scholar), "'Tu sé lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore”: Volgarizzamento and the Allegorical Problem of the Commedia
  • Catherine Bloomer (Columbia University), "'Ciotto,' 'Sciancato,' 'Zoppo': A Dantean Hierarchy of Mobility Disabilities"

Dante II
Presider: Paolo Scartoni (Rutgers University)

  • Nassime Chida (Columbia University), "History as Resistance: Montaperti, Farinata, and the Historical Argument of Inferno X"
  • Antonio Raschi (CNR-Istituto per la BioEconomia), "Fact and Fiction in Dante’s Description of Hell: A Geological Approach to Inferno XII-XVI"
  • Dabney G. Park (University of Miami), "Magnificent Vitriol: Dante’s Letter to the Italian Cardinals"
  • Kevin Martín (UC Berkeley), "Blaming Babylon: Dante’s Linguistic Journey from De vulgari eloquentia to La divina commedia"

Dante III
Presider: Nassime Chida (Columbia University)

  • Kathleen Verduin (Hope College), "Dante’s Face in America"
  • Alexander E. Schmid (Louisiana State University), "Dante and Milton’s Respectiver Usuries: Difference and Uniformity in the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost"
  • Amy Elise Eriksen (The Catholic University of America), "Growing Gentilesse: How Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale Cultivates Dante’s Nature Imagery of Convivio IV"
  • Ying Zheng (Taiyuan Normal University, Shanxi; Renmin University of China, Beijing), "Lao She as an Unrecognized Pioneering Dantist"

Recorded Events

  • The 140th Annual Meeting of the Dante Society of America was held online on May 7, 2022. It was followed by a program commemorating Robert Hollander and John Freccero, two influential Dantists who died during the previous year. A videorecording of the meeting and program is available on the Society's YouTube channel.
  • The 139th Annual Meeting of the Dante Society of America was held online on May 16, 2021. A videorecording is available on the Society's YouTube channel.
  • Video recordings of sessions from the 2021 Annual Symposium of the Dante Society of America, "'Tra liti si lontani': Dante for the Americas," are available as a playlist on the Society's YouTube channel. The symposium was on hosted online by Harvard University in collaboration with the Society on 5-13 May 2021.
  • The 137th Annual Meeting of the Dante Society of America was held at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, on Saturday, May 4, 2019. Presentations given during the associated symposium "Plurilingualism and Visibile Parlare" are available as a playlist on the Society's YouTube channel (note: due to technical difficulties, recordings of some presentations are not available).
  • The 136th Annual Meeting of the Dante Society of America was held at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, on Saturday, May 5, 2018. Presentations given during the associated symposium "'Come il baccialier': Questioning and Professing Dante" are available as a playlist on the Society's YouTube channel.
  • The 135th Annual Meeting of the Dante Society of America was held at the University of Oregon on Saturday, May 6, 2017. Presentations given during the associated symposium "Translation in Dante / Dante in Translation" are available as a playlist on the Society's YouTube channel.

Past Meetings and Events

A listing of meetings and events sponsored by the Dante Society in previous years is available here.

Minutes and agenda for the Society's annual membership meetings since 2014 may be found under "About the Society."