The Center for Renaissance Studies Dante Lectures have been held each year since 2001, bringing Dante scholars from throughout the United States and Europe to the Newberry to present cutting-edge research.
From 1983 to 1997, multiple lectures were held each year under the title Lectura Dantis Newberrania. Parts of this series resulted in the two-volume book Lectura Dantis Newberryana, edited by Paolo Cherchi and Antonio C. Mastrobuono (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988).
The Newberry’s Dante Lectures are cosponsored with the Devers Program in Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago.
Upcoming Dante Lecture
2015 will mark the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri in 1265, and the 31st year since the first Lectura Dantis Newberrania.
Philosophers typically attribute the foundation of modern thought to René Descartes, who in his Discours de la méthode (1637) extensively deploys metaphors of “founding” for his theory of how the edifice of knowledge is regrounded on the clear and distinct certainty of the cogito: “I think, therefore I am.” Cultural historians sometimes locate a remoter starting point for...