The Italian Program in the World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department presents Dante, Gender, and the Body at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 5 in Giffels Auditorium, room 201. This presentation is part of a series of events that celebrate the 700th centenary of Dante's death.

Carol Chiodo, librarian for collections and digital scholarship, Widener Library, Harvard University (https://library.harvard.edu/staff/carol-chiodo; https://carolchiodo.com/), will explore the innovative nature of Dante's approach to gender for his time and the complicated legacy it leaves for contemporary readers. Seven hundred years after its composition, Dante's Comedy still prompts reflection about human identity, community and mortality. Drawing on the idea of gender as a social and temporal phenomenon, this talk investigates the Comedy as a singular apparatus that assigns and reassigns norms to different bodies and organizes them in a social construct, animating them in directions that are either consonant with, or contrary to, those norms. It also illustrates how Dante negotiates and thwarts prior gendered understandings of poetic language to explore new possibilities for gender fluidities.

The event is sponsored by the Consulate General of Italy, in Houston, Texas; the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education; the Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies Program; the University Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; the English Department; the Gender Studies Program; Honors College; and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program.

Questions? Daniela D'Eugenio at deugeni@uark.edu or Ryan Calabretta-Sajder at calabret@uark.edu.