Where: Alumni 400, Muzzo Family Alumni Hall, University of Toronto, 121 St. Joseph Street, Toronto ON M5S 3C2. See the conference venues in Practicalities.
Entrance: Free (No registration required, except for the exhibition “How Does it Feel? Dante’s Emotions Today” to be booked on Eventbrite. Slots of 30 minutes for the VR experience are available for the general public on April 13-21, 2023. Free event).
April 12, 2023
10 AM – WELCOME & GREETINGS
Luca Somigli (Italian Studies and Goggio Chair)
Fr. Augustine Thompson (Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, Praeses)
Veronica Manson (Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Director)
10:30 AM – OPENING REMARKS
Elisa Brilli & Giulia Gaimari (University of Toronto)
11 AM – OPENING LECTURE
Gur Zak (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Dante’s Political Emotions: Compassion, Envy, and Community in the Purgatorio”
12 PM – LUNCH BREAK
2 PM – SESSION 1
Chair: Giulia Gaimari (University of Toronto)
Beth Coggeshall (Florida State University), “Negotiating Friendships in Dante’s Italy”
Giuliano Milani (Université Gustave Eiffel), “Building Communities Through Shame. On the Tenzone with Forese”
Respondent: Eva Plesnik (University of Toronto, Ph.D. student)
3:30 PM – COFFEE BREAK
4 PM – SESSION 2
Chair: Konrad Eisenbichler (University of Toronto)
Paolo Borsa (Université de Fribourg), “Love and Hope in Dante’s Lyric Poetry”
Giulia Gaimari (University of Toronto), “‘Propuosi di farlo sentire’: Feeling Together in Dante’s Vita Nova”
Respondent: Mia Lofranco (University of Toronto, Ph.D. student)
6 PM – “How does it feel? Dante’s Emotions Today” EXHIBITION OPENING & RECEPTION
In partnership with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura / Italian Cultural Institute of Toronto, 496 Huron St, Toronto, ON M5R 2R3.
This event is reserved for conference participants.
The general audience is welcome to visit the exhibition on April 13-21. The visit is free but must be booked on Eventbrite (slots of 30 minutes for the VR experience).
Are you a U of T or Toronto-based artist, musician, photographer, or writer? Please consider sharing your creative work with us by March 24, 2023. The call for creative contributions and supporting materials are available here.
… and while waiting for ISCAD5, you can listen to Toronto Salutes Dante, a series of multilingual readings of Dante’s Inferno featuring Adriene Clarkson, Margaret Atwood, Alberto Manguel, and many other members of our community who joined ISCAD to celebrate Dante’s legacy.
In 2020-2022, ISCAD suspended its activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
While we appreciate the incredible resources that remote work allows us all, we do not believe that the same communication formats can be maintained regardless of the medium used. A virtual seminar will never be the same as an in-person seminar, and in turn, the virtual world allows for projects that would otherwise be unthinkable.
So, for the Dante anniversary in 2021, part of the ISCAD team dedicated themselves to a different project: Toronto Salutes Dante, a series of multilingual readings of Dante’s Inferno open-access.
Commemorating the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, Toronto Salutes Dante features thirty-seven Canada-based guests who read Dante’s Inferno in various languages, several for the first time.
In short video clips, well-known personalities of Canadian public and cultural life who are U of T Alumni – including the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, former Governor General of Canada, and the internationally acclaimed writers Margaret Atwood and Alberto Manguel -, as well as professors and students at the University of Toronto, share their voices and fresh memories of their first encounter with the most important Italian author in world literature. For many of our readers, the language they read is a heritage one. Reading Dante’s work in translation and talking about it becomes a way to connect to family histories and reflect on what brought them to dedicate their lives to study and research, while also showcasing the unparelleled multicultural diversity of U of T wider community.
In addition to ten different Italian dialects, readings include Anishinaabemowin, Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Farsi, French, German, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Québécois, Russian, Sanskrit, Slovak, Spanish, Stoney Nakoda, Swedish, Thai, and Ukrainian. All interviews are in English.
Read more about Toronto Salutes Dante on U of T News.
Listen to Dante’s Inferno as you have never heard it!
Inferno 1 (Anishinaabemowin & English) – Featuring The Rt. Hon. A. Clarkson and M. Nunno (Author of the translation of Dante’s opening lines in Anishinaabemowin)
Inferno 34 (English & Stoney Nakoda) – Featuring Margaret Atwood, Alberto Manguel, and Trent Fox (Author of the translation of Dante’s opening lines in Stoney Nakoda), with the participation of E. Brilli, G. Ferzoco and N. Terpstra.
What happens when 21st-century people from diverse linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic communities confront and creatively reinterpret the emotional landscape of the opening scene of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, one of the most celebrated works of medieval times and world literature?
The exhibition How does it feel? Dante’s Emotions Today aims to tackle this question by sparking reflections on the vital relationship between emotions, literature, and community-making across cultures, places, and times. To do so, we are seeking creative contributions on the seven emotions displayed at the very beginning of Dante’s masterpiece (in Inferno I and II): fear, courage, hope, love, compassion, desire, and joy.
If you wish to participate, please select one emotion from this dossier edited by G. Gaimari and E. Plesnik, illustrating Dante’s emotional landscape, and share your relevant creative work with us.
Each submission should focus on one emotion only and how this emotion can be represented in today’s verbal or visual language.
Admissible pieces of creative works include:
Painting (max. 60×90 cm/26.3×35.4 inches)
Collage (max. 60×90 cm/26.3×35.4 inches)
Drawing (max. 60×90 cm/26.3×35.4 inches)
Photography (max. 60×90 cm/26.3×35.4 inches)
Video art (3 min. max)
Video performance (3 min. max)
Movie/Cartoon (3 min. max)
Music (3 min. max)
Short poem
A selection of seven creative works, one for each “emotion,” will be displayed at the in-person exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute (ICI) in Toronto on 11-21 April 2023, which will accompany a two-day international conference on Community and Emotions in Dante (U of T, 12-13 April 2023).
During the exhibition at the Institute, visitors will be invited to feel Dante’s array of conflicting emotions thanks to a virtual reality, full-immersive rendering of the Inferno’s opening miniature in the Dante Guarneriano, a 14th-15thcentury illuminated manuscript of the Commedia. They will be then invited to re-discover each of these emotions individually, thanks to illustrative panels and your creative work.
After the exhibition in person, all admitted creative works will also be included in an online, open-access, permanent exhibition.
The authors of the seven submissions included in the in-person exhibition will be invited to attend its opening on April 12, 2023. All other participants will be invited to attend it over the following weeks.
Submission Guidelines:
Deadline for submission of your creative work: Friday, 24 March 2023.
For heavy files, please send an email with a WeTransfer link (or similar).
All submissions should be accompanied by a one-page cover letter, including your name, the title and the descriptive caption of your work and explaining your reasons for submitting it.
Your authorization to display your work in person and/or online should also be included.
Selection Criteria
All submissions will be evaluated by the adjudication Committee formed by Prof. E. Brilli (CMS Director), G. Gaimari (Italian post-doctoral fellow), Prof. L. Ingallinella (Italian/CRRS), and V. Manson (ICI Toronto, Director), according to the criteria of pertinence, significance, and accessibility.
