Dante in African American Culture: Exile, Migration, Segregation, Integration, Identity

Professor Dennis Looney will discuss how African American authors have read, interpreted, and responded to Dante and his work from the 1820s to the present. He will reflect on some questions from his award-winning book Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the "Divine Comedy," a literary-historical study of the many surprising ways in which Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy have assumed a position of importance in African American culture.  

Pyle Center room 325-326

Free and open to the public

Dennis Looney is Professor of Italian at the University of Pittsburgh, and Director of Programs and of Association of Departments of Foreign Languages at the Modern Language Association. He has published extensively on Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Leopardi, Collodi, and on a wide range of other topics in Italian, Classics, and philosophy.