Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

  • Submit a Citing
  • Map
  • Links
  • Bibliography
  • User’s Guide
  • Teaching Resources
  • About

Dante at the Supreme Court

June 28, 2011 By Professor Arielle Saiber

dante-at-the-supreme-court“From Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in today’s case involving violent video games, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn.: California’s argument would fare better if there were a longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, but there is none.  Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore. . . In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they be skewered by devils above the surface . . . Justice Alito accuses us of pronouncing that playing violent video games “is not different in ‘kind'” from reading violent literature.  Well of course it is different in kind, but not in a way that causes the provision and viewing of violent video games, unlike the provision and reading of books, not to be expressive activity and hence not to enjoy First Amendment protection.  Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat.  But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones.  Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny[.]” […]    –Marc DeGirolami, Mirror of Justice, June 27, 2011

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

Categories: Consumer Goods, Odds & Ends
Tagged with: 2011, California, Games, Supreme Court, Video Games, Violence, Washington D.C.

“My Dante,” Frank Ambrosio and Edward Maloney, Georgetown University

January 14, 2010 By Professor Arielle Saiber

my-dante-georgetown-university

“Conceived as a digital incarnation of the medieval illuminated manuscript, My Dante fosters an entirely new type of contemplative reading experience. MyDante encourages readers to experience the poem in a way that is profoundly personal, while at the same time enabling a collaborative experience of a journey shared by a community of readers.
MyDante was originally developed for a philosophy course at Georgetown University, and a public version is currently in development that will be free and open to anyone.”    —My Dante Blog

Visit Georgetown’s My Dante site.

Categories: Odds & Ends
Tagged with: 2000, Internet, Universities, Washington D.C.

“Rogue American Woman”

November 18, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

rogue-american-woman“Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s book is ‘An American Life.’ Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans — ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans. If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living ‘bass-ackwards.’. . .
I approached reading her book with trepidation, worried I might learn that I am not a real American, dang it, just another dreaded, jaded ‘enlightened elite.’
I was born and live in Washington, D.C., after all. Now you’d think that this would be a rather patriotic city to call home, but Palin paints it as a cross between Sodom and Dante’s Fifth Circle.” [. . .]    –Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, November 17, 2009

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2009, Circles of Hell, Humor, Journalism, Politics, Washington D.C.

Synetic Theater, “Dante,” Washington, D.C. (2009)

February 19, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

synetic-theater-dante-washington-dc-2009

“In an unprecedented, ambitious production, Synetic Theater takes on the entirety of Dante Alighieri’s epic masterpiece, the tale of a lost traveler’s visionary journey through the torments of Hell and up the slopes of Purgatory, before the final attainment of redemption and Paradise. Delving into the core of Dante’s original work, this modern retelling will bring the Italian classic to life in a way never seen before.”    —Italian Cultural Institute

Contributed by Aisha Woodward (Bowdoin, ’08)

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2009, Theater, Washington D.C.

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Categories

  • Consumer Goods (194)
  • Digital Media (126)
  • Dining & Leisure (107)
  • Music (190)
  • Odds & Ends (91)
  • Performing Arts (360)
  • Places (131)
  • Visual Art & Architecture (415)
  • Written Word (845)

Random Post

  • Journées Dante Alighieri in Montauban, France (2021)

Frequent Tags

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 700th anniversary Abandon All Hope America American Politics Art Artists Beatrice Blogs Books California Circles of Hell Comics Dark Wood Divine Comedy England Fiction Films Florence France Games Gates of Hell Hell History Humor Illustrations Inferno Internet Italian Italy Journalism Journeys Literary Criticism Literature Love Music New York City Non-Fiction Novels Paintings Paolo and Francesca Paradise Paradiso Performance Art Poetry Politics Purgatorio Purgatory Religion Restaurants Reviews Rock Science Fiction Sculptures Social Media Technology Television Tenth Circle Theater Translations United Kingdom United States Universities Video Games Virgil

ALL TAGS »

Image Mosaic

How to Cite

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

Creative

 





© 2006-2022 Dante Today
research.bowdoin.edu