Dante Now!

The Center for Italian Studies partners with faculty and students in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures to hold Dante Now!, an annual Game Day event each Fall semester.

Dante Now! is dedicated to performing and understanding Dante's Divine Comedy.

Each year a professor or group of professors (usually Ted Cachey, Laura Banella, and others) kicks off the event with an illustrated public talk.

After the lecture, campus participants read selections from Dante's Inferno as they move in small groups toward the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in a mini-pilgrimage. The event concludes at the Grotto with a choral reading of Saint Bernard in Paradiso praying to the Virgin.

The lecture that gave rise to Dante Now! was given over a decade ago and it has been a Game Day event since 2012. For more on Dante Now!, see this article published in the Observer on Friday, September 28, 2018, or have a look at the video of the inaugural performance in 2012: