Exiled in death as in life, Dante Alighieri has hardly rested in peace over the centuries. Nobody knows this better than Guy Raffa, author of Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy. Raffa, an expert on Dante’s life, works and legacy, will be speaking at the annual Neil R. Euliano Lecture Series about the physical afterlife and graveyard history of the poet responsible for the Divine Comedy.
The event is free and will take place virtually on Wednesday, March 24 at 3:30 p.m. Advance registration is required here; attendees will receive an email with a link to the Zoom event after registering.
Raffa, currently an associate professor of Italian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, is an award-winning scholar, teacher and digital humanist. With a focus on Italian culture and history, he has made a name for himself through his many articles and three other books on Dante and his works.
“I met Guy a few years ago at an academic conference where he presented a work in progress on Dante’s graveyard history and cultural legacy,” says Chiara Mazzucchelli, director of UCF’s Italian program and Dr. Neil Euliano Chair in Italian Studies. “The seminal paper he presented at that conference is now a book (Dante’s Bones, Harvard University Press, 2020) and I am excited he has agreed to share his expertise with us and help the Italian Program at UCF celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Italian poet’s death.”
After publishing Dante’s Bones, Raffa is looking forward to finishing his current book project, tentatively titled Dante’s American Inferno, for which he was awarded an NEH Public Scholars Fellowship. Raffa has even brought his endeavors virtual, giving audiences an opportunity to take a multimedia tour on his award-winning website, Danteworlds.
The Euliano Lecture series discusses Italian and Italian-American cultures across different disciplines. Its goal is to foster and promote Italian culture through educational and academic activities at UCF. Previous lectures include “Why Is Opera So Popular?” and “Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema.”
“The series provides a unique opportunity to showcase to the local community the activities and opportunities to which students of the Italian Program at UCF are exposed,” says Mazzucchelli.