The Center for Italian Studies is proud to announce that the 2nd Annual Dante Society of America Graduate Student Conference will be hosted by the University of Notre Dame. "Dante’s Other Worlds: Art, Language, and Imagination," is the second in a series of conferences organized by graduate students working in the field of Dante Studies in America. This opportunity allows younger dantisti in the Americas to present their work and research among other scholars. The conference will take place on Saturday, September 27, 2025 following a two-day symposium dedicated to the conference "Global Dante Translation and Reception," hosted by the University of Notre Dame. The symposium will be open to speakers and participants of the DSA conference. In those days, participants are encouraged to visit the exhibit “Commedia: Mapping Global Dante in Translation.” The collection includes every major translation from more than 24 languages, including rare ones such as Japanese (the first edition of the first translation), Korean, and Bangla, along with approximately 120 of the 137 existing English translations. Organizers:Beatrice Maria Rosso (University of Notre Dame)Stefano Scandella (New York University)Evan Underbrink (The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA) The full program schedule is available here. Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.

Designed to help children develop their visual and verbal literacy skills, Artful Storytime is a partnership with the St. Joseph County Public Library. Each Artful Storytime includes stories, songs, artwork explorations, art-making, and more! We’ll be celebrating all our furry, feathered, and scaly pets this month. This program is best for families with children ages 4 to 6. Parking is available in the Visitor Lot immediately north of the Sculpture Park for a fee during the week (before 4:30 p.m.). Free two-hour parking is available in the Eddy Street Commons Parking Garage or along Angela Blvd. After 4:30 p.m. and on weekends, parking is free and available in any non-gated campus lot. If traveling via South Bend Transpo, take the No.7 bus and use the Eddy St. Commons stop.   Originally published at raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu.

One artistic form can inspire another, creating profound connections, often in eye-opening and fortuitous ways. In this writing workshop led by Brenda Cárdenas, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, you will learn about various approaches poets take to the mode of ekphrasis—poems that converse or correspond with, interpret, or “riff off” of visual art. Then, with the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art’s permanent collection at your disposal and using prompts to guide you, you will write poems in response to works of visual art that inspire, intrigue, puzzle, or move you. We will work toward creating a third space where the poem and art together are something more or different than their parts—something, perhaps, unexpected! This workshop is free and open to writers of all experience levels. Registration is required, and the workshop is limited to 15 participants. Register here. Parking is available in the Visitor Lot immediately north of the Sculpture Park for a fee during the week (before 4:30 p.m.). Free two-hour parking is available in the Eddy Street Commons Parking Garage or along Angela Blvd. After 4:30 p.m. and on weekends, parking is free and available in any non-gated campus lot. If traveling via South Bend Transpo, take the No.7 bus and use the Eddy St. Commons stop. About the instructor:Brenda Cárdenas has published ekphrastic poems in her two books, Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press, 2009), as well as in literary magazines and anthologies, most recently in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. Cárdenas is also co-editor of two anthologies, including Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017). She co-designed and co-taught the inaugural master workshop for PINTURA: PALABRA, a multi-year Letras Latinas initiative in partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she taught undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars on poetry and the visual arts. Cárdenas’s campus visit launches “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a multi-year partnership between the Museum and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS). This workshop will be preceded by a reading and talk on ekphrastic writing in the Museum on Wednesday, September 24th. Between the reading and workshop, Cárdenas will spend two days at the Museum observing, reflecting, and writing a new ekphrastic poem inspired by an artwork on display.   Originally published at raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu.

Classics in the Browning Directed by Akira KurosawaWith Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyoko Kagawa Not Rated, 143 minutesIn Japanese with English subtitles Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low, the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa recently revamped by Spike Lee in Highest 2 Lowest. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society. GET TICKETS *Co-presented by the Meg and John P. Brogan Endowment for Classic Cinema.

New at the Browning Directed by Spike LeeWith Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, A$AP Rocky Rated R, 133 minutes When a titan music mogul (Denzel Washington), widely known as having the best ears in the business is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma. Frequent collaborators Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the fifth in their long working relationship for a reinterpretation of the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller High and Low, now played out on the mean streets of modern day New York City. GET TICKETS