ANTESSA

DANTESSA CONFERENCE – CALL FOR PAPERS

To mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s Death, DANTESSA (Dante Society of South Africa) together with the Italian  Department and the English Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa) and under the auspices of the Consulate General of Italy in Johannesburg, intend to hold an online conference on the 17th and 18th of September 2021, entitled “Conversations with Dante in Africa and the Global South”. Dante’s Commedia famously mediates between various inherited traditions, engaging its readers in a continual process of translation and reinterpretation. The focus of this symposium is primarily on how this process might occur in an African context – in what sense does Dante’s text converse with Africa?  We invite you to send proposals for 15-20 minute papers, drawing on the condition of exile and process of translation which is inherent in the Commedia’s “conversio” 
narrative, and central to the African experience.  We invite presenters in all disciplines to participate and any discussion about the ways in which Dante’s writings, and specifically the Commedia, have been or might be appropriated by writers and scholars in the Global South would be most welcome.

The conference will be in English only. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• African writers who draw on Dante

• Pedagogical papers on teaching Dante in Africa and the Global South

• Translations of Dante’s works into African languages

• Translations of Dante’s works in the context of Africa and the Global South

• Dante’s concept of exile adopted by African writers

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Please send an Abstract of no more than 300 words and a very brief bio to dantesocietysouthafrica.wits@gmail.com by 30 June 2021
For more info please refer to our website: https://dantesocietysoutha.wixsite.com/my-site