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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DEVERS PROGRAM: 1999-2000
Academic Programs and Support
The Devers program's fourth annual Fall series was dedicated this year to the theme, "Dante and Modern Italian Poetry":
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Professor Dennis Dutschke of
the University of California, Davis spoke on "Uncovering Dante in
Petrarch" (Sept. 23).
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Professor Andrea Ciccarelli of Indiana University
spoke on "Experimentalism vs. Traditionalism: Dante and Modern Italian
Poetry" (Oct. 14).
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Professor Rebecca West of the University of Chicago
spoke on "The Other Woman in Dante's and Montale's Poetic
Itineraries" (Nov. 11).
The afternoon lectures were followed the next morning by informal seminars offered by the visiting scholars.
During the Spring of 2000 the Devers Program sponsored the third in its series of
credit-bearing compact seminars dedicated to the examination of Dante's minor
works. This year's Devers Visiting Professor, Teodolinda Barolini,
Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, offered a seminar
on "Dante's Lyric Poetry: Le rime" during the week following Spring
break (March 20-24) in the Department of Special Collections. Professor Barolini is currently preparing an edition and commentary of
Dante's Rime and provided an intensive (not to say gripping) comprehensive
reading of the collection. She generously made herself available to faculty and
students, including Ph.D. students in the Medieval Institute with whom she
discussed their work. Professor Barolini also gave a public lecture entitled
"Desire and Death, or Francesca and Guido Cavalcanti: Inferno 5 in its
Lyric Context" on March 20.
The Devers Program
also co-sponsored:
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with the Medieval Institute a lecture by Professor Salvatore
Camporeale of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University's Villa I Tatti
on "Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine" (March 1);
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with the Italian section of the Department of Romance Languages a
lecture by Professor Paolo Giordano of Loyola University, Chicago on
Italian-American literature on the occasion of the annual Italian Studies award
program (April 26);
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with the Department of Theology a lecture
by Professor Peter Hawkins of Yale University entitled "Figlia del tuo
figlio: Dante's Marian Christology" (April 27).
The Devers Program continued to support the teaching of Dante "across the
curriculum" by its support of the annual Dante course offered by the
Department of Romance Languages and taught by Professors Cachey and Moevs for the
fourth year in a row; by its support of teaching about Dante in the Core
Course; and by its organization of lectures and tours of rare Dante materials held in the Zahm Dante collection in the Department of Special Collections.
The Devers
Program also continued to provide small grants of support for graduate level
research in Dante studies and related areas. During 1999-2000 the Program was
pleased to support the summer research in Italy of Kari Kloos, a graduate
student in the History of Christianity Program.
The
Devers Program's academic goal of establishing Notre Dame as a leading national
and international center for the study of Dante is complemented by its commitment
to enhancing the quality of local intellectual and spiritual life both within
and without the University's walls. To this end, the Devers Program spearheaded
the establishment of a pilot site at Notre Dame of the national Teacher as
Scholars initiative and offered a seminar
within the context of this program "Dante's Inferno: Instructions for
Use." Finally, the Devers Program co-sponsored both the Dante 2000
conference organized by the Dante Society of America at Columbia University on
April 7-9 and the Third International Dante Seminar held in Florence on June
9-11, 2000.
Scholarly Publication
The
Devers Series in Dante Studies, edited by Professors Cachey and Moevs, published
its fourth volume, The Fiore (and the Detto d'amore): a 13th century Italian
translation of the Roman de la Rose attributable to Dante by Christopher
Kleinhenz and Santa Casciani. This volume is the first English translation of
the Fiore, a sequence of over 250 sonnets, which has been the focus of intense
debate over the last several years both for the question of its attribution to
Dante and for its critical collocation within the context of early Romance
lyric poetry.
In 1997 the series published a volume dedicated to the attribution
question (vol. II: The Fiore in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany, eds. Baranski
and Boyde) which has been received as a landmark contribution to the field. The
Kleinhenz and Casciani translation represents an ideal sequel to this earlier
title.
Internet Research and Publications
The
principal accomplishment in this area during the 1999-2000 academic year was the
release of a major upgrade of the search engine software for the Opera del
Vocabolario Italiano textbase of Italian vernacular sources. The search engine
software used to support this project is the PhiloLogic system developed by
Mark Olsen of the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago. PhiloLogic
version 2.0 was tested on several ARTFL databases last year and in the
spring of 2000 the OVI database was rebuilt to take advantage of its enhanced retrieval
and reporting capabilities, including the display of line numbers and organic
textual references, improved treatment of diacritics and the hiding of certain
types of extra-textual data from search indexing.
In
February 2000, an Italian version of the Ambrosiana Drawings Project Web site was created in conjunction with the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Both the Italian and
English versions are now linked to the official Web site of the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana. An additional 500 records were added to the database in May,
bringing the total number of cataloged drawings to 5,825.
The
Web-based Progetto Italica video language courseware package developed by the
Devers Program in collaboration with RAI International continued to be used in
first and second level Italian language courses at Notre Dame throughout the
year. Mirror sites were also established at York University in Toronto and
Middlebury College in Vermont so that faculty and students at these
institutions could more easily access courseware content. Additional
self-correcting grammatical exercises were added to project at the end of last
spring and more are planned for the coming fall, together with updates of
information contained in the cultural resource pages.
Rare Book Acquisitions
An important part of the mandate of the Devers
Program since its inception has been the purchase of rare materials for the Zahm
Dante Collection of the University Libraries. A formal program of acquistions was initiated during the
1999-2000 academic year focussing on rare materials pertinent to the strengths
of the Zahm collection with a special emphasis on Renaissance editions of
Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch as well as materials related to the history of
the Italian Language which was codified during the Renaissance on the basis of
the classic works of these authors. This collection strategy develops a niche
for Notre Dame's collections vis-à-vis those of other major libraries in the
Midwest including Chicago, Newberry Library, IU, and the University of Michigan
and complements well other collections currently held by the University like
the Ambrosiana microfilm collection and the Durand collection which also
includes a strong representation of late Medieval and Renaissance Italian
literary texts.
A list of works purchased during the 1999-2000 academic year is available here.
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