“What Lies Between. Dante’s isoletta and Archipelagic Liminality”
Friday 1st November 2024, Victoria College 323 (University of Toronto), 11:30 am
This talk will focus on Dante’s Purgatorio as a tour-de-force of liminality, exploring how Dante takes full advantage of a less than defined tradition around the space between hell and paradise and especially focusing on the space of the island. It will consider how Dante’s island resonates with other poets and their islands through the philosophical lens of Édouard Glissant’s archipelagic thought that urges us to rethink spatial and linguistic relations by focusing on the space between.
Akash Kumar is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on medieval Italian through the lens of Mediterranean and global culture, ranging from the history of science to boundary crossings as manifested by representations of the game of chess. Recent work includes contributions on a global Dante to the volume Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present (Manchester UP, 2022) and Wiley-Blackwell’s Companion to World Literature (2020), as well as collaborating with Richard Lansing on the first complete English translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s lyric poetry (forthcoming, University of Toronto Press). Akash currently serves as Editor of Dante Notes, the digital publication of the Dante Society of America.
Professor Ombretta Frau
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley
“In limine. Women and the City/Women in the City”
Saturday 2nd November 2024, Victoria College 323 (University of Toronto), 11:30 am
Following a series of virtual walks through various cities, this presentation will focus on the idea of liminality as a transitional threshold for nineteenth and early twentieth century women’s long path to emancipation.
Ombretta Frau is Dorothy Rooke McCulloch Professor of Italian at Mount Holyoke College and the the 2022 recipient of the Meribeth E. Cameron Faculty Award for Scholarship. Her scholarly interests include nineteenth and early twentieth-century Italian public intellectuals, and the material culture of literature. She is the author some fifty pieces on numerous Italian authors, among them Pirandello, Annie Vivanti, Flavia Steno, Contessa Lara, Marchesa Colombi, Jolanda, Mantea, Sfinge, Mara Antelling, Matilde Serao, Dacia Maraini, Palazzeschi, and topics such as Italian fascism, motherhood, and gender violence on the internet. With Cristina Gragnani, she co-authored Sottoboschi letterari (Firenze UP, 2011) and Pirandello’s Taccuino di Harvard (Mondadori, 2002). Her research has been supported by, among others, the Delmas, Mellon, Packard Foundations. Her most recent publications include studies on the Giamatti Dante Collection, on Matilde Serao, Italo Calvino, and Luigi Pirandello. With Juliet Guzzetta, Frau is the current guest editor of a forthcoming issue of g/s/i (gender/sexuality/italy) on Giorgia Meloni’s conservative feminism. She collaborates with the Enciclopedia delle Donne and the Dizionario Treccani.
