Leeds Dante Podcast

Conversations on Dante is a series of podcast episodes from Dante at Leeds, at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers and practitioners to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, hosted by Matthew Treherne, Amy Harris and Kimberly Campanello discuss twenty-first-century experimental translations of Dante into English. The conversation covers how writers have engaged with some of the innovative and challenging aspects of Dante's work, including Dante's approach to geography and specificity. Amy discusses her doctoral research on anglophone writers, and Kimberly shares insights from her current work versioning Dante. 

Amy Harris is a PhD Candidate at the University of Western Australia. The provisional title of her thesis is “Dante in the Anglosphere: an excursus in language and image”. Her project investigates how topography, regionalisms and neologisms are (re)interpreted in 21st-century English translations of Dante's Divine Comedy. ORCID: Amy Harris (0009-0000-9974-6440) - ORCID

Kimberly Campanello's most recent poetry collection An Interesting Detail was published by Bloomsbury Poetry in April. Her debut novel Use the Words You Have is the inaugural title from Somesuch Editions, the imprint of BAFTA and Oscar-winning production company Somesuch.  Her versioning of Dante is at once highly personal and ‘universal’ in Dante’s visionary sense of ‘la forma universal di questo nodo / the universal shape of this knot’. She traces the knotted threads tying together her birthplace in Elkhart, Indiana, traditional lands of the Pokagon Potawatomi, her family origins in Volturara Appula (Puglia, Italy), and her experience of young onset Parkinson’s disease.  Extracts from this work-in-progress, titled This Knot: A New Version of Dante’s Commedia with The Poet K, have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including Poetry Ireland Review, Still Point and Notre Dame Review, as well as in the Routledge Companion to Dante. She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and Director of Poetry@Leeds. https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/dante-with-the-poet-k

Translations and versions discussed

Dante’s Divine Comedy by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders: https://sandowbirk.com/divine-comedy

Dante’s Inferno by Lorna Goodison: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800174665/dantes-inferno/

Dante’s Inferno by Philip Terry: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781847772206/dantes-inferno/

The Divine Comedy by Clive James: https://www.clivejames.com/the-divine-comedy.html

Dante’s Divine Trilogy by Alasdair Gray: https://thealasdairgrayarchive.org/shop/books-by-alasdair/dantes-divine-trilogy/

Dante on the Move: https://danteonthemove.blog/

Caroline Bergvall, Via: https://carolinebergvall.com/work/via-48-dante-variations/

Conversations on Dante is a series of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, hosted by Matthew Treherne, Joseph Luzzi discusses his book In A Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing and the Mysteries of Love (Harper Collins, 2015) (https://josephluzzi.com/book/in-a-dark-wood/). The conversation covers how Joe arrived at this genre of writing - part memoir, part literary criticism - as well as how the process of writing the book helped him think anew about Dante, including notions of exile. We also discussed the ways in which in the current world - marked by the Covid-19 pandemic - the lessons of Dante, and the experience of reading, are emerging with renewed force. 

Joseph Luzzi is Professor of Comparative Literature and Faculty Member in Italian Studies at Bard College. For more information on his work, please visit  https://josephluzzi.com/.

The episode was edited by Olivia Jowle.

Conversations on Dante is a series of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, hosted by Matthew Treherne, Rebekah Locke discusses her research on Purgatory in Italy in the centuries after Dante's death. Rebekah gives examples of visual and textual accounts of Purgatory in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which suggest that - for all its daring originality - Dante's Purgatorio had a limited influence on how Purgatory was represented and understood; rather than seeing Dante's text as offering a decisive intervention in the tradition of writing on Purgatory, Rebekah argues for a richer understanding of the deep persistence of long-standing ideas on the nature of this realm. Rebekah's work, which offers an important challenge to critical commonplaces on Dante's role in shaping understandings of Purgatory, can be read online in her 2020 doctoral dissertation at the University of Bristol.

The episode was edited by Esme Sayal.

Conversations on Dante is a series of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, hosted by Matthew Treherne, Guy Raffa discusses his recent book, Dante's Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy (Harvard University Press, 2020). Guy talks about some of the high points of writing and researching the book, and what the story of Dante's dead body can tell us about Dante's place in Italian cultural, social and political life. We also discuss Guy's award-winning DanteWorlds website (http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/), and his current Public Scholars Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities - including what it means to be a public scholar.

Guy Raffa is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/frenchitalian/faculty/guyr). 

The episode was edited by Esme Sayal. 

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, Sukanta Chaudhuri discusses the ways in which Bengali culture has engaged with Dante and with Italian culture more broadly, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day – in translations, commentaries and rewritings of Dante’s works. He discusses some of the challenges of translating Dante into Bengali, and of presenting Dante to a Bengali audience. Sukanta also reflects on his own experience as a translator, and on how Dante’s account of his relationship with Florence resonates with modern experiences of the city of Kolkata.

Sukanta Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is editor of a series of translations of Italian literature at Jadavpur University Press, which includes a translation of Dante’s Comedy into Bengali by Alpana Ghosh (Inferno published in 2017, and the remaining cantiche forthcoming): Narak (নরক) – Jadavpur University Press / যাদবপুর বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় প্রকাশনা (jadunivpress.com)

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, Dr Jason Allen-Paisant discusses the ways in which a number of Caribbean poets have engaged with Dante: Aimé Césaire, Kamau Brathwaite and Lorna Goodison. He explains how Dante's approach to vernacular language, and his treatment of justice and the afterlife, offer a template for these poets. Jason also reads some of his own poetry, discussing how some of these themes emerge in his own practice as a poet.  

Dr Jason Allen-Paisant is Lecturer in Caribbean Poetry and Decolonial Thought at the University of Leeds, where he researches cultural memory in the African diaspora. His first collection of poetry, Thinking with Trees, is published by Carcanet Press in 2021. 

The conversation is hosted by Matthew Treherne.

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, economic sociologist Mark Davis talks about the sociology of finance, and how Dante's engagement with questions of money and finance might resonate with twenty-first century debates about finance: about indebtedness, the limits of finance-driven economic growth, and the connections between finance and sustainability. 

Dr Mark Davis is Associate Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Leeds, where he founded the Bauman Institute. Among his many research projects, he is leading, together with Matthew Treherne and Rachel Muers, a project on The Cultural Life of Money and Finance. 

The conversation is hosted by Matthew Treherne.

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, Dr Federica Coluzzi discusses her forthcoming book on the reception of Dante in Victorian culture. We discuss why the Victorian period saw such a significant change in how Dante was understood in Britain, and the ways in which Federica's approach to reception - which pays close attention to book history, material culture, and the social conditions in which reading took place - enables fresh insights into the Victorian encounter with Dante. We also discuss Federica's new research project, on women readers of Dante in the long nineteenth century. 

Federica's book, entitled Beyond Influence: Rethinking Dante Reception in Victorian Literary Culture, will be published in Spring 2021 by Manchester University Press, and was developed during her time as an Irish Research Council post-doctoral fellow at University College Cork. She is now a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Warwick University.

The conversation is hosted by Matthew Treherne.

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, Dr Helena Phillips-Robins discusses her work on liturgical song and practice in Dante, which will be published in a book in early 2021 by the University of Notre Dame Press. We discuss why understanding liturgical song and practice can enrich a reading of Dante - across issues from time, the body, the relationship between humanity and the divine, and the way Dante envisages his readers engaging with the Comedy.   

Helena Phillips-Robins is Research Fellow at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. 

The conversation is hosted by Matthew Treherne.

Conversations on Dante is a new set of podcast episodes from the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the University of Leeds. In each episode, we sit down with researchers from a range of disciplines to discuss some of the work which is helping to shape our understanding of Dante, his context and works, and his place in the cultures of the world.

In this episode, Dr Kristina Olson and Prof. Chris Kleinhenz discuss their new volume, Approaches to Teaching Dante's 'Divine Comedy', published in 2020 by the Modern Language Association (https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/Approaches-to-Teaching-World-Literature/Approaches-to-Teaching-Dante-s-i-Divine-Comedy-i-second-edition). Chris and Kristina talk about the diverse disciplinary and pedagogical approaches to teaching Dante which emerge in the volume. We also consider what it means to teach Dante in 2020, especially in light of the new educational and social contexts in which students are encountering Dante, as well as discussing the rich connections between teaching and research on Dante.  

Chris Kleinhenz is the Carol Mason Kirk Professor Emeritus of Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kristina Olson is Associate Professor of Italian at George Mason University.

The conversation is hosted by Matthew Treherne.