As part of the 2025 Fall Italian Research Seminar series, the Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Filippo Gianferrari (UC Santa Cruz) titled:Our Memories, Ourselves: Restoring Political Communities in Purgatorio   In one of the most striking and comic episodes of the Commedia, Dante and Virgil, Dante, Virgil, and a group of newly arrived souls in Purgatorio are suddenly scattered—like doves in a public square—by an irate Cato. They have just been caught indulging in a moment of recreation, entranced by the singing of a Florentine musician, Casella, who is performing one of Dante’s own canzoni: “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona.” This enigmatic episode has generated sustained critical debate, particularly concerning the target of Cato’s rebuke. Yet the preceding exchange between Dante and Casella is no less peculiar and deserves closer scrutiny—an inquiry this reading seeks to undertake. Casella’s assurances about his unchanged “memory” and “practice of the songs of love” (Purgatorio 2.107) constitute a bizarre and surprising claim in light of the late-medieval scholastic controversy on the survival of memory and affections in the disembodied soul. Dante’s revelations here about the condition of the separated souls must be appreciated as integral to the development of two of the Ante-Purgatory’s central and interconnected themes: the human body-soul composite and the political wreckage of Dante’s contemporary Italy. How do these seemingly unrelated concerns converge to animate this liminal space between life and death, body and soul, time and eternity? To begin addressing this question, this reading broadens its focus to examine the nexus between memory and embodiment in Dante’s treatment of both human generation (Purgatorio 25) and his representation of bodily ombre who can see, experience, and remember each other in Purgatorio (12–14). Through this exploration, affective memory and empathy emerge as key elements of Dante’s anthropology. Not only are they essential to individual and collective identities, but they are also central to his vision of ‘embodied’ souls called to purge themselves and to mend their fractured political bonds. Filippo Gianferrari is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame, and an MA and BA from the University of Bologna. Before joining USCS, he taught at Vassar College and Smith College. His recent book, Dante’s Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Poetics, was published by OUP in 2024 and investigates the influence of Latin school texts on Dante's poetics of vernacular learning. His next book project, “Political Eschatology: Vernacular Theories of the Common Good,” focuses on debates on the common good among the laity in late medieval Italian city-states. In particular, the project explores the entanglements of late-medieval political theory and theological controversies on the body-soul nexus, the intellect, and the beatific vision. He is the organizer of the webinar, “Project Paradiso: Exploring Dante’s Heaven,” and co-editor with Ronald Herzman of the edited volume Dante's Paradiso: A Reader's Guide (forthcoming, Routledge: 2025). The lecture is co-sponsored by the Medieval Institute.The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The Seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The Seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange. Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.