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

Renaissance Society of America Annual Convention, 22-25 March 2025

The Dante Society of America is sponsoring four panel sessions at the 2025 Annual Convention of the Renaissance Society of America, which will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, 20-22 March 2025. Descriptions of each panel follow below.

Friday March 21

Dante as Syncretic Philosopher: Politics, Philosophy, and Allegory in Dante’s Works
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Boston Westin Copley Place - Newbury Room - 2nd Floor
Chair, Jason Aleksander, San Jose State University

  • Matteo Pace (Connecticut College), "Medicine as Syncretism in the Commentary Tradition of the Commedia"
  • Dr. Gregory Stone, Louisiana State University), "Dante’s Passible Intellect: The Averroism of Paradiso’s Final Verses"
  • Paul Stern (Ursinus College), "Dante’s Political Philosophy: Re-Thinking Paradiso"
  • Alexander Eliot Schmid, Louisiana State University), "Dante’s Syncretism: Revelatory or Rationalist?"

Dante’s Paradiso I: Philosophical and Theological Traditions
1:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Boston Westin Copley Place - Newbury Room - 2nd Floor
Chair: Alison Cornish, New York University

  • Stefano Scandella (New York University), "'Quando l’uomo ascende in cielo, ello è contro natura': Dante’s (Un)natural Ascent as (In)formative Violence"
  • Susanna Barsella (Fordham University), "Falling from Heaven"
  • Thomas L Cooksey (Armstrong State University), "Dante and the Nine Worthies: Fame or Glory"
  • Rookshar Myram (University of Notre Dame), "Language, Sacred and Unstable: Adam, Christ, and the Vernacular Legitimacy of Dante’s Commedia"

Dante’s Paradiso II: New Perspectives
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Boston Westin Copley Place - Newbury Room - 2nd Floor
Chair: Theodore J. Cachey, University of Notre Dame

  • Chiara Sbordoni (University of Notre Dame), "'La forma general di paradiso' (Par. XXXI, 52) from the Vita Nova to the Commedia"
  • Maria Irene Fiducia (Brown University), "Dante’s Great Chain of Knowledge: A Narratological Reading of the Third Cantica"
  • Virginia Lauria (Sapienza Università di Roma), "Aesthetics of Contemplation: Mysticism and Byzantine Art in Dante’s Paradise"
  • Glenn A. Steinberg (The College of New Jersey), "A Poet’s Paradise: Dante’s Innovative Imagery in the Paradiso"

Dante’s Paradiso III: Receptions
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Boston Westin Copley Place - Newbury Room - 2nd Floor
Chair: Filippo Gianferrari, University of California, Santa Cruz

  • Mr. Ianick Takaes de Oliveira, Columbia University), "'Potentes potenter tormenta patientur': Apocalyptic Prophecies in Philippe Thomassin’s Last Judgment (1606)"
  • Giacomo Berchi (Stanford University), "Epic Paradise: Camões, Dante, and the Machine of the World"
  • Giulio Genovese (The Pennsylvania State University), "No Women in Heaven: Monique Wittig’s Conceptualization of Dante’s Paradiso in Virgile, non"

2025 DSA Symposium, April 10-11, 2025

The 2025 Annual Symposium will be hosted in collaboration with and held at the Casa ltaliana Zerilli-Marimo at New York University on April 10-11, 2025. Titled "Dante and Money," the program has been organized by Alison Cornish (NYU) and Alessandro Vettori (Rutgers University). Please visit the symposium webpage for additional details.

International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 8-10, 2025

The 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 8-10, 2024. The Dante Society of America has organizing five panel sessions:

Dante (1): Friday, May 9, 2025: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  • Stefano Scandella (New York University), "'Quando l'uomo ascende in cielo, ello è contro natura': Dante's (Un)natural Ascent as (In)formative Violence in the Making of Paradise on Earth"
  • Beatrice Arduini (University of Washington–Seattle), "The Wood of the Self-Murderers and the Forests of Dante's Time"
  • Wuming Chang (Peking University), "Is Virgilio a Book? Accessus, Allegory, and Authorship from Brunetto Latini to the Prologue of the Divine Comedy"

Dante (2): Friday, May 9, 2025: 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

  • Penélope Salge Glick, (independent scholar), "Red, Old, and Religious: An Analysis of Literary Adaptation, Visual Imaginary, and Stereotypes in Dante's Divine Comedy in Colombia"
  • Sara Galli (Dickinson College), "Teaching Dante Through Himself"

Dante (3) Friday, May 9, 2025: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

  • Aaron Scott Taylor (University of Central Oklahoma), "Saturn's Sphere: Astrology, Mythology, and the Contemplatives in Dante's Paradiso 21–22"
  • Humberto Ballesteros (Hostos Community College, CUNY) "From 'Deificari in otio' to 'Disio degli altri cari': The Development of the Doctrine of Caritas from Augustine to Dante"

Dante and Ovid (1): Thursday, May 8, 2025: 1:30 PM - 3:00 PMCo-sponsored with the Societas Ovidiana

  • Sara Frances Burdorff (Guilford College), "Devorat ipse dolor: Reprising Hecuba in Dante's 9th Circle of Hell"
  • Julie Van Peteghem (Hunter College), "Let's (Not) Talk About Sex: Reading Ovid's Stories of Rape in Dante's Time"
  • Paola M. Rodriguez (Graduate Center, CUNY), "The Influence of the Virgilian Bucolic in Dante's Interpretation of Ovid's Galatea Myth in Purgatorio I"

Dante and Ovid (2) Thursday, May 8, 2025: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

  • Jacek Hajduk (Jagiellonian University, "Ovid and Dante in Machiavelli"
  • Giordana Artiaco (University degli Studi di Siena), "Sculpting the Poet: Dante, Orpheus, and the Ovidian Legacy"

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."