From May 25–27, 2026, Notre Dame Rome hosted the Notre Dame–Yale Dante Seminar, an invitation-only gathering organized this year as part of the collaborative Dante Among Theologians project jointly developed by the Devers Family Program in Dante Studies and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Bringing together an international group of leading scholars, the seminar explored Dante and the theological virtues through three days of intensive discussion, while fostering sustained dialogue between literary studies and theology.

The program was organized around thematic sessions dedicated to faith, hope, and charity, alongside broader discussions of literary tradition and the formation of the Dantean canon before and after the Commedia. Presentations and discussions featured scholars from the University of Notre Dame, Yale University, and the Universities of Bologna, Cambridge, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Torino, Roma Tre, La Sapienza, and Dallas, among others. The seminar concluded with a session examining the reception of Dante’s works across the medieval and early modern periods.

As part of the ongoing Dante Among Theologians initiative, the 2026 seminar exemplified the collaboration between the Devers Family Program and the de Nicola Center in promoting serious interdisciplinary engagement with Dante’s thought.

“This collaborative project originated in intellectual friendship, not only with campus colleagues like Ted Cachey and Demetrio Yocum, but also George Corbett from St. Andrews and Vittorio Montemaggi from Notre Dame London,” said Jennifer Newsome Martin, director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. “Together we hoped that it would foster deliberate cross-pollination between disparate disciplines and research methods in order to integrate the best of scholarly reflection on Dante and his legacy. The richness of Dante’s corpus seems to invite and even to require interdisciplinary conversation, where methodological differences can happily coexist in something like the noncompetitive vision of Dante’s own heavenly celestial rose. The dCEC is delighted to support these efforts to promote the richness of the Catholic intellectual, moral, and aesthetic tradition, and the advancement of original research in the field.”

Previous collaborations through the initiative included two panels (panel 1, panel 2) at the de Nicola Center Fall Conference in 2025 that explored the virtue of hope against the backdrop of the conference theme, “living tradition.” By bringing together scholars of literature, theology, and intellectual history at Notre Dame Rome, these events continue to strengthen international research networks while advancing the shared mission of exploring Dante’s continuing significance for theological and ethical inquiry.

The seminar was co-sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies, the Devers Family Program in Dante Studies, Notre Dame Rome, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, the ND Global Catholic Research Initiative, and the ND Cultivating Hope Forum (2025–26).