The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to inaugurate the sixth edition of the series Tre Corone: testi e contesti dell'Italia medievale (2025–2026) with an event dedicated to the recently published volume Voci sul Purgatorio di Dante. Una nuova lettura della seconda cantica (Carocci, 2024), edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Maria Antonietta Terzoli. The book brings together canto-by-canto readings of Dante’s Purgatorio, developed through a series of five seminars held between September 2022 and September 2023, co-sponsored by the University of Basel’s Institute of Italian Studies and the William & Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame. International in scope, Voci sul Purgatorio features contributions from scholars across diverse backgrounds and traditions who, building on the momentum of the Dante centenary, offer a fresh critical reassessment of the Purgatorio and its central themes. In addition to the canto readings, the volume includes essays on the structure and models of the Purgatorio ; its language and style between memory and modernity; the theme of love; the pastoral tradition; and issues of biography and textual transmission. On this occasion, the editors will be joined in conversation by Alberto Casadei (University of Pisa) and Mira Veronica Mocan (University of Roma Tre). Register hereZygmunt G. Barański is the Emeritus R. L. Canala Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame and the Serena Professor of Italian Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of numerous studies on Dante’s works and their reception, on medieval Italian literary tradition with particular focus on authors such as Cavalcanti, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as on modern Italian literature, culture, and cinema, with many essays devoted to Pasolini. His books include: The New Italian Novel (with Lino Pertile, 1993); “Libri poetarum in quattuor species dividuntur”: Essays on Dante and ‘Genre’ (1995); “Luce nuova, sole nuovo”: Saggi sul rinnovamento culturale in Dante (1996); The “Fiore” in Context: Dante, France, Tuscany (with Patrick Boyde, 1997); Pasolini Old and New: Surveys and Studies (1999); Dante e i segni: Saggi per una storia intellettuale di Dante (2000); “Chiosar con altro testo”: Leggere Dante nel Trecento (2001; winner of the Valle dei Trulli Prize for Literary Criticism); The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture (with Rebecca West, 2001); Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition (with Theodore J. Cachey Jr., 2009); Dante in Context (with Lino Pertile, 2015); The Cambridge Companion to Dante’s “Commedia” (with Simon Gilson, 2019); Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Literature, Doctrine, Reality (2020); and Voci sull’Inferno di Dante (with M. A. Terzoli, Rome, 2021). Maria Antonietta Terzoli is professor emerita at the University of Basel and the author of numerous studies on Italian literature from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Her publications include: Il libro di Jacopo (1988); La casa della “Cognizione” (1993 and 2005); Foscolo (2000, 2008, 2010, and 2016); Le lingue di Gadda (1995); I margini del libro (2004); Le prime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (2004); Piccolomini und Basel (2005); Piccolomini: uomo di lettere (2006); Un archivio italiano (2006, with G. Giovannetti); Con l’incantesimo della parola (2007); Alle sponde del tempo consunto (2009); Letteratura e filologia fra Svizzera e Italia (2010, with A. Asor Rosa and G. Inglese); Nell’atelier dello scrittore (2010); Un meraviglioso ordegno (2013, with C. Veronese and V. Vitale); L’italiano in Svizzera (2014, with C. A. Di Bisceglia); William Blake. I disegni per la “Divina Commedia” (2014, with S. Schütze); L’italiano sulla frontiera (2015, with R. Ratti); Commento a “Quer Pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana” di C. E. Gadda (2015 and 2016, with the collaboration of V. Vitale); Gadda: guida al “Pasticciaccio” (2016, 2017, and 2018); Dante und die bildenden Künste (2016, with S. Schütze); Invenzione del moderno (2017); William Blake. La “Divina Commedia” di Dante (2017, with S. Schütze); Inchiesta sul testo (2018); Tasso und die bildenden Künste (2018, with S. Schütze); I “Trionfi” di Petrarca (2020, with M. M. S. Barbero); Saba, Ungaretti e altro Novecento (2021); Petrarca und die bildenden Künste (2021, with S. Schütze); and Voci sull’Inferno di Dante (Rome, 2021, with Z. G. Barański). Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.

Amit Prasad is an associate professor in the School of History & Sociology at Georgia Institute of Technology. He specializes in global, transnational, and postcolonial sociology and history of science, technology, and medicine. His research focuses on the history of the present — in particular, how history of colonialism continues to impact present day norms, values, and practices. His goal has been to excavate the complex and often contradictory entanglements of colonial tropes, ideologies, etc. with emergent knowledges and practices of science, technology, and medicine. Prasad also explores the visual culture of medicine, in particular its shift with the emergence of technologies such as MRI, issues of priority and invention, and scientific misinformation . He has also published on biopolitics of overseas drug trials and medical transcription and engaged with the role of history of science in films. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, American Institute of Indian Studies, among others and he has published in a number of journals, including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology & Human Values, Theory, Culture, and Society, Cultural Geographies, Technology & Culture. His first book, Imperial Technoscience: Entangled Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), through a study of connected histories of MRI in the US, the UK, and India, investigated how the invention, industrial production, as well as cultures of MRI were entangled within colonial, West-centric, and Orientalist discourses. His second book, Science Studies Meets Colonialism (Polity, 2022), investigates how colonial tropes, norms, ideologies, etc. continue to animate the present, including in the fields of history of science and science and technology studies (STS). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a stem cell clinic, he is writing his third book that is tentatively titled Miracle or Science: Scientific Uncertainty, Contested Ethics, and Global Melange in a Stem Cell Laboratory. He is an editor of the journal Science, Technology and Society (Sage). He is also an avid collector of Indian art - medieval miniatures and modern and contemporary paintings and etchings. He is particularly interested in postcolonial cosmopolitanism of Indian art/artists. Prasad's lecture is sponsored by the Liu Institute's South Asia Group and Health, Humanities and Society, Reilly Center for Science Technology and Values.Lunch Provided — Please Bring Beverages In support of the Liu Institute’s growing commitment to sustainability, we will no longer be offering drinks at our public lectures and panels. We encourage audience members to bring their water bottles or to drink from nearby water fountains.   Originally published at asia.nd.edu.

Featuring: General Martin Dempsey, Retired, 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff In conversation with: Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., University President The United States and the global community face a myriad of complex foreign policy, economic, and security challenges. In the face of these challenges, what opportunities exist to create a more just and peaceful world?Join us for a conversation with General (Ret.) Martin Dempsey who will draw on his experiences as the senior leader of the United States Military from 2011–15 to offer insights about the importance of creating a culture of hope and building relationships based on trust while navigating even the most daunting challenges. The livestream feed will be posted to this page prior to the event. About General Martin Dempsey, Retired General Martin E. Dempsey was the 37th Chief of Staff of the Army and the 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Following 41 years of military service, he now teaches leadership at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and consults for the National Basketball Association on leader development and social responsibility. Since 2016, General Dempsey has also served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of USA Basketball, the national governing body for all of our country’s international basketball competitions, men's and women's, 5x5 and 3x3, from ages 16 through the Olympics. He is a best-selling author, a decorated soldier, and among other foreign awards, a Knight of the British Empire. He is the grandson of four Irish immigrants, a member of the Irish-American Hall of Fame, and an honorary member of the Notre Dame Class of 2016. Go Irish! He and his high school sweetheart, Deanie, have been married for 49 years and live in Wake Forest, North Carolina. They have three children—each of whom served in the Army—and nine grandchildren.   Originally published at forum2025.nd.edu.

Join the Institute for Social Concerns on Friday afternoons on select home football weekends for MVP Fridays: lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Reception and book signing to follow! For the weekend of the NC State game, we welcome Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive. Introduction by Paul Blaschko, director, Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society; assistant teaching professor of philosophy. Co-sponsored by the Department of Theology and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, exploring how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age. She is also the host of The Sacred podcast, interviewing those who shape our common life about their deepest values. She is an experienced broadcaster, writer and lecturer on themes related to public ethics, spirituality, wisdom and our common life, including on the BBC and in The Times, FT, The Economist, Prospect, and UnHerd, among others. For ten years she was director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank, building a healthy and human team culture alongside a commitment to excellence. She is the chair of the board of directors of Larger Us, an organization working to help change-makers bridge divides rather than deepening them.

Saturdays with the Saints has established itself as a popular Notre Dame football pregame ritual that combines the University’s rich traditions of Catholic faith and spirited game days. In this lecture, Cyril O’Regan, the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology, will present on "To Remind of the God Who is With Us: Newman on the Sacred Heart." The lectures take place in the Andrews Auditorium, located on the lower level of Geddes Hall, adjacent to the Hesburgh Library. The talks are free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early as the events tend to fill to capacity.Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

Thad DunningRobson Professor in Political ScienceUniversity of California, Berkeley A vast literature highlights the political, social, and economic consequences of slavery. Yet previous research — particularly in political science and particularly in work on Latin America — appears to have missed important channels through which the regulation of slavery contributed crucially to state-building. In this research in progress, Dunning argues that the regulation of slavery in imperial Brazil contributed to the construction of a bureaucracy that was autonomous in many ways of slaveholder interests and propose the hypothesis that this was driven by imperatives of political survival. He then empirically examine two main vehicles through which an autonomous state was built: responses to lawsuits for freedom brought on behalf of enslaved persons and appeals for protection in the carceral system. The argument and supporting evidence may contribute new comparative insights to the understanding of state-building in the Americas.Thad Dunning is the Robson Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and director of the Center on the Politics of Development. His research centers on comparative politics, political economy, and quantitative methods, with a regional focus on Latin America, Africa, and India. For more information, visit the event page. Sponsored by the Kellogg Institute at the Keough School of Global Affairs.