Investigation of significant genres and modes of writing as they recur in the course of Italian cultural history.

This seminar will explore the affinity between Dante’s Commedia and various theoretical approaches that have made it a particular point to feature the sommo poeta. We’ll focus both on the primary text and theoretical engagements that range from Renaissance forms of reading to figures like Marx, Auerbach, Spivak, Glissant, and the like. At stake will be a development of a critical toolkit that balances a historicized understanding of Dante and the ability to deploy such theoretical approaches that might postulate a Dante who is queered, a decolonized poem and tradition, a social revolutionary with an affinity for gender trouble, and beyond.

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