Monday, September 20, 2021
5:30 p.m. EST
Zoom (link will be sent upon registration)
2021 Fordham Reads Dante Lecture:
What’s a Dante Theme Park? Reading and Writing the Divine Comedy into the American Present
Presented by Randy Boyagoda, University of Toronto
Writer and professor Randy Boyagoda has been reading a canto of the Divine Comedy every day for the past five years while writing a novel about people building a Dante theme park in an opioid-ravaged American small town. In this talk and reading from his new novel, Dante’s Indiana, he will reflect on what it means to imagine contemporary life with and through Dante’s vision of eternal sinners and saints. In turn, he will consider what the perils and promises of Inferno and Paradiso mean for our own lives in a seemingly purgatorial here and now.
Novelist Randy Boyagoda is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as Vice-Dean, Undergraduate. He’s the author of four novels including his latest, Dante’s Indiana. He lives in Toronto with his wife and four daughters.
Cosponsored by The Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, The Center for Medieval Studies, The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
Free and open to the public. This lecture will be virtual, and a Zoom link will be sent upon registration.
Registration is required. For more information, email cacs@fordham.edu.