Vanderbilt University:

William Franke http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/complit/franke

Program in Comparative Literature email: william.franke@vanderbilt.edu

VU Station B #351709 telephone: (615) 322-6900

Vanderbilt University fax: (615) 322-6909

Nashville, TN 37235

ACADEMIC DEGREES:

1988-91 Stanford University, Ph. D. in Comparative Literature

1986-88 University of California at Berkeley, M.A. in Comparative Literature

1978-80 Oxford University, M.A. in Philosophy and Theology

1974-78 Williams College, B.A. in Philosophy, summa cum laude

EMPLOYMENT:

1991-present Vanderbilt University

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian

and Associate Professor of Religious Studies (secondary appointment)

ACADEMIC AWARDS AND HONORS:

Fellowships

· Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Fellow, sabbatical year in Germany, 1994-95

(affiliated with Universität Potsdam, sponsored by Prof. Dr. Helena Harth)

· Bogliasco Foundation (Genova, Italy), Fellow in Philosophy, Spring 2006

· Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), Residential Research Fellowship, Fall 2000

· Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities (Vanderbilt), Fellow, 1995-96

(year-long weekly seminar on the Millennium, with stipendium)

· Stanford Fellowship (in lieu of New Century Fellowship at University of Chicago

and University Fellowship at Yale), 1988-91

· John E. Moody Scholarship, Oxford University, 1978-80

International Visiting Teaching Appointments and Teaching Abroad

· Fulbright-University of Salzburg Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology and Study of Religion, 2006-07, Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen

· University of Hong Kong Honorary Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Fall 2005

· Professor of French in Residence, Vanderbilt-in-France, Aix-en-Provènce, Spring-Fall 2008

Prizes and Honors

· Dante Society Council, by general election of The Dante Society of America, 2007-2009

· Rosenberg Poetry Prize, UC Berkeley, 1987

· Skeat-Whitfield Essay Prize in English, Oxford University, 1979

· Scholarship from W. B. Yeats International Summer School, Sligo, Ireland, 1979

· John W. Miller Prize in Philosophy, Williams College, 1978

· Phi Beta Kappa, 1977

Grants and Stipends

· Research Grant for On What Cannot Be Said, Vanderbilt University Research Council, 2002

· Travel Awards from the Istituto Italiano per gli studi filosofici, Naples, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998

· Direct Research Support Grant, Vanderbilt University Research Council, Summer 1996

PUBLICATIONS:
Books

· Dante’s Interpretive Journey (pp. 242 + xi)

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Religion and Postmodernism Series

· On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

Edited with Theoretical and Critical Essays by William Franke

Vol. I: Classic Formulations (401 pp + xi)

               Vol. II: Modern and Contemporary Transformations (480 pp + viii)

      Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language
                       Stanford University Press (forthcoming, 2008)

Articles and Essays

54. “’The Missing All’: Emily Dickinson’s Apophatic Poetics”

Christianity and Literature

53. “The Coincidence of Reason and Revelation in Communicative Openness:

A Critical Negative Theology of Dialogue”

Journal of Religion

52. “Le Nom de Dieu comme vanité du langage au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabès”
           ["The Name of God as the Vanity of Language in the Heart of Every Word"],
            trans. by Martine Prieto and Geoffrey Obin
         In Edmond Jabès, l'éclosion des énigmes, pp. 249-260
         eds. Daniel Lançon et Catherine Mayaux
         (Vincennes: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2008)

51. “Eine kritische Negative Theologie des Dialogs: Die Koinzidenz der Vernunft und der Offenbarung in

kommunikativen Offenheit“ [ “A Critical Negative Theology of Dialogue: The Coincidence of

Reason and Revelation in Communicative Openness”] trans. by Anja Bandas and William Franke
in Salzburger Theologisher Zeitschrift 11 (2007): 217-249

50. "Joyce" in Blackwell’s Companion to the Bible in English Literature (2008)

(eds. Emma Masson, Christopher Rowland, Jon Roberts, and Rebecca Lemon)

49. “Edmond Jabès, or the Endless Self-Emptying of Language in the Name of God”

Literature and Theology 22/1 (2007): 1-17

48. “The Ethical Vision of Dante’s Paradiso in Light of Levinas”

Comparative Literature 59/3 (2007): 209-227

47. “Poetic Language, Apocalypse, and the Premises for Dialogue

Between a Secular West and Radical Islam”

Reconstructing Realities: Occident-Orient Engagements,

eds. Ganakumaran Subramaniam, Shanthini Pillai and Hafriza Burhanudeen

(Kuala Lumpur: Pearson Malaysia, 2007), pp. 41-52

46. “The Ethical Posture of Anti-Colonial Discourse in Edward Said and in Mohatma Gandhi”

Journal of Contemporary Thought 25 (Summer 2007):5-24

45. “The Deaths of God in Hegel and Nietzsche

and the Crisis of Values in Secular Modernity and Post-Secular Postmodernity”

Religion and the Arts 11/2 (2007): 214-41

44. “Scripture as Theophany in Dante’s Paradiso’’

Religion and Literature 39/2 (Spring 2007): 1-32

(2006 Annual Religion and Literature Lecture, University of Notre Dame)

43. “Hermeneutics, Historicity, and Poetry as Theological Revelation in Dante’s Divine Comedy”

In Art and Time, ed. Jan Lloyd Jones et al. (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing,2007),
pp. 39-56

42. “The Rhetorical-Theological Presence of Romans in Dante:

A Comparison of Methods in Philosophical Perspective”

In Medieval Readings of Paul's Letter to the Romans, ed. William Campbell, Peter Hawkins and Brenda Deen
Schildgen (Edinburgh: Continuum/T&T Clark, 2006)

41. “Primordial Sacrifice, Typology, and the Theological Vocation of Literature:

Extending Gian Balsamo’s Interpretation of Joyce and Christian Epic”

Literature and Theology 20/3 (2006): 251-268

40. “Praising the Unsayable: An Apophatic Defense of Metaphysics

Based on the Neoplatonic Parmenides Commentaries”

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11/1 (2006): 143-173

39. “Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion: From Neoplatonic Negative Theology to

Postmodern Negation of Theology”

In Self and Other: Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion, ed. Eugene Long,

Special issue of International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60, numbers (2006): 61-76

38. “Linguistic Repetition as Theological Revelation in Christian Epic Tradition:

The Case of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”

Neophilologus 90/1 (2006): 155-172

37. “The Singular and the Other at the Limits of Language in the Post-Holocaust Poetry

of Edmond Jabès and Paul Celan”

New Literary History 36/4 (2005): 621-638

36. “Varieties and Valences of Unsayability in Literature”

Philosophy and Literature 29/2 (2005): 489-497

35. “Franz Rosenzweig and the Emergence of a Post-Secular Philosophy of the Unsayable”

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 58/3 (2005): 161-180

34. “Virgil , History, and Prophecy”

Philosophy and Literature 29 (2005): 73-88

33. “Damascius. Of the Ineffable: Aporetics of the Notion of an Absolute Principle”

Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 12/1 (2004): 111-31.

(Introduction with original translation from the Greek of De principiis, Part I, cc 3-8)

32. “A Philosophy of the Unsayable: Apophasis and the Experience of Truth and Totality.”
In Imaginatio Creatrix, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana LXXXIII (2004): 65-83.

31. “Truth and Interpretation in the Divine Comedy”

In Dante Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2004), pp. 287-305.

(excerpt reprinted from Dante’s Interpretive Journey, pp. 5-23)

30. “The Dialectical Logic of Yeats’s Byzantium Poems”

In Poetry Criticism,vol. 51, ed. Carol Ullman (Kennedale, TX: Gale Group, 2004), pp. 146-52

[Reprinted from Yeats-Eliot Review 15, no. 3: 23-32]

29. “The Exodus Epic: Universalization of History Through Ritual”
In Universality and History: The Foundations of Core, ed. Don Thompson, Darrel Colson, and J.

Scott Lee (Lanham-New York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2002), pp. 59-70

28. “The Interpretive Journey and the Allegory of Reading:
Introduction to the Inferno as a Humanities Text”
In Uniting the Liberal Arts: Core and Context, ed. Bainard Cowen and J. Scott Lee

(Lanham-New York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2002), pp 75-82

27. “Literature as Liturgy and the Interpretive Revolution of Literary Criticism”

Preface to Gian Balsamo, Scriptural Poetics in Finnegans Wake

(Lewisburg, New York: Edwin Mellin Press, 2002), pp. v-xiii

26. “Il significato teologico del paesaggio di san Benedetto nel Paradiso di Dante”

Lo Speco CVII, no. 4 (2002): 80-82

25. “William Franke on Post-Structuralist Interpratation”

In Italo Calvino: Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2001), pp. 28-30.
[Reprint from “The Deconstructive Anti-Logic of Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili,” Italian Quarterly 30 (1989)].

24. “Dante’s Address to the Reader en face Derrida’s Critique of Ontology”

Annalecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phemonenological Research LXIX (2000): 119-131.

23. “Prophecy Eclipsed: Hamlet as a Tragedy of Knowledge”

In Core Texts in Conversation, eds. Jane Kelley Rodeheffer, David Sokolowski, and J. Scott Lee

(Lanham-New York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2000), pp. 149-154.

22. “Metaphor and the Making of Sense: The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance”

Philosophy and Rhetoric 33/2 (2000): 137-154.

21. “Apocalypse and the Breaking-Open of Dialogue: A Negatively Theological Perspective”

International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 47 (2000): 65-86

20. “The Linguistic Turning of the Symbol: Baudelaire and his French Symbolist Heirs”
In Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity, volume in Honor of Claude Pichois,

ed Patricia Ward (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), pp. 28-40.

19. “Figuralism,” “Albert the Great,” “Constantine,” “Israel," “William II of Sicily”

In The Dante Encyclopedia (New York-London: Garland Publishing, 2000),

pp. 376-79, 11, 216-17, 524-525, 885-86.

18. “Eine Kontextbestimmung der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft--das Beispiel Vanderbilt”

In Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft. Konturen und Profile im Pluralismus, pp. 181-192

With John McCarthy, ed. Carsten Zelle (Opladen/Wiesbaden, 1999)

17. “Apocalyptic Poetry Between Metaphysics and Negative Theology: From Dante to Celan and Stevens”

Literature and Belief 19/1,2 (1999): 261-284

16. “‘Enditynges of Worldly Vanitees’: Truth and Poetry in Chaucer as Compared with Dante”

The Chaucer Review 87, no. 1 (1999): 87-106

15. “The Dialectical Logic of Yeats’s Byzantium Poems”

Yeats-Eliot Review 15, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 23-32

14. “Psychoanalysis as a Hermeneutics of the Subject: Freud, Ricoeur, Lacan”

Dialogue: The Canadian Philosophical Review 38 (1998): 65-81.

13. “Reader’s Application and the Moment of Truth”

In Dante: Contemporary Perspectives,

ed. Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 59-80.

[reprint, revised of “Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought,”

Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 12 (1993): 34-52]

12. “Blind Prophecy: Milton’s Figurative Mode in Paradise Lost”

In Through A Glass Darkly: Essays in the Religious Imagination,

ed. John Hawley (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), pp. 87-103.

11. “Resurrected Tradition and Revealed Truth: Dante’s Statius”

Quaderni d’italianistica 15/1-2 (1994): 7-34

10. “Dante and the Poetics of Religious Revelation”

Symploke: A Journal for the Intermingling of Literary, Cultural and Theoretical Scholarship

2/2 (1994): 103-116

9. “Dante’s Hermeneutic Rite of Passage: Inferno IX”

Religion and Literature 26/2 (1994): 1-26

8. “In the Interstices Between Symbol and Allegory: Montale’s Figurative Mode”

Comparative Literature Studies 31/4 (1994): 370-89

7. “Dante’s Address to the Reader and its Ontological Significance”

Modern Language Notes 109 (1994): 117-127

6. “Hermeneutic Catastrophe in Racine: The Epistemological Predicament of 17th Century Tragedy”

Romanische Forschungen 105 (1993): 315-31

5. “Poetics and Apocalypse in Manzoni’s Interpretation of History”

Esperienze letterarie Anno XVIII - n. 4 (1993): 17-38

4. “Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought”

Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 12 (1993): 34-52

3. “The Logic of Infinity: European Romanticism and the Question of Giacomo Leopardi”

Comparatio: Revue Internationale de Littérature Comparée 1 (1990): 69-82

2. “The Deconstructive Anti-Logic of Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili”

Italian Quarterly 30 (1989): 31-41

1. Note on "Robert Harrison’s The Body of Beatrice"

Rivista di studi italiani 4 (1988): 78-82

forthcoming

“Dante” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity forthcoming

“Le nom de Dieu comme vanité du langage au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabes”

in Edmond Jabès hors genre, hier et aujourd’hui (CERISY) forthcoming

“Italian Topographies as Metaphors for the Other World in the Paradiso”

Le Dimore della Poesia, Acts of XVII Conference of A.I.S.L.L.I. forthcoming

“The Birth of Christian Epic out of the Death of God:

Altizer’s Apocalyptic Theology and Postmodern Poetics of Revelation”

Critical Reviews and Appreciations

Review of Massimo Verdicchio, Of Dissimulation: Allegory and Irony in Dante’s Commedia

in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature

Review of Warren Ginsberg, Dante and the Aesthetics of Being

in Speculum 76/3 (July 2001), 727-29

“Dante and Modernism.” On David Pike’s Passage through Hell: Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds, review article in Speculum 74/3 (1999): 68-71

“Diecimila quadri ed anche qualcuno di più,” L’arte illustrata 5, November 1985

“Poesia e politica si mescolano,” Tempi di fraternità, August 1985

“Due poeti e un libro,” Tempi di fraternità, September 1986

Poetry

“The Automocrat,” Only Poetry, Spring 1982

“Invocation of Campion,” “Jenny Arranging Herself to Play Violin: an Appreciation by Her Pianist,”

“Passing the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square,” California State Poetry Quarterly, Volume IX,

No. 1, 1982

“Contemporaries,” California State Poetry Quarterly, Volume X, No. 2, Summer 1983

“Dance of the Shirts,” The Writer, November 1984

“Letter to a Friend,” “March,” SEAMS: The Cultural Art Journal, Volume 2 No. 1, Fall 1985

“Free Riding I-IV,” SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume 2, No. 2 Winter-Spring 1986

“Glimpses I-IV,” SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume 2, No. 3, Summer-Fall 1986

“Limbo,” “Faring Well in Arms,” “Lightspot”SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume 2, No. 4, Winter-Spring 1987

“Original Lyric,” “Outsight,” BERKELEY POETS 1987 (Rosenberg Prize)

PUBLIC LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS:

“The Canon Question and the Value of Theory: Towards a New Concept of Universality”

Conference on National Literatures in the Age of Globalization: The Issue of Canon

University of Bucharest, October 31 to November 1, 2008

“Existentialism: A Christian Philosophy or Ultimate Atheism?”

The Fourth World Congress of Phenomenology: The Phenomenology and Existentialism of the Twentieth Century at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

August 18, 2008

* “Dante’s Paradiso and Medieval, Monastic Conceptions of Heaven”

Abbaye Saint-Wandrille, Normandy, France

July 19, 2008

“Acknowledging Unknowing: Stanley Cavell and the Philosophical Criticism of Literature”

Conference on Stanley Cavell and Literary Criticism, Edinburgh University

May 11, 2008

"Poetics of Silence in the Post-Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan"

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference,

Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington November 2, 2007

* “Porphyry and the Philosophical Criticism of Literature”

Lecture in Classical Philology, University of Salzburg, May 14, 2007

* “A Critical Negative Theology of Dialogue:

The Coincidence of Reason and Revelation in Communicative Openness”

(Vorlesung auf Englisch abgehalten mit anschliesender Diskussion auf Deutsch)

University of Salzburg, May 9, 2007 POSTER

”Postmodern Identity Politics and the Social Tyranny of the Definable”

Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film

Tallahassee, Florida, February 3, 2007

“The Ethical Posture of Post-Colonial Discourse in Said and in Gandhi”

9th International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory

Udaipur, Rajasthan (India), December 16, 2006 INDIA TRAVELOGUE

* “Scripture as Theophany in Dante’s Paradiso”

2006 Annual Lecture in Religion and Literature POSTER

University of Notre Dame, October 30, 2006

“Habermas’s Critical Reflexive Philosophy versus Premodern Poetic and Theological Reflexivity”

12^th International Philosophy Colloquium: The Structure of Reflection—Self-Conscioiusnes and Critique

Evian, France, July 16-22, 2006

“’The Missing All’: Emily Dickinson’s Apophatic Poetics”

College English Association 37^th Annual Conference,

San Antonio, Texas, April 7, 2006

“Edmond Jabès, or the Name of God as the Vanity of Language in the Heart of Every Word”

XVIIth Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures

Stetson University, Deland, Florida, March 3, 2006

“Primordial Sacrifice, Typology, and the Theological Vocation of Literature in Finnegans Wake”

Lecture for Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong

December 5, 2005

“Poetic Language, Apocalypse, and the Premises for Dialogue: How a Secular West Can Face Radical Islam.” Worlds in Discourse: Representations of Realities, International Conference,

Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia, November 21, 2005 Conference Publication Series

“’Shadowy Prefaces’: Literature, Theology, and the Philosophy of Unsaying”

Lecture for Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong,

November 8, 2005

“The Truth of Art in Time and in Eternity: Dante’s Divine Commedy”

Conference on Art and Time, Australian National University, November 3, 2005

* “The Death of God and the Crisis of Values in Secular Modernity and Post-secular Postmodernity”

Lecture Series on Culture, Value, and the Meaning of Life

Department of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong, September 28, 2005

“A Heideggerian Reading of Prophetic Temporality in the Aeneid”

ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Annual Convention

Penn State University, March 11, 2005

“An Epistemology of the Humanities as Involved Knowing”

National Assocation for Humanities Education 2005 Convention

Richmond, February 25, 2005

“What Philosophical Criticism of Literature Can Do”

Seventh Annual Comparative Literature Conference: “Thinking on the Boundaries: The Availability of Philosophy in Film and Literature,” University of South Carolina, February 11, 2005

“The Place of the Proper Name in the Italian Topographies of the Paradiso”

MLA (Modern Language Association) National Convention, Philadelphia, December 28, 2004

“Apophasis and the Neoplatonic Interpretation of Religious Revelation”

AAR (American Academy of Religion) National Convention. Platonism and Neoplatonism Group.

San Antonio, November 21, 2004.

“Proper Names, Singularities, and the Unnameable in the Topographies of Dante’s Paradiso”

Names and the Unnameable: Literary Art and Spiritual Vision: 2004-05 Midwest Regional Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Notre Dame University September 17, 2004

“Typological Re-Origination and the Theological Vocation of Poetry”

Bloomsday 100: 19^th International James Joyce Symposium

Dublin, Ireland, June 14, 2004

“Christian Epic Tradition and Theological Revelation in ‘Finnegans Wake’”

Conference on Christianity and Literature

Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, March 27, 2004

“Negative Theology in Dante’s Paradiso after Derrida and Levinas”

Medieval and Postmodern Intersections: NJCEA 27^th Annual Conference

Seton Hall University, March 20, 2004

“New Interpretations of Joyce and Christian Epic”

Miami Joyce Conference, January 30, 2004

“Primary Metaphorization and the Origin of Language: Vico’s Heritage”

Session on Italian Literature between Religion and Philosophy from Baroque Culture to Romanticism

MLA national convention, San Diego, December 28, 2003

“Dante and the Secularization of Religion through Literature”

Divison on Literature and Religion: Religion and the Rise of Literary Studies

MLA national convention, San Diego, December 27, 2003

Response to papers on “The Letter to the Romans Through the Ages”

Society for Biblical Literature at the AAR (American Academy of Religion) national convention

Atlanta, Georgia, November 22, 2003

"Dante's Ugolino, or Narrative as the Instrument of Sin"

Session on Ethics and Narrative

PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Assoc.), Claremont College, November 8, 2003

“Le nom de Dieu comme vanité du langage au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabes”

(“The Name of God as the Vanity of Language at the Bottom of Every Word according to Edmond Jabès”)

Colloque Jabès at CERISY (Centre Internationale de Culture)

Cerisy, France, August 19, 2003

"Mystical Rhetorics of Silence: Medieval to Modern"

Sixth International Literature and Humanities Conference: “Inscriptions in the Sand,”

Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta, Cyprus, June 1, 2003

“Paul Celan’s Immemorial Silence”
ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) annual convention: “Crossing Over”

San Marcos, California, April 5, 2003

“Negative Theology in the Neoplatonic Parmenides-Commentary Tradition

and as Revived in Contemporary Apophatic Forms of Thinking”

Society for the Contemporary Assessment of Platonism (SCAP)

American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, San Francisco, March 31, 2003

“Virgil’s Invention of History as Prophecy”

Comparative Literature Conference: “Imagning Rome”

California State University, Long Beach, March 15, 2003

“Dante: Prophet and Pioneer of Secular Humansim”

Conference on Humanism, SUNY Stony Brook, February 28, 2003

“A Philosophy of the Unsayable: Apophatic Discourses from Plato to the Postmodern”

Vanderbilt Philosophy Colloquium, October 11, 2002

“Joyce’s Typology and the Theological Vocation of Poetry”

International James Joyce Symposium, session on Joyce and the Bible

Trieste, Italy, June 21, 2002

“The Writing of Silence in Post-Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès”

Phenomenology and Literature Conference: Aesthetics of Mystery in Poetry, Novel, Drama and Film

Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 9, 2002

“Virgil’s Invention of History as Prophecy”

Classical Association of the Atlantic States, session on Augustan Latin Poetry

Cherry Hill, New Jersey, April 27, 2002

"Singularity, Alterity, and the Unspeakable: Apophasis in Post-Holocaust Poetry and
Thought.” International Phenomenological Symposium: “Singularity-Subjectivity-The Other”

Perugia, Italy, July 17, 2001

“On What Cannot Be Said: Significances of Silence in Society, Philosophy, Religion, Literature and

the Arts,” McGill Philosophy Discussion Hour

Vanderbilt, April 2, 2001

“Dante’s Paradiso and the Poetics of Unsayability”

Presentation at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, November 18, 2000

“Topografie italiane come metafore dell’altro mondo nel Paradiso dantesco”

(“Italian Topographies as Metaphors for the Other World in the Paradiso”)

XVII Conference of A.I.S.L.L.I. (Associazione Internationale per gli Studi di Lingua e Letteratura Italiana) on the topic “Le Dimore della Poesia” (“The Dwellings of Poetry”)

Gardone Riviera (Brescia), Italy, June 3, 2000

“Dante’s Poetics of Exile”

International Dante Seminar, invited as “discussant” by Società Dantesca Italiana

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, June 9-11, 2000

“The Exodus Epic: History and Ritual”

2000 Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Sixth Annual Conference

San Francisco, April 15, 2000

“Theological Apocalypse and the Breaking-Open of Dialogue in Literature: Some Political and Poetic Proposals for the New Millennium.” Comparative Literature Colloquium, Vanderbilt, January 25, 2000

“The Lyric Poetics of the Paradiso”

1999 South Atlantic MLA Convention, Atlanta, November 6, 1999

“Inferno as a Humanities Text: The Interpretive Journey and the Allegory of Reading”

1999 Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Fifth Annual Conference

New Orleans, April 11, 1999.

* “Poetry as Apocalypse and as Negative Theology: Dante to Paul Celan and Wallace Stevens”

Lecture for the Department of French and Italian and Committe on Graduate Studies

Louisiana State Universtiy, March 19, 1999

“Language as Exile: The Poetics of Ineffability”

(French Graduate Conference on “Exile,” read for me in absentia by Prof. Patricia Ward)

Vanderbilt University, February 26, 1999

“Joyce and Christian Epic Tradition: Linguistic Repetition and Theological Revelation”

XVI International James Joyce Symposium

Rome, June 18, 1998

“Prophecy Eclipsed: Hamlet as a Tragedy of Knowledge”

1998 Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Fourth Annual Conference

University of North Carolina, April 19, 1998.

“Dante’s Address to the Reader en face Derrida’s Critique of Ontology”

XXII Annual Phenomenology and Literature Congress,

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning

Harvard University, April 16, 1998

“Theory of the Symbol in French Symbolist Poetry: Baudelaire’s Heirs”

L’ère de Baudelaire: Symposium Honoring Claude Pichois

W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies, Vanderbilt University, April 4, 1998

“Dante and Derrida: Ontology and Hermeneutics”

Philosophy Colloquia Series, Department of Philosophy

Vanderbilt University, February 20, 1998

“Dante’s Vision of Scripture in the Heaven of Jove”

1997 MLA Conference: Medieval/Renaissance Italian Division

Toronto, December 30, 1997

“Apocalypse and the Breaking-Open of Dialogue”

Colloquium for History and Critical Theories of Religion Program,

The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities

Vanderbilt University, 3 December, 1997

“Poetry Between Metaphysics and Negative Theology: From Dante to Celan”

Symposium on The Tradition of Metaphysical Poetry and Belief, November 1, 1997

Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature, Brigham Young University

“Dante’s Comet: Apocalyptic Poetry and its After-Sparks”

Symposium on History, Apocalypse and the Secular Imagination

University of British Columbia, September 19, 1997

“An Evening Around William Franke and his Dante’s Interpretive Journey”

Religious Studies Department, Vanderbilt University, September 8, 1997.

“Humanities Knowledge and the Bible”

1997 Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Third Annual Conference

Temple University, April 11, 1997

“Dante’s Address to the Reader and Derrida on Address”

1996 American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference on “Literature Between
Philosophy and Cultural Studies,” University of Notre Dame, April 12, 1996

“Petrarch, Bocaccio, and the Waning of Dante’s Hermeneutic Horizon”

Tenth Biennial New College Conference on Medieval -Renaissance Studies,

Sarasota, March 14, 1996. Session Chair: Lee Patterson

* “Resurrection and the Like: Historical Tradition and Revelation According to Dante Alighieri.”

Lecture at the Graduate Center for Medieval Studies, Medieval History Series,

University of Reading, England, May 26, 1995.

“Truth and Interpretation in the Divine Comedy”

Ninth Biennial New College Conference on Medieval -Renaissance Studies,

Sarasota, Florida, March 11, 1994

“Dante and the Poetics of Religious Revelation”

MLA Special Session on “Literature and the Concern for Truth”

Toronto, December 28, 1993

“Heidegger and the Greeks”

Seminar at Collegium Phaenomenologicum

Perugia, Italy, August 1993

“Dante, Gadamer and the Question of Suprahistorical Truth”

International Hermeneutics Symposium

Heidelberg, July 2-4, 1993

“Heidegger on Heraclitus’ Logos Fragment”

Workshop in program of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum,

Perugia, Italy, August 1992

“The Divine Comedy as Prophetic Poem”

Pair of lectures in Great Works Series at Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities

Vanderbilt University, April 10, 1992

“Dante’s Address to the Reader and its Resonance with Contemporary Theories of Interpretation”

Symposium in Comparative Literature on Dante and Modernism

University of Tulsa, March 27, 1992

“The Sign of the Swan and the Polysemous Dove: Incarnational Poetics in Dante and Mallarmé”

Lecture sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature

Stanford University, June 10, 1991

“Historical Sense and Reader’s Historicity in the Divine Comedy”

Lecture for the Medieval Studies Forum

Stanford University, May 29, 1991

“Blind Prophecy: Milton’s Figurative Mode in Paradise Lost”

Conference on Christianity and Literature

Santa Clara University, May 3, 1991

“The Polysemous Dove: Truth and Interpretation in the Divine Comedy”

Lecture for The Program in Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt University, January 25, 1991

LANGUAGES:

Modern

Italian (fluent)

French (fluent)

German (fluent)

Spanish (adequate)

Ancient

Greek

Latin

Medieval

Middle English

Old French

Occitan (Langue d’oc)

Middle High German

(University-level experience teaching courses in philosophy, literature, and theology in German, Italian, and French, as well as in English. Ancient and medieval languages listed are ones used in published research.)