The Italian Studies Committee invites you to attend

the Luigi and Anita Traverso Italian Studies Lecture Series

Red Dress, White Dress:

Emily Dickinson Reads Dante

Professor John Ahern

Vassar College

Monday April 18, 2005

7:00 PM

Lecture Center 102

Emily Dickinson's reading of Dante's Vita Nuova has escaped the attention of many scholars and readers.  This tantalizing book told her all her "dreams were true." But did the famously reclusive, imaginative Dickinson identify with Beatrice in her gown or Dante the writer?

John Ahern has held the Dante Antolini Chair of Italian Letters at Vassar College since 1982. His research centers on the production and reception of Italian literature in the fourteenth century. He has published widely on Dante in scholarly journals such as Publications of the Modern Language Association, Romanic Review, Letture Classensi, and Dante Studies. His reviews have appeared in the New Republic, American Poetry Review, the New York Times Book Review, and Parnassus. He has served as Vice President of the Dante Society of America. At present his research focuses on the Familiares of Petrarch and his relation to the legal scholar, Giovanni d'Andrea.

* This lecture is sponsored by the Luigi and Anita Traverso Endowment for Italian Studies.