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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Kimiya Memarzadeh, “Academia’s Inferno” (April 4, 2016)

May 5, 2022 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

person-behind-books“In high school I read a book called Inferno by Dante Alighieri. [. . .] I want to take you through the nine circles of suffering every graduate student experiences on their journey to defending their thesis. I’m sure there are far more than nine forms of struggle that graduate students go through, but for the purpose of the analogy, we will stick with nine.

[. . .]

“Defeat is another circle that graduate students become quite familiar with. It happens so often that around the two-year mark of grad school, most of us seem to get desensitized to it. We learn to separate our self-worth from the worth of our work, and to focus on doing the best we can without letting defeat get in the way of our confidence. We build a thicker skin, and if nothing else, this circle of suffering will prepare us for a lifetime of rejected grants and harsh criticism from pesky ‘Reviewer Three.’

“This brings us to the last and probably most dangerous circle – doubt. Part of being a scientist is being a skeptic. However, if you constantly doubt yourself, your progress, or your ideas, you will inevitably make your graduate school experience a painful one. Go confidently in the direction you pursue, and if you fail – well then you’re just back at circle one.” –Kimiya Memarzadeh, “Academia’s Inferno,” McGovern Medical School (April 4, 2016)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2016, Academia, America, American Universities, Blogposts, Circles of Hell, Graduate School, Science, Student Life, Students, Universities

Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono (2005)

February 28, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

garane-garane-author-of-il-latte-e-buono

“Ho studiato nelle scuole della lingua di Dante…Grazie Dea Italia! Sarò finalmente lontano da questi somari, da questi brutti ceffi, selvaggi, che adorano i cammelli…”      –Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono, 2005

“Gashan’s (the protagonist’s) identification with Dante is central in the novel, which can be seen as an inverted journey from the Heaven of the uncritical enjoyment of Italian culture in Somalia to the Hell of European and American discrimination and Somali Civil War. Garane’s Il Latte è Buono can be defined as a Bildungsroman since the character becomes increasingly aware of the psychological influence of Italian colonialism on his education when he reaches and lives in Italy. To some extent, Dante’s role within his Bildung is once again to serve as a meta-literary guide for the main character, recalling Virgil’s role as Dante’s mentor in the Commedia.”    –Simone Brioni, Lorenzo Mari, Postcolonial Dante: Reading the Commedia in Mogadishu, 2019

Access Il Latte è Buono by Garane Garane here.

Contributed by Simone Brioni (Ph.D., Stony Brook University)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2005, 2019, Africa, America, Books, Civil War, Colonialism, Education, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Italy, Journeys, Literature, Novels, Somalia, Travel, Virgil

Tony’s Kansas City Blog, “Guy Fieri Reveals 3rd Circle Of Hell Replica In Kansas City Power & Light Restaurant” (January 24, 2019)

November 27, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

guy-fieri-tacos-kansas-city-picture

“This isn’t news but every broadcaster in KCMO mentioned it anyway, take a look at this new joint wherein locals can order gourmet fake tacos.

“And then there’s this passage that might or might not be a review: ‘Upon reaching the Third Circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil find souls of gluttons who are overlooked by a worm-monster Cerberus. Sinners in this circle of Hell are punished by being forced to lie in a vile slush that is produced by never-ending icy rain.'”     —Tony’s Kansas City, January 24, 2019 (retrieved November 27, 2021)

Read more about Guy Fieri’s new restaurant here.

Categories: Dining & Leisure, Written Word
Tagged with: America, Circles of Hell, Food, Gluttony, Kansas City, Missouri, Restaurants, Reviews, Tacos, United States

The Mathematics of The Divine Comedy

November 19, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

painting-of-dante-looking-at-scores-of-angels

“As God’s Creation, we experience a physical realm of differentiated entities and perceive multiplicity in our material reality. The character of Beatrice utilizes this fact in Paradiso 2 when she proposes the mirror experiment. The experiment combines mathematical, geometrical, and optical/physical principles to demonstrate spiritual truths. This experiment, especially its utilization of reflection, plants a seed in Dante, prodding him on his journey to the Divine: ‘Nature offers to the symbolic poet clearly denotable objects in-depth and in the round, which yield the analogies to the higher senses.’ [19] In the Primo Mobile, Dante the poet utilizes these same principles as he approaches the dimensionless punto of the Divine, the source and ground of all being.”[. . .]    –Matthew Canonico, University of Notre Dame: Church Life Journal, April 28, 2021

Read the full analysis here.

Categories: Odds & Ends, Written Word
Tagged with: 2021, America, Astronomy, Beatrice, Cosmos, God, Journeys, Light, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Mirrors, Optics, Paradiso, Physics, Vita Nuova

Dante’s Pizzeria in The Handmaid’s Tale (S04E05)

July 26, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

The fourth season of Hulu’s dystopian drama The Handmaid’s Tale (based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name) features two characters roaming the ruins of a bombed-out Chicago (episode 5, “Chicago,” 2021). While attempting to trade resources with other rebels, the two handmaids find themselves hiding from Gilead soldiers in the wreckage of Chicago’s Dante’s Pizzeria. Below, a still from the show (which you can watch here, Hulu subscription required):

See our previous post for Dante’s Pizzeria, with two Chicago locations, here.

Categories: Performing Arts, Places
Tagged with: 2021, America, Chicago, Drama, Dystopian Fiction, Illinois, Pizza, Science Fiction, Television, United States

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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