Students

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

May 5, 2022 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“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)

Student-Led “In via Dante Network”

October 31, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

The “In Via Dante Network” is “a student-led initiative for Post-Graduate Students and Early-Career Researchers with an interest in Dante Studies.” —In Via Dante Network

The group organizes events, creates opportunities for networking, and maintains a mailing list through which members can initiate collaborations, advertise events, and provide support. Sign up for the listserv here.

Learn more on their website here.

Dante’s Purgatorio, video game by Charlie McKinney

October 18, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Charlie McKinney of DeMatha Catholic High School (Hyattsville, Maryland) built a text-based video game based on Dante’s Purgatorio. The game was created as a project for ethics and theology teacher Homer Twigg’s unit on Dante’s Purgatorio in 2021. Check out the game here.

Sylvain Reynard, Gabriel’s Inferno (2012)

July 26, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Enigmatic and sexy, Professor Gabriel Emerson is a well-respected Dante specialist by day, but by night he devotes himself to an uninhibited life of pleasure. He uses his notorious good looks and sophisticated charm to gratify his every whim, but is secretly tortured by his dark past and consumed by the profound belief that he is beyond all hope of redemption.

“When the sweet and innocent Julia Mitchell enrolls as his graduate student, his attraction and mysterious connection to her not only jeopardizes his career, but sends him on a journey in which his past and his present collide.

“An intriguing and sinful exploration of seduction, forbidden love, and redemption, Gabriel’s Inferno is a captivating and wildly passionate tale of one man’s escape from his own personal hell as he tries to earn the impossible—forgiveness and love.” —Penguin Random House

The 2012 novel, set in Toronto, was adapted into a three-part series of films starring Giulio Berruti and Melanie Zanetti and directed by Tosca Musk. It was produced and released by Musk’s company Passionflix in 2020. The image above comes from the Amazon Prime Video page for the film. Gabriel’s Rapture (Part Two) and Gabriel’s Redemption (Part Three) are scheduled for release in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Contributed by Margaret Goodspeed

Scenes From the Mountain, a score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (2020)

November 24, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Scenes From the Mountain is a musical score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (DeMatha Catholic High School ’21).

Of his composition, Cheng writes: “This small movement, which is only around six-and-a-half minutes long, was incredibly difficult to complete despite its length. I returned to it many times over quarantine though I could not seem to find any musical ideas that would stick with me. That changed for the better when I returned to the work in late August and decided to shift my approach. Instead of specifically cataloguing the tale of Dante, I decided to use music to describe the general environment of the Mountain of Purgatory. This ended up giving me more musical freedom. I also shifted the orchestration from a traditional orchestra towards something I am much more familiar with, that being the wind ensemble. The specific movement here encapsulates the base of the mountain (Canto I) up to just before the Valley of Princes (Canto VII).”

The score, with Cheng’s interlinear notes, are available to view here. Listen to it on Soundcloud.

The DeMatha Wind Ensemble (pictured) recorded a performance of Scenes from the Mountain in April 2021.

Many thanks to Zachary Cheng and his teacher, Mr. Homer Twigg of the Department of Theology at DeMatha Catholic High School, for permission to share the composition.

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