Marianna Esposito Vinzi is a lecturer in Italian Language and Culture at the Education Nationale Académie de Paris.

During the period September 2024 - February 2025, she is an affiliated researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, Section of Italian Studies, as part of the Observatory on Dante Studies research project.

She will conduct a preliminary research entitled In Dante We Trust. The Reception of Dante among Politicians in the United States: from the American Civil War to Martin Luther King.

Brief description of the project:

The reception of Dante in the United States is certainly of particular interest because it involves both Americans and some Italians as far back as Lorenzo da Ponte. Naturally, the first interest was directed at him by scholars, both in the academic sphere and through the establishment of the first Dante Society (1881) and by writers (among the best known are Eliot and Pound). These aspects have been extensively examined from various points of view, but generally from a literary one. On the other hand, no attention has been paid to the reception of Dante's work in other elite circles, such as the political one.

In particular, the period from the American Civil War to Martin Luther King (i.e. from the 1860s to the 1970s) will be examined in an attempt to answer the following main questions: when, how and why was Dante read by this elite group?