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

International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 9-11, 2024

The 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 9-11, 2024. The Dante Society of America has organized the three panel sessions and an evening lecture:

Dante (1)
Friday May 10, 2024
10:00-11:30 AM
Sangren Hall 4725
Sponsor: Dante Society of America
Presider: Alejandro Cuadrado (Yale University)
Organizer: Akash Kumar (University of California, Berkeley)

  • Samuel F. McMillan (Flagler College), "A Twisted Canon: Dante and the Authorship of Horror"
  • Matteo Ottaviani (McGill University), "Charting Dante’s Political Landscape: Chronicles as Crucial Narratives in Romagna"
  • Andrea Celli (University of Connecticut), "Climbing the Trees of Purgatorio: Early Commentaries and Visual Sources"
  • Kalena Holeman (University of Houston), "Katabasis in the Black Diaspora: Dante’s Pilgrim in Ellison’s Invisible Man and Walcott’s Omeros"

Dante (2)
Friday May 10, 2024
1:30-3:00 PM
Sangren Hall 4725
Sponsor: Dante Society of America
Presider: Akash Kumar (University of California, Berkeley)
Organizer: Akash Kumar (University of California, Berkeley)

  • Elizabeth Coggeshall (Florida State University), "Lorna Goodison’s Dante: A Case Study in Tradaptation"
  • Virginia Jewiss (Johns Hopkins University), "Dante’s Vita Nuova: Translations and Transpositions"
  • F. Regina Psaki (University of Oregon), "'Even a flicker of the blissful realm': Mary Jo Bang's Comedy and Its Readers"
  •       Respondent: Mary Jo Bang (Washington University in St. Louis)

Dante (3)
Friday May 10, 2024
3:30-5:00 PM
Sangren Hall 4725
Sponsor: Dante Society of America
Presider: Elizabeth Coggeshall (Florida State University)
Organizer: Akash Kumar (University of California, Berkeley)

  • Rookshar Myram (University of Notre Dame), "Beatrice and the Eyes of Contemplation: Dante’s Transformation in Paradiso 26"
  • Humberto Ballesteros, Hostos Community College, CUNY), "'Libertà vanno cercando': On Cato’s Guardianship of Purgatory in the Light of Piccarda’s Exemplum of Freedom"
  • Sally A. Tucker (University of California–Berkeley), "A Queer Femmina Balba: Unproductive Stasis and Queer Temporality in Dante’s Purgatorio"
  • Michael Sherberg (Washington University in St. Louis), "In the Center, at the Margin"


Dante Society of America Lecture
Friday May 10, 2024
7:00 PM
Sangren Hall 1910
Sponsor: Dante Society of America
Presider: Alison Cornish (New York University)

  • Martin Eisner (Duke University), "Black Limbo: Dante and Global Ethnic Studies"

DSA Annual Meeting, May 17, 2024

The Annual Meeting for members of The Dante Society of America will convene online 5-6pm on Friday, May 17. In addition to Society business, we will have some flash talks from graduate students and a tour through our new DSA website — coming soon! More information and the meeting link will be shared on the Society's members mailing list.


2024 DSA Symposium: Il mondo sanza gente. Dante in the Americas. Visibility and Invisibility (Lima, Peru, July 10-12, 2024)

This year, together with Universidad del Pacífico (Lima), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and Istitituto Italiano di Cultura-Lima, The Dante Society of America will cosponsor, for the first time ever, a symposium in South America, thanks to the vision and labors of Jorge Wiesse Rebagliati, of Universidad del Pacífico, and Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio of the University of Rochester and Honorary Professor at Universidad del Pacífico. The conference will be streamed live for those unable to make the trip to Peru, and will feature scholars from both our American continents as well as from Europe. Please check back here for additional information later this spring.


2025 DSA Symposium, April 11, 2025

The 2025 Annual Symposium will be held at New York University on April 11, 2025. Details forthcoming.


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."