Franke CV 2025  (click here, then again on link that appears)

William Franke                                                             https://my.vanderbilt.edu/williamfranke/

Department of French and Italian                                 email:  william.franke@vanderbilt.edu

Vanderbilt University                                                   telephone: (615) 322-6900

Nashville, Tennessee                                                    fax: (615) 322-6909

 

ACADEMIC DEGREES:

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

(Thesis: Dante’s Divinatory Hermeneutic: Towards a Poetics of Religious Revelation. Committee: Jeffrey Schnapp, John Freccero, Robert Harrison, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht)

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 (USA)

Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian and Professor of Religious Studies

2012 – 2016         University of Macao (China, SAR) (concurrent with Vanderbilt appointment)

Professor Catedrático and Head of Philosophy and Religious Studies

2012                     University of Hong Kong, Professor of European Studies with tenure (relinquished for Macao)

 

       International Visiting Appointments and Teaching Abroad

 

• Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, University of Navarra (Spain), 3 seminars on Identity Politics and Justice,

“Social Identities and Social Justice: Rethinking Ethics and Politics in Times of Crisis,” January 2025

• Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies,

Francesco de Dombrowski Visiting Professor, Florence, Italy, Spring, 2024

• Visiting Professor (Profesorado Internacional), University of Navarra (Spain), Departamento de Filosofía (Philosophy Department), Facultad de Filosofía y Letras + research fellow of Instituto Cultura y sociedad (ICS), Proyecto Sociedad Civil y Religión, Spring, 2020
• Philosophy Department, University of Frankfurt, Block-Seminar: “Apophatische Theologie und neuzeitliche Philosophie,” Summer Semester 2016
• Visiting Fellow in Philosophy and Religions, University of Macao (China), Fall 2011
• Research Scholar in Residence, University of Salzburg (Austria), Summer 2008
• Professor of French in Residence, Vanderbilt-in-France, Aix-en-Provence, Spring and Fall 2008
• Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology and Study of Religion,

University of Salzburg, Center for Intercultural Theology and Study of Religions

(Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen), 2006-07

• Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, Fall 2005
• Faculty, Collegium Phaenomenologicum, Perugia, Italy, Summer, 1992, 1993

 

ACADEMIC AWARDS AND HONORS:   

 

Fellowships

 

• Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies,

Professor in Residence, Florence, Italy, Spring, 2024

• Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), research fellow, University of Navarra, Spring 2020
• Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology and Study of Religion,

University of Salzburg, Center for Intercultural Theology and Study of Religions

(Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen), 2006-07

• Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Full-year research fellowship 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 stipend)

• 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

 

                                             Honors and Awards

 

• Honorary Professor (Professor Honoris Causa), 2021

Agora Hermeneutica, The International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH)

• Hermes Award: Book of the Year in Phenomenological Hermeneutics,

Agora Hermeneutica, The International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH), 2021

• Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), University of Navarra, Research Associate, since 2020
• HolyLit: Religion and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin & Harvard University,

Fellow, 2016-present

• The International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH), Senior Fellow, 2015-21
• Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, Philippines, Certificate of Appreciation, 2015
• Dante Society Executive Council, by general election of the Dante Society of America, 2007-2010
• Rosenberg Poetry Prize, UC Berkeley, 1987
• Skeat-Whitfield Essay Prize in English, Oxford University, 1979
• John W. Miller Prize in Philosophy, Williams College, 1978
• Phi Beta Kappa, 1977

 

Grants and Stipends

 

• Multi-Year Research Grant, Level IV (highest) 1,500,000 MOP (= 152,000 Euros or $188,000 USD) from Macao Government for “Apophatic Paths from Europe to China” research project (2014-17)
• Start-Up Research Grant, 150,000 MOP (=18,800 USD), University of Macao, 2013
• Research Scholar Grant for translation into German of Poetry and Apocalypse,

Vanderbilt University Research Council, Summer 2008-09

• 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
• Summer Research Grant, Vanderbilt University Research Council, Italy 1992

 

 

PUBLICATIONS:

Books (Single-Authored)

 

• Mallarmé’s Theo-Political Poetics: Revolution and Revelation in French Symbolist Poetry

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2026 forthcoming.

Cambridge Elements: History of Philosophy and Theology in the West

 

• The Sign of the Swan: How French Symbolist Poetry Re-envisions Reality

London: Anthem Press, 2026

 

• Social Identities and Social Justice: Reconceiving Ethics and Politics in the Wake of Wokeism

Washington: Academica Press, 2025 (303 + xi pages + 6 color illustrations)

 

• Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature: The Hope for Planetary Salvation

New York: Routledge, 2025 (146 + xii pages + 7 B/W illustrations).

Routledge Focus on Literature series.

 

• Don Quixote‘s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature:

Fiction, Reflection, and Negative Theology

New York: Routledge, 2025 (256 pages + 8 B/W illustrations)

Routledge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literatures

 

• Dantologies: Theoretical and Theological Turns in Dante Studies

New York: Routledge, 2024 (273 + xiv pages)

Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture

 

• The Divine Vision of Dante’s Paradiso: The Metaphysics of Representation

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021 (304 + xx pages)

 

• Dante’s Vita Nuova and the New Testament:

Hermeneutics and the Poetics of Revelation

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021 (299 + xix pages)

 

• Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought:

                            Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection

New York: Routledge, 2021 (334 + xxii pages)

Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature Series

 

Translated into Italian by Andrea Loffi, with a Forward by Andrea Aguti, as:

                            Il Paradiso di Dante e le origini teologiche del pensiero moderno: Una filosofia d’autoriflessività

Milan: Mimesis, 2025 (502 pages). Philosophy Collection, No. 975.

 

• On the Universality of What Is Not: The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking

Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020 (450 pages + xii)

 

• Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions Without Borders

Albany: SUNY (State University of New York) Press, 2018 (246 + xxii pages),

Series on Chinese Philosophy and Culture, edited by Roger Ames

 

• A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities

Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2017 (103 + x pages)

Cascade Books Imprint, Cascade Companions series

 

• Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante

Columbus: The Ohio State University Press: 2016 (256 + xii pages)

Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies series, edited by Lori Branch

 

• The Revelation of Imagination:

                           From Homer and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante

Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015 (424 + xii pages)

 

• A Philosophy of the Unsayable

Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014 (384 + viii pages)

 

• Dante and the Sense of Transgression: ‘The Trespass of the Sign’

London and New York: Continuum [Bloomsbury Academic], 2013

Invited for New Directions in Religion and Literature Series,

edited by Mark Knight and Emma Mason (200 + xv pages)

 

• Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language

Stanford: Stanford University Press: 2009 (211 + xiv pages)

 

Translated into German by Ursula Liebing and Michael Sonntag as:

Dichtung und Apokalypse: Theologische Erschließungen der dichterischen Sprache

Aus dem Amerikanischen von Ursula Liebing und Michael Sonntag

Salzburger Theologische Studien, Band 39 (Interkulturell 6)

Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 2011 (216 pages)

 

• 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 + xi pages)

 

• 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. II: Modern and Contemporary Transformations (480 + viii pages)

 

• Dante’s Interpretive Journey

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (242 + xi pages)

Religion and Postmodernism series, edited by Mark C. Taylor

 

 

Edited Volumes

 

• Unspoken Modernities, special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies (forthcoming 2027),

Edited by William Franke, Matteo Zupancic, Lucia Battistel, and Enaiê Mairê Azambuja

 

• Sprache der Migration – Migration der Sprache. Sprachidentitäten und transkulturelle Literatur im Zeitalter der Globalisierungsprozesse, XIV. Kongressakten der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), Palermo 2021 (Bd.7),

Hg. von (edited by) Sandro M. Moraldo, Max Graff und William Franke.

In Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive. Akten des XIV. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), Bd. 7, hg. v. Laura Auteri, Natascia Barrale, Arianna Di Bella u. Sabine Hoffmann (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022)

 

• Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy

Edited by Nahum Brown and William Franke

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 (327 pages)

 

 

Poetry Books

 

• The Vagabond Scholar: Poems of My Life and Thought in Several European Lands

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books [Wipf & Stock], 2026. + 24 B/W illustrations

 

• The Thoughtful Muse: Autobiography in Occasional Verse

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books [Wipf & Stock], 2026. + 54 B/W illustrations

 

 

Articles and Essays

 

(In press or under contract and awaiting publication)

 

187. “Medieval Origins of the Question Concerning Technology and its Contemporary Apocalypses,” in After the

End: Apocalypse, Technology, and the Future of Humanity, edited by Anna Bugajska, Marta Soniewicka, Leon van den Broeke, and Bart van Klink

 

186. Apophatic Catholicity: Its Speculative Roots and Inspiration

 

 

185. “Paradiso XXVII. Heavenly Glory and Human Misery:

The Compenetration of the Abject and the Exalted”

California Lectura Dantis, eds. Allen Mandelbaum and Anthony Oldcorn (Berkeley: University of

California Press, forthcoming)

 

184. 184. “Self-reflection and the Other: Dante’s Paradiso and its Inauguration of an Alternative Modernity”

Dante & the Other, Volume II: A Phenomenology of Divine Frontiers?

Ed. Aaron Daniels (New York: Routledge, 2024)

The Psychology and the Other Book Series (Forthcoming)

 

183. “An Apophatic Approach to Creative Critique,” co-authored with Merel Visse,

Artistic Care, eds. Tatiana Chemi, Anu Mitra, Fabiola Camuti, and Louis van den Hengel

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

 

182. “La eternidad como frontera de la historia en la tradición épica cristiana”

Libro de las XI Jornadas Internacionales de Teoría y Filosofía de la Historia: El canon en la historia

 

181. “From New World Designer to Self-Fashioned Saint: A Review Essay on Mary Watt’s Dante Books”

Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature 41/1 (2026):

 

180. “Unsaying Theology in the Name of All”

Thinking About Nothing: Negation, Philosophy, & the Mystical,

eds. Simon Podmore and Duane Williams

Routledge series ‘Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism’ (forthcoming0

 

179. “The Apophatic Connection at the Source of Modern Thought: Dante and Islamic Philosophy,”

Dante und Islam, ed. Kyuhee Park and Aurelia Maruggi, Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes zur Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie,

forthcoming in 2024

 

178. “Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Method and Mysticism in Intercultural Philosophy”

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Mysticism, in series Routledge Handbooks in Religion,

eds. Louise Nelstrop and Saiko Yazaki

 

177. 177. “Apophatic Ethics versus Identity Politics as the Foundation for Social Justice,”

Synodality: Learning toward Being Together in the World with Others,

1. Andrew Wiercinsky (Netherlands: Brill, 2025) Series:

Hermeneutics in Enactment: International Research in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology

 

 

2026

 

 

176. “Negative theologische Hoffnung im Nichtwissen, erzeugt durch kontroverse

Meinungen und Glaubenssätze in Bezug auf Pandemien.” In Aphin Tagesband.

Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2026

 

175. “The End of Imagination in Mystic Vision (Paradiso 33)”

Dante’s Paradiso: A Reader’s Guide, chapter 14,

eds. Filippo Gianferrari and Ronald Herzman (New York: Routledge, 2026), 387-410

 

 

2025

 

174. “The Persistent Implication of Religion in Western Political Philosophy”: Review Article on Montserrat Herrero, Filosofía política. De la antigüedad al mundo contemporáneo (Madrid: Rialp, S.A., 2024)

Philosophy in Review 45/4 (2025): 10-13

 

173. “Justice and Mercy as Spectacle in the Heaven of Jupiter”

Giustizia e misericordia nell’età di Dante, eds. Massimo Lucarelli and Cécile Le Lay

(Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2025), pp. 207-222

 

172. “A Kenotic and Postsecular Approach to Postcolonial Ethics and Politics: The Social Justice

Revolution and its Inversion of Christian Revelation,”

Postsecularity and Decoloniality: Global Perspectives.

Eds. Justin Beaumont and Chris Baker. Lexington Books, forthcoming

 

171. “Nietzsche and Nihilism: Opening to the Dimension of the Other”

Forward to A Phenomenology of the Alien: Encounters with the Weird and Inscrutable Other,

1. Aaron B. Daniels, Psychology & the Other series, ed. David Goodman

(New York: Routledge, 2025), pp. xiii-xxv

 

170. “Unsaying Wokeism, or the Role of Self-Critique in Judging Others,” in Tracking Global Wokeism,
171. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Amsterdam: Brill, 2025), pp. 107-26. Value Inquiry Book Series

 

2024

 

169. “The Apophatic Turn in the Liberal Arts,”

Church Life Journal (A Journal of the MacGrath Institute for Church Life)

The Apophatic Turn in the Liberal Arts | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame

July 29, 2024

 

168. “Plato’s Apophatic Legacy and the Unwritten Doctrines (I): Negative Theologies and Poetics,”

Archives of the History of Philosophy 69 (2024): 1-21,

special issue for Professor Seweryn Blandzi, ed. Dariusz Piętka

 

167. “Plato’s Apophatic Legacy and the Unwritten Doctrines (II): Toward a Speculative Philology,” Archives of the History of Philosophy 69 (2024): 1-28,

special issue for Professor Seweryn Blandzi, ed. Dariusz Piętka

 

166. “Kénose et wokeisme : une alternative à l’instrumentalisation de la justice social,”Violence et

Révélation : René Girard lecteur de la Bible, ed. Félix Resch, special issue of Nouvelle Revue

Théologique, 121-40, November 2024

 

165. “Gender Fluidity in Don Quixote: Its Metaphysical Implications”

eHumanista 59 (2024): 103-118, Special issue on Medicine and Gender in Hispanic Literature,

1. Luis F. Gonzalez Lopez

 

164. “La sfida woke: Politiche identitarie e la libertà de dire il vero,” Comunicare il vero e il falso,

eds. Giorgio Sandrini et al. (Milan: Mimesis, 2024), 131-148

 

163. “The Death of God as Source of the Creativity of Humans,”

Philosophies 9 (2024): x (1-14), Special Issue on: “The Creative Death of God,”

edited by Lissa McCullough and Marcin J. Schroeder

 

2023

 

 

162. “Dante’s New Life for Poetic Language as Theological Revelation in a Modern Secular Key,”

in La modernità di Dante, eds. Raffaele Pinto and Mariano Pérez Carrasco

 (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2023), 65-73 (Chapter 7)

 

161. “Not War, nor Peace. Are War and Peace Mutually Exclusive Alternatives?”

War: Thinking the Unthinkable, Special Issue of Continental Thought and Theory:

A Journal of Intellectual Freedom 4/1 (2023): 25-35,

eds. Cindy Zeiher and Mike Grimshaw

 

160. “Apophatic Ethics as an Alternative to Identity Politics, or How to Avoid Wokeism”

Meridian 4 (2023): 5-6

The Newsletter of the Global Studies Center, Gulf University of Science and Technology

 

159. “Negative Theology and Theophany in Dante’s Paradiso,”

Verbum Vitae 41/1 (2023): 673-91

 

158. “Perspective Chapter: Liberal Arts Education Worldwide Ltd. Inc. –

The Unspeakable Basis of Comparative Humanities,”

in Multiculturalism and Interculturalism – Managing Diversity in Cross-Cultural Environment,

1. Muhammad Mohiuddin, Md. Tareque Aziz, and Sreenivasan Jayashree

(IntechOpen, 2023), 1-15

 

157. “Afterword” to A Heart of Flesh: William Desmond and the Bible, ed. Steven E. Knepper, Forward by

Cyril O’Regan, Afterward by William Franke (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2023), 199-210.

 

156. “Irony,” commissioned article, major entry

The Chaucer Encyclopedia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2023), eds. Richard Neuhauser, Vincent Gillespie, Jessica Rosenfeld, and Katie Walter

 

2022

 

155. “Prolegomena to a Speculative Criticism of Literature,”

Analecta Hermeneutica 14/2 (2022): 194-205

Commencement, Continuation, Conversation: Commencement Addresses

 

154. “Theory and Theology as Driving Forces in the Globalization of Dante,”

              La mondializzazione di Dante, I Europa, Atti del Convegno Internazionale

(Nancy, 7-8 ottobre 2021), eds. Antonella Braida, Joseph Cadeddu, and Giuseppe

Sangirardi (Ravenna: Longo, 2022), 211-30

 

153. “Muslim Traditions of Learned Ignorance: Apophatic Paths in Islam,”

Critical Muslim 42, Summer (2022): 61-75

Special Issue on Ignorance, ed. Ziauddin Sardar

 

152. “Hamlet and the Philosophical Interpretation of Literature,” Phainomena 120/21 (2022): 213-30

Special Issue on Hermeneutics and Literature

 

151. “Einleitung: Sprache der Migration – Migration der Sprache. Sprachidentitäten und transkulturelle

Literatur im Zeitalter der Globalizierungsprozesse,” with Max Graff and Sandro Moraldo, 361-71,

Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive. Akten des XIV. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), Bd. 7, ed. Laura Auteri, Natascia Barrale, Arianna Di Bella, and Sabine Hoffmann

 

150. “Die Aufgabe der Literatur in der globalisierenden Welt, oder Begegnung mit dem Unvergleichbarem:

Walter Benjamin und die Weltliteratur,”

Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, Sonderausgabe 7 (2022): 569-80,

Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive,

Akten des XIV. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG) (Bd. 7),

1. Laura Auteri, Natascia Barrale, Arianna Di Bella, Sabine Hoffmann

 

149. “Il sacro irriconoscibile: Universalità cognitiva tra scienza e discipline umanistiche,”

in Quel che resta del sacro: Tra spiritualità e neuroscienze, eds. Andrea Aguti,

Giorgio Sandrini, Walter Minella, Andrea Loffi, Paolo Mazzarello

(Milan: Mimesis, 2022), 191-232

 

148. “Apophatic Ignorance and its Applications,”

Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, 2^nd ed.

eds. Matthias Gross and Linsey McGoey

(New York: Routledge, 2022), 26-35

 

147. “Revelation: Mallarmé and the Negativity of Prophetic Revelation in Modern Literature,”

in Literature and Religious Experience: Beyond Belief and Unbelief, ed. Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 21-38

 

146. “Modernist Re-makings of Prophetic Poetry by Pound and Eliot”

The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 4 (2022): 105-120,

Special Issue: “The Waste Land at 100,”

eds. Frances Dickey, Julia Daniel

 

2021

 

145. “Dante’s Theology and Contemporary Thought: Recovering Transcendence?”

Forum Italicum 55/2 (2021): 627-41

Special Issue in honor of the seventh centennial of Dante’s death,

eds. Rachel Jacoff and Lino Pertile.

 

144. “Amphibolies of the Postmodern: Hyper-Secularity or the Return of the Religious?”

Sacred and the Everyday: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Religious and Sacred,

1. Stephen Morgan (Macau: University of Saint Joseph Academic Press, 2021), 9-33
2. “Tanto onesta, tanto gentile pare,” in Citar Dante: Espressioni dantesche nell’Italiano di oggi, eds.

Irene Chirico, Paolo Dainotti, and Marco Galdi (Athens: ETP Books, 2021), 272-75.

(Lectura Dantis Metelliana, 2021), Saggi e critici 11

 

142. “Representing the Other: Dante, Duns Scotus, and the Crisis of Representation in the Modern Age”

Dante and the Other, ed. Aaron Daniels (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 51-71,

The Psychology and the Other Book Series

 

2020

 

141. “Why an Open or ‘Public’ Sphere is Necessary to Civil Society and its Entanglement with Religion,”

Epilogue to Public Sphere and Religion: An Entangled Relationship in History, Education, and Society, ed. Carl Antonius Lemke (Hildesheim: Olmes, 2020), 230-49

 

140. “Poetry as Prophecy: From Anthropological Origins to Postmodern Apocalypses,” in

Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World: Poetry, Theology and Philosophy in Dialogue, eds. Mark S. Burrows, Hilary Davies, Josephine von Zitzewitz,

vol. V of “The Power of the Word” (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 9-30

(keynote speech for The Power of the Word International Conference V, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, September 2017)

 

139. “Eastern and Western Apophatic Paths between Pre-Modern Divinity and Post-Modern Secularity,”

Tamkang Review: A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 50/2 (2020): 3-30

(keynote speech for Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies [TACMRS], National Chi Nan University, Taiwan, October 2018)

 

138. “De Dante à Mallarmé à travers l’Hamlet de Shakespeare : Négativité de la révélation poético-

prophétique dans la modernité,” Dante et Shakespeare : Cosmologie, politique, poétique, eds, Pascale Drouet and Isabelle Battesti (Paris: Éditeurs Classiques Garnier, 2020), 65-83

 

137. “The Vision of Language in Paradiso XVIII in Light of Speculative Grammar”

Letteratura italiana antica, XXI, special issue in honor of Antonio Lanza,

eds. Marta Ceci e Marcellina Troncarelli (Rome: Serra, 2020), vol. 2, pp. 215-25.

 

136. “Amphibolies of the Postmodern: Hyper-Secularity or the Return of Religion?”

“houxiandai de hanhun : chaoshisu haishi zongjiao de huigui?”

??现??含混：?世俗还?宗教?回归？》

Translated into Chinese by Gong Kexin

Journal for Christian Culture Studies, 2020

 

2019

 

 

135. “Altizer and the Christian Epic Tradition”

Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 19/1 (2019-20): 134-48,

Special Issue: Thomas J. J. Altizer, ed. Lissa McCullough

 

134. “Christliche Offenbarung mittels lyrischer Dichtung: Dantes Vita nuova und das Neue Testament,”

in Christlicher Humanismus: Festschrift für Sigmund Bonk, ed. Veit Neumann and Susanna Biber (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 117-138.

 

133. “A Negative Theological Critique of Postmodern Identity Politics”

Religions 10/488 (2019): 1-15, Special Issue on “Christian Literary Imagination: Seeking Transcendence in an Age of Identity,” ed. Christopher Denny

 

132. “Schrift als Theophanie in Dantes Paradiso: Das Medium als Metapher für die göttliche

Unmittelbarkeit” [“Writing as Theophany: Dante’s Scriptural Epiphany and the Medium as Metaphor for Immediacy”], in Schrift und Graphisches im Vergleich. Beiträge zur XVII. Tagung der DGAVL in Bochum vom 06. bis 09. Juni 2017, eds. Monika Schmitz-Emans, Linda Simonis, and Simone Sauer-Kretschmer (Bielefeld, Germany: Aisthesis Verlag, 2019), 59-70

 

2018

 

131. “Thinking in the Gap between the Cultures of Greece and China”

Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 47 (2018): 45-49

 

130. “Religion and Representation: Dante Studies after the Theological Turn,”

The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 26/1 (2018): 86-105

 

129. “World Literature and the Encounter with the Other: A Means or a Menace?”

Tensions in World Literature: Between the Local and the Universal,

1. Weigui Fang (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), pp. 113-146

 

128. “Hema de mingxiang yu shensheng de miusi—zuowei chuangzao yu qishi de shishi songge”

荷马的冥想与神圣的缪斯—作为创造与启示的史诗颂歌

(“Homer’s Musings and the Divine Muse: Epic Song as Invention and as Revelation”).                                                   Translated into Chinese by Zhaobo, in Kuawenhuayanjiu 跨文化研究 (Transcultural Studies)

(Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018), Special Issue: Homeric World, pp. 69-98.

 

127. “Tradition” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory

(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), ed. Jeffrey R. Di Leo, pp. 721-23.

 

126. “Unsayability and the Promise of Salvation: An Apophatics of the World to Come”

Ewiges Leben. Ende oder Umbau einer Erlösungsreligion, eds. Günter Thomas and Markus Höfner, Religion und Aufklärung series (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), pp. 303-16

 

125. “A Theology of Human Encounter: Montemaggi’s Professional-Personal Testament”

Literature and Theology 32/4 (2018): 475-496

 

2017

 

124. “dongya ruxue wenhua de renwen xueke jiaoyu yu bijiao renwenxue jichu”

《东亚儒学文化的人文学科教育与比较人文学基础》(“Study on the Basis of Humanities

Education and Comparative Humanities of Confucian Culture in East Asia”)

Translated into Chinese by Shi Yuanhui

Journal of Jiangnan University (Humanities & Social Sciences Edition) 16/5 (2017): 5-10

 

123. “Paul Celan, Dante’s Manfred, and the Woundedness of Language as our Common Bond”

Compar(a)ison: An International Journal of Comparative Literature 2013/1 (2017): 131-143, Special Issue: Paul Celan Today, edited by Michael Jacob

 

122. “Betwixt and Amidst: Mixed Genres of Sophia,” Chapter 6 in

Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, eds. J. Aaron Simmons and Nahum Brown (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion Series, pp. 81-106

 

121. “Concluding Responses: New Apophatic Paths in Critical Thinking,” in

Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, eds. J. Aaron Simmons and Nahum Brown (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion Series, pp. 371-87

 

120. “Apophatic Universalism East and West:

Rethinking Universality Today in the Interstices between Cultures,” chapter 13 in

Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, eds. J. Aaron Simmons and Nahum Brown (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion Series, pp. 263-292

 

119. “Augustine’s Discovery of Reading as Revelation: Conversion by the Book”

In The Confessions of Augustine, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, vol. 185

       (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2017), pp. 80-90

[Reprinted from The Revelation of Imagination (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015), chapter 4 (subsection IV: Conversion by the Book), pp. 267-282]

 

118. “Religion and Representation,” with Chance Woods

Sec. 2: “Religious Belief and the Cultural Limits of Representation”

The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 1/25 (2017): 19-42

 

117. “The Negative Theology of Wallace Stevens’s “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”

Religions 8/4 (2017): 54 (1-9), Special Issue on “English Poetry and Christianity,”

edited by Kevin Hart

 

116. “Shijie wenxue he yutazhe xiangyu : yizhong fangfa haishi yizhong weixie?”

《世界文学和与他者相遇：一种方法还是一种威胁？》

(“World Literature and the Encounter with the Other: A Means or a Menace?”)

Translated into Chinese by Gao Wenchun, in: Sixiang yu fangfa: difangxing yu pushixing zhijian de shijie wenxue 思想與方法：地方性與普世性之間的世界文學 (Ideas and Methods: World Literature Between the Local and the Universal), ed. Fang Weigui 方維規 (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2017), pp. 78-102

 

2016

 

115. “Betwixt and Amidst: Mixed Genres of Sophia: A Response to Sai Bhatawadekar, W. C. Hackett,

Kevin Hart, J. Aaron Simmons, Stephen Palmquist,” Syndicate Theology 3/2 (2016): 136-48.

 

114. “Classical Chinese Thought and the Sense of Transcendence”

Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy

Eds. Nahum Brown and William Franke (New York: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 35-66

 

113. “Equivocations of ‘Transcendence’: Responses to Roger Ames”

Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy

Eds. Nahum Brown and William Franke (New York: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 67-78

 

112. “Nothingness and the Aspiration to Universality in the Poetic ‘Making’ of Sense:

An Essay in Comparative East-West Poetics”

Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East 26/3 (2016): 241-64

 

111. “Poetry, Prophecy, and Revelation”

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion

Ed. John Barton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)

(http://religion.oxfordre.com), 1-25

 

110. “The Philosopher or the Sage: Apophaticism in Europe and China”

In Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches

Eds. Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew Whitehead

(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 55-73

 

109. “Saint Paul Among the Theorists: A Genealogy of the New Universalism”

Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion, ed. Mark Knight

(New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 146-55

 

108. “The Religious Vocation of Secular Literature: Dante and Postmodern Thought,”

In Letteratura Italiana e religione (Religion and Literature in Italian Tradition), ed. Salvatore Bancheri and Francesco Guardini (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2016), pp. 49-68

 

107. “Writings and Revelation: Literary Theology in the Bible,”

Literature and Theology 30/1 (2016): 51-66

 

2015

 

106. “The Ethical Import of (Negative) Theology in Intercultural Dialogue:

Eine Ausseinandersetzung mit François Jullien,” in Ethik zwischen Vernunft

              und Glaube. Brennpunkte und Gegenwartsfragen im interkulturellen Diskurs

[Transcending Boundaries. Practical Philosophy from Intercultural

Perspectives], ed. Walter Schweidler (Eichstätt/Ingoldstadt: Academia Verlag-Sankt Augustine, 2015), series: West-östliche Denkwege, pp. 75-90

 

105. “Involved Knowing: On the Poetic Epistemology of the Humanities”

Humanities 4/4 (2015): 600-22, Special Issue on “The Challenges of the Humanities, Past, Present, and Future,” vol. 2, ed. Albrecht Classen

[reprinted revised from The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 16/4 (2011): 447-68]

 

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

Philosophy and Literature 39/1 (2015): 248-258

 

103. “Agamben’s Logic of the Exception and Its Apophatic Roots and Offshoots”

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 41/2 (2015): 95-120

 

102. “Intercultural Dia-logue and Its Apophatic Interstices”

Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, vol. 25, no. 1 (2015/4): 1-23

 

101. “William Franke on Edmond Jabès” in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol. 304,
102. Lawrence J. Trudeau (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015), pp. 202-217

[reprinted from A Philosophy of the Unsayable, chapter 4, section ii]

 

100. 100. “Language and Transcendence in Dante’s Paradiso”

The Poetics of Transcendence,

 eds. Elisa Heinämäki, P.M. Mehtonen, and Antti Salminen

(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2015), Currents of Encounter series, vol. 38, pp. 107-131

 

99. “Le dia-logue et son au-delà apophatique : avec François Jullien”

Des possibles de la pensée: L’itinéraire philosophique de François Jullien

Eds. Françoise Gaillard and Philippe Ratte with Nathalie Schnur

(Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2015), pp. 277-298

 

98. “Le commencement et la fin de la philosophie dans la mystique apophatique:

De Platon au postmodernisme”

In Philosophie et mystique chez Stanislas Breton : Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (août 2011)

Eds. Jean Greisch, Jérôme de Gramont, and Marie-Odile Métral

(Paris: Éditions le Cerf, 2015), pp. 129-43.

 

97. “Learned Ignorance: The Apophatic Tradition of Cultivating the Virtue of Unknowing”

Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies,

eds. Matthias Gross and Linsey McGoey

(New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 26-35

 

2014

 

96. “Professional Dantology and the Human Significance of Dante Studies”

Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 42/4 (2014): 54-71

 

95. “The New Apophatic Universalism: Deconstructive Critical Theories

and Open Togetherness in the European Tradition”

Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy 21 (2014): 86-101

 

94. “Symbol and Allegory”

The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics,

eds. Jeff Malpas and Hans-Helmuth Gander (New York: Routledge, 2014)

Chapter 29, pp. 367-77

 

93. “War and Tragedy and the Fate of the Spoken: Virgil’s Secularization of Prophecy”

College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies 41/4 (2014): 25-40

 

92. “Poetics of Silence in the Post-Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan”

Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 2/1-2 (2014): 137-58

 

91. “All or Nothing?—Nature in Chinese Thought and the Apophatic Occident”

Comparative Philosophy 5/2 (2014): 4-24

 

90. “Augustine’s Confessions and the Transcendental Ground of Consciousness:

or How Literary Narrative Becomes Prophetic Revelation”

Philosophy and Literature 38/1 (2014): 204-222

 

89. “Cosmopolitan Conviviality and Negative Theology: Europe’s Vocation to Universalism”

The Journal of European Studies (2014): 44/1 (2014): 30-49

 

88. “Canonicity, Creativity, and the Unlimited Revelation of Literature”

Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 12: 1 (2014): 1-24

 

2013

 

88. “Postmodern Identity Politics and the Social Tyranny of the Definable”

The Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy 2013

Official Conference Proceedings 2013, Osaka Japan

 

87. “The Paramount Importance of What Cannot Be Said in Public Theological Discourse”

Contextuality and Intercontextuality in Public Theology, eds. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Florian Höhne, Tobias Reitmeier (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2013), series on “Theology in the Public Square / Theologie in der Öffentlichkeit,” vol. 4., pp. 321-334

 

86. “Dante and the Secularization of Religion through Literature”

Religion and Literature 45/1 (2013): 1-31

 

85. 85. “Paradoxical Prophecy: Dante’s Strategy of Self-Subversion in the Inferno”

              Italica 90/3 (2013): 343-64

 

84. “Dante’s Hermeneutic Complicity in Violence and Fraud in Inferno IX-XVII”

University of Toronto Quarterly 82/1 (Winter 2013): 1-19

 

83. “Apophasis as the Common Root of Radically Secular and Radically Orthodox Theology”

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73/1 (2013): 57-76

 

82. “The Secondariness of Virgilian Epic and its Unprecedented Originality”

College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies 40/1 (2013): 11-31

 

81. “Negative Theology”

Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions

              eds. Anne Runehov, Lluis Oviedo (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 1443-1450.

Co-authored with Chance Woods.

 

2012

 

80. “La teologia negativa come critica dell’idolatria”

              Hermeneutica, Nuova Serie (2012): 315-332

Annuario di Filosofia e Teologia fondato da Italo Mancini

 

79. 79. “The Place of the Proper Name in the Topographies of the Paradiso”

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 87/4 (2012): 1089-1124

 

78. “From the Bible as Literature to Literature as Theology:

A Theological Reading of Genesis as a Humanities Text”

Interdisciplinary Humanities 29/2 (Summer 2012): 28-45

 

77. “Total Forgetting as the Moment of Truth at the Climax of Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Christian

Epic Tradition,” in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrative Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter / Record, Relate, Remember: Narrative Constructions of Memory and Generation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds. Benjamin Pohl, Maurice Sprague and Linda Hörl (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 299-326

 

76. “Dante’s Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Prophetic Voice and Vision

in the Malebolge (Inferno XVIII-XXV)

Philosophy and Literature 36/1 (2012): 111-121

 

75. “Apophatic Paths: Modern and Contemporary Poetics and Aesthetics of Nothing”

Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 17/3 (2012): 7-18

Special Issue: “Nothing,” eds. Antti Salminen and Sami Sjöberg

 

74. “Un díptico apofatíco: Juan de la Cruz y Samuel Beckett”

[“An Apophatic Dyptich: John of the Cross and Samuel Beckett”]

Despalabro. Ensayos de Humanidades 6 (2012): 179-88

 

73. 73. “The Origin of Philosophy in Theological Critique of Idolatry and its Consummation

in Negative Theological Critique of Conceptual Idolatry”

Hermeneutica, Nuova serie (2012): 315-32

 

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

Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism on Dante, vol. 142,

Ed. Laurence J. Trudeau

(Detroit/New York: Gale/Cengage Learning, 2012), pp. 238-56

Reprinted from Dante’s Interpretive Journey, pp. 82-118

 

2011

 

71. “Dante’s New Life and the New Testament: An Essay on the Hermeneutics of Revelation”

The Italianist 31 (2011): 335-66

 

70. “Gospel as Personal Knowing: Theological Reflections on not Just a Literary Genre”

Theology Today 68/4 (2011): 413-23

 

69. “On Doing the Truth in Time: The Aeneid’s Invention of Poetic Prophecy”

Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 19/1 (2011): 53-63

 

68. “Prophecy as a Genre of Revelation: Synergisms of Inspiration and Imagination in the Book of Isaiah”

Theology 114/5 (2011): 340-52

 

67. “Involved Knowing: On the Poetic Epistemology of the Humanities”

The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 16/4 (2011): 447-68

 

66. “Homer’s Musings and the Divine Muse: Epic Song as Invention and as Revelation”

Religion and Literature 43/1 (2011): 1-28

 

65. “The Canon Question and the Value of Theory: Towards a New (Non-)Concept of Universality”

The Canonical Debate Today. Crossing Disciplinary and Cultural Boundaries, eds. Liviu Papadima, David Damrosch, and Theo D’haen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 55-71.

 

2010

 

64. “‘The Missing All’: Emily Dickinson’s Apophatic Poetics,” Poetry for Students, vol. 35

(Kennedale, TX: Gale Group, 2010)

[Reprinted from Christianity and Literature 58/1 (2008):  61-80]

 

63. “Sulla verità poetica che è superiore alla Storia: Porfirio e la critica filosofica della letteratura,”

Italian translation of “On the Poetic Truth That Is Higher than History . . .” (#61)

with critical introduction (“Per una Critica Speculativa”) by Laura Lucia Rossi

Enthymema: Rivista di teoria, critica e filosofia della letteratura 1 (2010): 1-17

 

62. “On the Poetic Truth that is Higher than History:

Porphyry and the Philosophical Interpretation of Literature”

International Philosophical Quarterly 50/4 (2010): 415-430

[Reprinted in Acts of ISSEI (International Society for the Study of European Ideas)

2010 International Conference on “Thought in Science and Fiction”]

 

61. “The Death and Damnation of Poetry in Inferno XXXI-XXXIV:

Ugolino and Narrative as an Instrument of Revenge”

Romance Studies 28/1 (2010):  27-35

 

60. “Alighieri, Dante,” “Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite,” and “Petrarch, Francesco.”

Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, ed. Daniel Patte

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2010)

 

2009

 

59. 59. “Dante’s Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic Truth,”

Philosophy and Literature 33/2 (2009): 252-66

 

58. 58. “Existentialism: An Atheistic or a Christian Philosophy?”

In Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twentieth Century, Chapter 22

Analecta Husserliana 103 (2009): 371-94

 

57. “Equivocations of Metaphysics:

A Debate with Christian Moevs’s The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy”

Philosophy and Theology 20/1-2 (2009): 29-52

 

56. 56. “Beyond the Limits of Reason Alone: A Critical Approach to the Religious Inspiration of Literature”

Position Statement in forum of invited contributions to a Special Issue on the discipline:

Religion and Literature 41/2 (2009): 69-78

 

55. 55. “James Joyce and the Bible”

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, chapter 46

Eds. Rebecca Lemon, Emma Mason, Jonathan Roberts, Christopher Rowland,

(Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 642-53.

 

2008

 

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

Literature and Theology 22/1 (2008): 1-17

 

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

Christianity and Literature 58/1 (2008):  61-80

 

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

A Critical Negative Theology of Dialogue”

Journal of Religion 88/3 (2008): 365-92

 

51. 51. “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, Edmond Jabès : L’éclosion des énigmes,

eds. Daniel Lançon et Catherine Mayaux (Vincennes: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2007), pp. 249-60 (Paris: Littérature Hors Frontières, 2008).

 

2007

 

50. 50. “Eine kritische Negative Theologie des Dialogs: Die Koinzidenz von Vernunft und Offenbarung in

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

Reason and Revelation in Communicative Openness”], translated by Michael Sonntag

Salzburger Theologishe Zeitschrift 11/2 (2007):  217-49.

 

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

Comparative Literature 59/3 (2007): 209-27

 

48. “The Ethical Posture of Anti-Colonial Discourse in Said and in Gandhi”

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

 

47. 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 Longman, 2007), pp. 41-52

 

46. 46. “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

 

45. 45. “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)

 

44. 44. “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),

1. 39-56

 

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

A Comparison of Methods in Philosophical Perspective”

In Medieval Readings of Romans, eds. William S. Campbell, Peter S. Hawkins, Brenda Dean Schildgen (New York: T & T Clark International, 2007), pp. 142-52

 

2006

 

42. 42. “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): 251-68

 

41. 41. “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): 143-73

 

40. 40. “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/ 1-3 (2006): 61-76

 

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

The Case of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”

Neophilologus 90/1 (2006): 155-172

 

2005

 

38. 38. “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): 621-38

 

37. 37. “Varieties and Valences of Unsayability in Literature”

Philosophy and Literature 29/2 (2005): 489-97

 

36. “The Linguistic Turning of the Symbol: Baudelaire and his French Symbolist Heirs”
    In Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism, ed. Russel Whitaker

(Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005), vol. 144: French Symbolist Poetry, pp. 40-47

[Reprinted from Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity, volume in Honor of Claude Pichois,

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

 

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

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 58/3 (2005): 161-80

 

34. “Virgil, History, and Prophecy”

Philosophy and Literature 29/1 (2005): 73-88

 

2004

 

 

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: The Pivotal Force of the Genesis/Ontopoiesis of Human Life and Reality, 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]

 

2002

 

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”

[“The Theological Significance of the Landscape around Saint Benedict in Dante’s Paradiso”]

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

 

2001 – 2000

 

25. “William Franke on Post-Structuralist Interpretation”

In Italo Calvino: Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2001).

30. 28-30. [Reprinted from “The Deconstructive Anti-Logic of Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili,” Italian Quarterly 30 (1989)].

 

24. “Dante’s Address to the Reader in Face of Derrida’s Critique of Ontology”

The Poetry of Life in Literature. Annalecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research LXIX (2000): 119-31.

 

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. 149-54

 

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 47/2 (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,
21. 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),

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

 

1990s

 

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

In Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft.  Konturen und Profile im Pluralismus, pp. 181-92

With John McCarthy, ed. Carsten Zelle (Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 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 34, 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,

80. 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,

1. 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”

MLN (Modern Language Notes) 109 (1994): 117-27

 

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 6/2 (1988): 78-82

 

 

Critical Reviews and Appreciations

 

Review of Pierre Mandonnet, Dante the Theologian, George Corbett and Patricia Kelly, eds. and trans. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025) in The Journal of Church History September (2025):

Review of Andrew W. Hass, ed., Sacred Modes of Being in a Postsecular World (Cambridge University Press, 2021) in Literature and Theology 36/3 (2022) (Oxford University Press), 342-45

 

Review of Donald Phillip Verene, The Philosophy of Literature: Four Studies (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018) in American Academy of Religion forum: Reading Religion The Philosophy of Literature – Reading Religion (2019)

 

Review of Marco Maggi, Walter Benjamin e Dante: Una costellazione nello spazio delle immagini (Rome: Donzelli, 2017) in Speculum 93/3 (2018): 873-74

 

Review of James Robinson, Joyce’s Dante: Exile, Memory, and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) in James Joyce Quarterly 53/3-4 (2016):

 

Review of Peter Hawkins, Dante: A Brief History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), in Christianity and Literature: 471-72

 

Review of Massimo Verdicchio, Of Dissimulation: Allegory and Irony in Dante’s Commedia + Naming Things: Aesthetics, Philosophy and History in Benedetto Croce in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature = Revue canadienne de littérature comparée 32, no. 2 (2005): 225-228

 

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): 808-11

 

“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 Thoughtful Muse: Autobiography in Occasional Verse (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books [Wipf & Stock], 2026)

 

A Vagabond in Europe: Poems of my Life and Thought in Several European Lands (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books [Wipf & Stock], 2026)

 

“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, CONFERENCES, SEMINARS:

(* for keynote, plenary, named, or featured lectures)

 

(scheduled or planned)

 

*“Dante, Duns Scotus, and the Crisis of Representation in the Modern Age”

Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library,

Chicago, December 10, 2024 – to be rescheduled

 

*Five “Great Works” lectures on Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, and Mallarmé,

Lecture series for Renmin University in Beijing (to be scheduled after Covid crisis)

 

*“On the Universality of What is Not” or “Dante and the Foundations of Modern Western Culture”

Distinguished Lecture Series “BOI” University of North Bengal, India

Raja Rammohanpur, Siliguri, India

 

2026

 

“The Chronic Human Condition as Revealed by Plagues and Pandemics,” Theology Without Walls program on “The Human Predicament” at American Academy of Religion (AAR) National Convention,

Atlanta, November 22, 2026.

 

“Révolution et révélation dans la poésie symboliste : De Baudelaire à Mallarmé,”

Séminaire du Groupe Baudelaire de l’ITEM (Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes)

Paris, June 5, 2026

 

“Apophatic Catholicity: Its Speculative Roots and Inspiration”

International Seminar on “Theologies of Catholicity: Exploring Secular Analogues”

Institute of Religion and Critical Inquiry of the Australian Catholic University.

Rome, ACU Campus in Monteverde, 7-10 February 2026.

 

 

2025

 

*Closing Lecture: “La eternidad como frontera de la historia en la tradición épica Cristiana” [“Eternity at the Limits of Time and History: Christian Epic Tradition and Apocalypse Now”], 12^th International Conference on Theory and Philosophy of History, LAS FRONTERAS DE LA HISTORIA, XII Jornadas Internacionales de Teoría y Filosofía de la Historia, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Viña del Mar, Chile, August 29, 2025

 

“Negative theologische Hoffnung im Nichtwissen, erzeugt durch kontroverse Meinungen und Glaubenssätze in Bezug auf Pandemien,” Aphin V (Arbeitskreise philosophierender Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler): “Meinen, Glauben, Wissen, Hoffen,” Enkirch an der Mosel, June 22, 2025

 

“After You Sir, Madame, They: Levinasian Ethics of Otherness and Identitarian Politics”

Invited Speaker for «Current Readings of Levinas’ Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence»,

International Congress at Dipartimento di Filosofia, VILLA MIRAFIORI, Sapienza Università

Rome, May 28, 2025

 

“Introduction to Dante’s Paradiso: Vision Impossible”

Lecture for “Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Birth of Modern Religion,” symposium sponsored by Gladdening Light (NPO), Orto de’ Medici Hotel, Florence, May 24, 2025

 

* “Living Together: An Apophatic Ethics”

Keynote Lecture, Plenary Session, for 8th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education,

May 22, 2025, Vienna, Austria

 

* “Dichter und Philosoph Dante Alighieri und die Selbst-Reflexion: An der Schwelle vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit – Verhältnis zwischen Wissenschaft und Theologie” [“Self-Reflection on the Threshold between the Middle Ages and Modernity: A Theological Genealogy of the Birthing of Modernity as the Age of Representation”]                  Akademisches Forum Albertus Magnus, University of Regensburg, May 20, 2025

 

“Introduction to Dante’s Inferno: A Journey of Interpretation”

Lecture for “Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Birth of Modern Religion,” symposium sponsored by Gladdening Light (NPO), Orto de’ Medici Hotel, Florence, May 19, 2025

 

“Singularity and Ineffability in Apophatic Perspective” for the Online Seminar Series: “Singularity in Historical and Theoretical Perspective,” April 17, 2025  https://projects.unifr.ch/aesthetics-critique/2024/04/22/online-seminar-series-being-singular-historical-and-theoretical-perspectives/

 

* “Medieval Origins of the Question Concerning Technology and its Contemporary Apocalypses”

Keynote Lecture for International Conference “Apocalypse Now? Technology and Existential Threats,”

Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics, Jagiellonian University, Ignatianum University,

Krakow, Poland, March 7, 2025

 

“Dante, maître spirituel : sa Divine Comédie comme Guide”

3 lectures in Lecture series : « Dante prophète d’espérance et poète de la miséricorde »

Petit cinéma de Bras, Bras, Le Var, France.

L’Enfer, January 11, 2025

Le Purgatoire, February 1, 2025

Le Paradis, March 1, 2025

 

* “Don Quixote’s Quest for the Absolute in Literature: Fiction, Reflection, and Negative Theology. In Dialogue with Unamuno and Ortega.” Respondent: Alejandro Martinez in Spanish.

Department of Philosophy, University of Navarra, January 22, 2025

 

* “Social Identities and Social Justice: Rethinking Ethics and Politics in Times of Crisis”

3 seminars on Identity Politics and Justice, Instituto Cultura y Sociedad, University of Navarra

1) From Revolution to Religion: The Woke Revolution’s Founding of Social and Political Power on a Religion of Victimhood, January 21, 2025

2) Identity versus Universality: The Universality of What is Not, January 23, 2025

3) Transcending Power Politics Negatively: Kenosis as the Apophatic Solution to Societal Conflict, January 24, 2025

 

2024

 

*Featured Speaker for “A Dante Conversation” with John Took and David Mcleod Black,

moderator Aaron B. Daniels, Psychology & the Other London Conference,

Northeastern University’s London Campus,

Devon House, St. Katherine’s Docks,

London, England, July 13-14, 2024

 

“Transmedial Transmissions: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Cult of the Vita nuova”

Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies

Villa i Tatti, Florence, Italy,

June 27, 2024

 

*“Politiche identitarie e giustizia sociale: Come rifondare l’etica e la politica dopo la rivoluzione woke?”

Collegio Fratelli Cairoli, Facoltà di Filosofia, University of Pavia

May 2, 2024

 

Project Paradiso: Exploring Dante’s Heaven

A Webinar Series, The Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz

Episode Eleven: “The End of Imagination in Mystic Vision (Paradiso 33),”

March 22, 2024

 

2023

 

*“Kénose et wokisme : une alternative à l’instrumentalisation de la justice sociale”

[“Kenosis and the Woke: An Alternative to Weaponizing Social Justice”]

LECTURE for Académie Française-sponsored Symposium:

« Girard, Lecteur de l’Écriture » (René Girard and the Bible)

Collège des Bernardins, Paris, France, December 15, 2023

 

* “Dante’s New Life, or How Phenomenological Reduction Enables Theological Revelation”

MAIN SPEAKER for the Dante Salon at 2023 “Psychology and the Other” Conference

Sponsored by APA (American Psychological Association)

Boston College, October 7, 2023

 

“Taking Letters Literally and Figuring the Unsayable: Plato’s Apophatic Legacy”

GUEST LECTURE for 7th Platonic Summer Seminar: ἄγραφα δόγματα

Platonic Academy, IPS, International Plato Society,

Lanckorona (Krakow), Poland, June 25-July 2, 2023

 

“A Theological Reading of Dante’s Lyrical Language as Self-reflection”

Congresso Dantesco Internazionale,

Ravenna, May 17-20, 2023

 

“Transmedial Transmissions: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Cult of the Vita nuova”

FEATURED LECTURE for the International Seminar in Philosophy, Architecture, Education, and Legislation: The Truth of/in Painting, Philosophy Department, University of Warsaw [via Google meet]

Warsaw, Poland, May 11, 2023

 

*“Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for Symposium on “Processing the Pandemic III: Hope,”

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Emotions in the Wake of COVID19,

Center for Renaissance Studies, University of Warwick (cosponsored by Center for Renaissance Studies and the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library)

Warwick, England, April 13-14, 2023

 

*“Unsaying Wokeism, or the Role of Self-Critique in Judging Others”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for Global Studies Center conference on “Tracking Global Wokeism”

Gulf University of Science and Technology,

Mubarak Al-Abdullah, Kuwait, February 8, 2023

 

2022

 

www.crono.news Podcast, “Divine Comedy and Bhagavad Gita with William Franke and Jayashankar Krishnamurthy,” Crono News: international Italian web magazine dedicated to art, multiculturalism, spirituality, music, literature, history.  https://soundcloud.com/cosmic-dancer-talk/divine-comedy-and-bhagavad-gita-with-william-franke-and-jayashankar-krishnamurty-episode-93

 

“Revolution in Poetic Language: Dante’s Use of the Vernacular as Vehicle for Theological Revelation,” 2022 Virtual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), December 2, 2022

 

*“Dante’s New Life for Poetic Language as Theological Revelation in a Modern Secular Key,”

INAUGURAL LECTURE for Annual Dante Lecture Series, Vanderbilt University,

November 29, 2022, Nashville, Tennessee

 

*“Self-Reflection and Reduction in the Language of Lyric,”

Reduction Lecture Series, ICI (Institute for Cultural Inquiry)

Berlin, May 16, 2022

 

[“Revolution in Poetic Language: Dante’s Use of the Vernacular as Vehicle for Theological Revelation,”

Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Convention, special session co-sponsored by Dante Society of America (DSA), Dublin, March 21-April 2, 2022  POSTPONED]

 

2021

 

*“Dante and East Asia: The Apophatic Connection”

PLENARY ADDRESS for Symposium: “Afterlives: Dante in Dialogue with East Asian Buddhism”
UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS)

November 13, 2021

 

*Invited as Participant in Symposium on “Apophatic Thinking, Aesthetics and Humanism,”

University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht,

The Netherlands, October 27-28, 2021

 

[*“My Interpretive Journey with Dante: From Existential Hermeneutics in Hell to Virtual Reality in Paradise,” presentation for International Seminar in Philosophy of Education: “An Imaginary Space of the Future: A Hermeneutic Reading of Dwelling in Dante’s Divine Comedy,”                                   International Institute for Hermeneutics, University of Warsaw, October 21, 2021] POSTPONED

 

“Justice and Mercy as Spectacle in the Heaven of Jupiter,” International Conference: Giustizia e misericordia nell’età di Dante. Riflessioni, espressioni, rappresentazioni e pratiche,

University of Lyon, October 18-19, 2021

 

“Transcendence, Immanence, and Transdescendence in Modern Art from Dante to Mallarmé”

JIS (Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies) International Symposium:

“The Arts & Transcendence: In Search of Beauty, Truth & Goodness”

Pasadena, California, October 17, 2021

 

“Vita nuova: The New Life for Poetic Language as Theological Revelation in a Modern Secular Key”

International Conference “La modernità di Dante,”

Complutense University of Madrid, October 15, 2021

 

“Dante’s Relevance to and Impact on Postmodern Thought”

Colloque International: “La mondialisation de Dante”

Société française de littérature générale et comparée

University of Lorraine, Nancy, France, October 7-8, 2021

 

*“Self-reflection and the Other in Dante’s Paradiso”

INVITED ADDRESS for the Dante Salon at 2021 Psychology and the Other Conference

Sponsored by APA (American Psychological Association)

Boston College, September 17-19, 2021

 

[“A Theological Reading of Dante’s Lyrical Language as Self-reflection”

Congresso Dantesco Internazionale,

Ravenna, September 15-18, 2021] POSTPONED

 

“Die Aufgabe der Literatur in der sich globalisierenden Welt, oder: Begegnung mit dem Unvergleichbaren. Walter Benjamin und die Weltliteratur”

Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), XIV. Kongress:

Wege der Germanistik in transkulturellen Perspektiven,

Palermo 26 July – 2 August 2020

 

Public Debate on Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought

With critique by Francesco Giusti, Moderator Christine Ott, Comparative Literature

University of Frankfurt, Germany, June 25, 2021

 

“¿Porque la revelación teológica tiene que expresarse en la vernáculo? La Vita nuova de Dante y el Nueve Testamento” [Why Theological Revelation Needs to Express itself in the Vernacular: Dante’s Vita nuova and the New Testament]. Conference on: El diálogo de las lenguas: la emergencia del pensamiento en vernáculo (siglos XIII-XVI), Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, May 26, 2021

 

“Warrior Saints and Scripture as Theophany: Paradiso XVIII”

A Lectura Dantis with Jakob Abell for Dante Society of America, podcast

May 20, 2021

 

Presentation online for seminar “Lirica & Teoria”

Hosts Christine Ott and Francesco Giusti, Comparative Literature

University of Frankfurt, Germany, March 26, 2021

 

2020

 

“La Vita nuova entre poésie et prose: renouvellement de vie et révélation théologique”

Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur la Littérature Italienne

du Moyen Âge (CERLIM),

Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3), November 14, 2020

 

[*“Four Lectures: Dante’s Vita nuova, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Goethe’s Faust, Mallarmé’s Coup de dés”

Renmin University, Beijing, November, 2020  POSTPONED TO 2022

 

[“Dante’s Relevance to and Impact on Postmodern Thought”

International Colloquium, Le mondialisation de Dante

University of Lorraine, Nancy, FRANCE

15-16 October, 2020          POSTPONED TO 2021

 

[*“Selbst-Reflexion auf der Schwelle zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit: eine theologische Genealogie des Zeitalters der Vorstellung,” lecture for the Alfred Magnum Forum

University of Regensburg, October 2020  POSTPONED TO 2021

 

[“Walter Benjamin und die Weltliteratur, ”

Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG), XIV. Kongress:

Wege der Germanistik in transkulturellen Perspektiven,

Palermo 26 July – 2 August 2020]  POSTPONED TO 2021

 

[*“La Vita nuova entre poésie et prose: renouvellement de vie et révélation théologique”

Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur la Littérature Italienne

du Moyen Âge (CERLIM),

Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3), May 16, 2020] POSTPONED TO 2021

 

[“¿Porque la revelación teológica tiene que expresarse en la vernáculo? La Vita nuova de Dante y el Nueve Testamento” (Why Theological Revelation Needs to Express itself in the Vernacular: Dante’s Vita nuova and the New Testament). Conference on: El diálogo de las lenguas: la emergencia del pensamiento en vernáculo (siglos XIII-XVI), Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, May 11-13, 2020] POSTPONED TO 2021

 

*“Much Virtue in Vagueness: Premonition of the Eternal and Encountering the Other”

Keynote Speech for Literary Workshop on: “Obsession with Eternity and Challenges of the Other,”

Departments of Arabic and English, College of Arts, University of Anbar, Iraq

May 11, 2020 (online)

 

*“La rappresentazione scientifica versus rappresentazione simbolica del reale: Duns Scoto e Dante”

Seminario de Dantología: Spring 2020: Modernidad de Dante (Dante y la naturaleza humana: Mentalidad científica, mentalidad simbólica)

La Asociación Complutense de Dantología

Universidad Complutense, Madrid, March 6, 2020

 

“The Discourse of Social Justice in a Negative Theological Perspective”

Lecture Series: “Lecturas sobre religión y sociedad civil,”

Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), University of Navarra,

Pamplona, Spain, January 21, 2020

 

2019  

 

*“The Birth of Modernity and its Crisis in Dante’s Phenomenology of the Self-Reflective Subject”

PLENARY LECTURE WITH RESPONDENT (Aaron Daniels) for “Psychology and the Other 2019 Conference,” section on “Dante and Phenomenology”

Sponsored by APA (American Psychological Association)

Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, October 4, 2019

 

*“Religion, Culture, and Art: Their Common Matrix”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for ICRCA International Conference on Religion, Culture, and Art

MIGCCA (Modern International Green Culture Communication Association)

(Co-Organizers: University of Zagreb, Yun Tech, University of Glasgow)

Xi’an, Xianxi, China, September 21-22, 2019

 

*“Speculative Philology: From Ancient Theological Hermeneutics to Modern Linguistic Epistemologies”

Presenter at Yale-NUS and Princeton “Comparative Antiquities” workshop on “Global Classicism,” a Humanities Council Global initiative, Princeton University,

National University of Singapore, August 1-5, 2019

 

*“Technological Transformation and Postmodern Re-enchantment of the Everyday”

Comparative Literature and Religious Studies Round Table on “Sacredness and the Everyday,”

jointly hosted by Renmin University of China and the University of Saint Joseph,

XXII Congress of ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association),

University of St. Joseph, Macao, China, July 29-31, 2019

 

“Dante’s New Life and the New Testament: Hermeneutics of Revelation in the Vita Nuova,”

Session on “Rereading Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova’ – Modes of Interpretation”

Congresso Dantesco Internazionale: “Alma Dante 2019”

Ravenna, May 31, 2019

 

*“The Fate of Philology in a Logo-decentered Culture: The Challenge of Media Studies,”

Gastvortrag (Guest Lecture), Lehrstuhl für Medienwissenschaften (Institute for Media Studies) in Fakultät für Sprach-, Literatur-, und Kulturwissenschaften (Faculty of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies), University of Regensburg, May 9, 2019

 

*“De Dante à Mallarmé à travers l’Hamlet de Shakespeare: Négativité de la révélation prophétique-poétique dans la modernité” (“From Dante to Mallarmé via Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Negativities of Prophetic Revelation in Modernity”), International Conference: « Dante et Shakespeare: Cosmologie, Politique et Poétique », University of Poitiers / Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, FRANCE, 4-6 April 2019

*“Apophasis und die Achsenzeit: Transzendente Ursprünge des kritischen Bewusstseins”

(“Apophasis and the Axial Age: Transcendent Origins of Critical Consciousness”)

FEATURED LECTURE for “Negation und Wissen. Zur Kategorie der Negativität in Theologie, Anthropologie und Ästhetik der Vormoderne” (Negativity and Knowledge: On the category of negativity in theology, anthropology and aesthetics in the pre-modern period), Interdisciplinary Conference under auspices of SFB: Sonderforschungsbereich: Episteme in Bewegung,

Freie Universität, Berlin, April, 4-5, 2019

 

2018

 

* “From Blake’s ‘Eternal Great Humanity Divine’ to Confucian Jūnzǐ 君子 as Consummate Humanity:

Apophatic Paths between Post-Modern Secularity and Pre-Modern Divinity”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for the Conference “Between Humanity and Divinity: In Literature, Art, Religion and Culture” of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS)

National Chi Nan University, Taiwan, October 20, 2018

 

“Dante between Philosophy and Philology (After the Theological Turn)”

Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students

Co-led with Prof. Justin Steinberg, University of Chicago

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library,

Chicago, September 8, 2018

 

“Dante in Context”

Panel discussion with Zyg Baranski, Ted Cachey, Justin Steinberg, Gary Cestaro, and Anne Leone

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library,

Chicago, September 7, 2018. Cancelled.

 

“Outline of an Apophatic Approach to an Intercultural Philosophy of Universalism”

24th World Congress of Philosophy, Section 19: Intercultural Philosophy

Beijing, August 13-20, 2018

 

* “Voice and the Taking Place of Language: Disrupting the Reflexive Cohesion of Tradition”

Invited Theology and Poetry Workshop on “Theology, Poetry, and Disruptive Voices”

St. Peter’s College, Adelaide, Australia, June 18-20, 2018

 

* “Philosophy, Theology, Poetry,” Podcast Conversation with Kevin Hart and the Dean of St. John’s Cathedral, Brisbane for “On The Way,” with OMNY Studios, June 15, 2018

 

* “At the Creative Source of the Arts: Poetry as Prophecy in a Negative Theological Key”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for “Tell it Slant: A Symposium on Theology and the Arts”

Centre for Public and Contextual Theology

St. Francis Theological College of Charles Sturt University,

Brisbane, Australia, June 15-17, 2018

 

* “Paths Beyond Words: The Ways of Unsaying in Early Modernity”                                                             KEYNOTE SPEECH for Conference “Beyond Words: The Unknowable and Unutterable in Early Modernity,” Centre for Research on Early Modern Studies (CREMS) and Humanities Research Centre (HRC), University of York, UK, June 1, 2018

 

* “Negative Theology, Poetic Prophecy, and the Religious Bonding of Society”

Lecture Series: “Lecturas sobre Religión y sociedad civil,” Institute for Culture and Society

Department of Philosophy, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, May 15, 2018

 

“Dante and the Crisis of Representation in the Modern Age”

MLA Panel on Crisis in Dante,

Modern Language Association National Convention,

New York City, January 7, 2018

 

2017

 

* “How to Read the Bible: Can Fundamentalists and Secularists be Brought into Dialogue?”

Presentation of A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities

Ecumenical Chaplaincy, Lake Forest Place,

Lake Forest, Illinois, December 21, 2017

 

* “Contemporary Apophatic Thinking and its Fields of Application”

Guest Lecture for Critical Religion Research Group + Stirling Students Critical Religion Association,

University of Stirling, Scotland, November 8, 2017 (via webcam)

 

* “The Other Italian Renaissance between Religion and Humanism: Dante to Vico”

Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Workshop co-led with Prof. Rocco Rubini

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library, Chicago, October 13, 2017

 

* “Poetry as Prophecy: From Anthropological Origins to Postmodern Apocalypses”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for The Prophetic Word: Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation,

The Power of the Word International Conference V,

Heythrop Institute for Religion and Society (Heythrop College, University of London) and the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture (Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford)

Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, England, September 13-16, 2017

 

*“Traum-Epistemologie und religiöse Offenbarung in Dantes Vita nuova”

[“Dream Epistemology and Religious Revelation in Dante’s Vita nuova”]

Lecture for Graduiertenkolleg „Europäische Traumkulturen“

Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany, June 13, 2017

 

“Writing as Theophany: Dante’s Scriptural Epiphany and the Medium as Metaphor for Immediacy”

“Schrift und Graphisches im Vergleich,” XVII. Tagung der DGAVL (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Vergleichende und Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft),

University of Bochum, Germany, June 6, 2017

 

 

2016 

 

*“Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Method and Mysticism in Intercultural Philosophy”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for Comparative Mysticism: Renewing a Neglected Project,

Annual Conference of the Mystical Theology Network,

University of Glasgow, Scotland, December 15, 2016

 

*“Religious Tradition and Interdisciplinary Humanities Studies in a (Post)Secular World”

Beijing Capitol University of Business and Economics (CUEB), Beijing, October 17, 2016

 

*“Liberal Arts Education as Learned Ignorance: From an East-Asian Vantage Point”

60th ANNIVERSARY LECTURE, Beijing Capitol University of Business and Economics (CUEB),

Beijing, October 14, 2016

 

* “Apophatische Theologie und ihre Wirkung auf die neuzeitliche Philosophie”

[Apophatic Theology and its History of Effect in Modern Philosophy] Summer Semester Block-Seminar,

co-taught with Prof. Wilhelm Essler, Philosophy Department,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, August 2-6, 2016

 

“Die vielen Sprachen der Literaturwissenschaft”

ICLA 2016 – Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée/International Comparative Literature Association – XXI. Kongress, 21. Juli – 27. Juli 2016 – University of Vienna, Austria

 

* “Universality of Knowledge and Specialization at the University: A Path from France to China”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for International Academic Conference to Inaugurate the School of Foreign Studies,

Beijing Capitol University of Business and Economics (CUEB), Beijing, May 26, 2016

 

“Imagining Otherness as an Aporia for Comparative Philosophy: In Debate with François Jullien”

21^st Symposium: Imagination East and West

Académie du Midi, Alet-les-bains, France, May 15-21

 

* “Books, Bread, and Bubbles:

or How to Read Dante Backwards and Forwards in Time on the Way to China”

William Franke places his recent books in the context of an integrated philosophy of the humanities,

Followed by a Critical Response to The Revelation of Imagination by Lenn Goodman, Andrew W. Mellon Prof. of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, April 6, 2016

 

* “The Apotheosis of Self-Reflection: Dante and the Inauguration of the Modern Era”

ANNUAL DANTE LECTURE at the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies,

co-sponsored by the Devers Program in Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame,

and the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago

Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies, Chicago, February 27, 2016

 

* “Poetry as Theology: New Theoretical Approaches to Dante”

Interdisciplinary Graduate Workshop co-led with Prof. Vittorio Montemaggi

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library, Chicago, February 26, 2016

 

2015 

 

*“Negative Theology”

Philippine Academy of Philosophical Research

University of Santo Tomas (“The Catholic University of the Philippines”),

Manila, Philippines, December 6, 2015

 

*“Theological Revelation and Secular Reason: Critical Proposals for a Meeting of Minds and Cultures,”

Invited Lecture in Department of Philosophy, Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas

Manila, Philippines, December 5, 2015

 

*“The Tradition of the Chinese Classics and the Idea of World Literature Today”

KEYNOTE SPEECH (with simultaneous translation into Chinese) at International Symposium on “The Orient vs. The Occident: Cultural Exchanges and Influences,” sponsored by Foreign Language Department of Capital University of Economics and Business, jointly organized by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, Capital International Culture Research Center of Beijing Language and Culture University, and the Comparative Literature Studies Center of Soochow University.

Beijing, November 27-29, 2015

 

*Invited Speaker and Panelist for Session on “Negative Theologies and Apophaticism”

American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting

Atlanta, November 22, 2015

 

Host and Moderator (with Xavier Garnier, Director of L’Alliance Française, Macao)

“Universality and Cultural Difference between East and West”

Philosophy Café (public lecture/discussion): Rui Cunha Foundation, Macao, February 11, 2015

 

*Invited Speaker and Panelist on “Liberal Arts Education in the East-Asian University:

The Unspeakable Basis of Comparative Humanities”

Symposium on “Liberal Arts in the Age of Globalization,”

10^th Anniversary Celebration of Underwood International College

Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, October 28, 2015

 

* “Apophatic Paths from Europe to Asia: A Personal Philosophical Journey”

Invited Lecture for Center for Zhouyi and Ancient Chinese Philosophy,

Philosophy Department, Shandong University, China, October 20, 2015

 

* “Nothingness and the Aspiration to Universality in the Poetic ‘Making’ of Sense:

An Essay in Comparative East-West Poetics”

What Is World Literature? Tension between the Local and the Universal

An International Summit Dialogue and Forum

School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University, October 16-17, 2015

 

*“From the Globalism of Nature to the Universality of Thought: Bringing Universalist Ethics and Politics back into Ecological Harmony by the Apophatic Way”

27^th International Conference of Philosophy (IAGP): Global Ethics and Politics (Invited Speaker)

Vouliagmeni (Athens metropolitan coast), July 10-16, 2015

 

* “Die Apophase als Paradigma der belehrten Unwissenheit”

[“Apophasis as Paradigm of Learned Ignorance”]

Cusanus-Tagung zur Thematik des Idiota bei Cusanus

University of Tübingen, Germany, June 5-6, 2015

 

“Cognitive Universality between Science and the Humanities”

PhilHist’15: History of Philosophy Conference on “Interactions”

DAKAM (Eastern Mediterranean Research Centre)

Istanbul, Turkey, May 14-16, 2015

 

“Classical Chinese Thought and the Sense of Transcendence”

International Colloquium: Transcendence and Immanence in Intercultural Philosophy

Program of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Macao, March 20- 21, 2015

 

Introduction and Roundtable for: “What is Apophatic Thinking and Why is it Relevant Today?

Discussions around William Franke’s A Philosophy of the Unsayable”

International Philosophy Colloquium,

Program of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Macao, March 7, 2015

 

*“Philosophical Universalism and the Role of China in the World Today”

Philosophy Café (public lecture/discussion): Rui Cunha Foundation, Macao, February 11, 2015

 

* “Natural Cognition, Universals, and the Nothing of Religion”

KEYNOTE ADDRESS for “Cognition, Religion, and Science”: A Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), co-sponsored by the Toronto Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion and the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program, University of Macao, January 13-14, 2015

 

 

2014

 

* “Immanence versus Transcendence–A Key Controversy in Comparative Philosophy”

Invited Lecture in Philosophy Colloquium series, Chinese University of Hong Kong,

Hong Kong, October 13, 2014

 

* “Dante’s Apophatic Vision and Classical Daoist and Confucian Wisdom: Methodological Reflections on Comparative Philosophy, Religion, and Literature”

Dante and East Asia, Devers Program in Dante Studies

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, August 27-28, 2014

 

* “Self-Reflection and the Theological Apotheosis of Lyric in the Paradiso”

Lecture at NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Institute:

“Dante’s Divine Comedy, poetry, philosophy, and the city of Florence”

Florence, July 21, 2014

 

Seminar on Paradiso VI-X and XI-XVIII

NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Institute:

“Dante’s Divine Comedy, poetry, philosophy, and the city of Florence”

(Institute Leader, with Brenda Schildgen, et al.)

Florence, July 18-22, 2014

 

“Identity and the Undefinable: What Escapes all Social Categorizations?”

14th International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations

Vienna, July 9-11, 2014

 

“The Philosopher or the Sage? Apophaticism in Europe and China”

Symposium: Wisdom East and West

Académie du Midi, Alet-les-bains, France, June 8-14

 

* “Paul Among the Theorists: A Genealogy of the New Universalism”

2014 Symposium of contributors to Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion

University of Toronto, June 4-6, 2014

 

Invited participant in Jungcusaner Symposium (“Wissensformen bei Nicolaus Cusanus”)

Kueser Akademie für Europäische Geistesgeschichte

Berncastle-Kues, Germany, May 26-28, 2014

 

“Universalism and Transcendentality East and West: The Theological Anomaly”

Critical Theory and the Way: Kantian Paradigms and Prospects in East Asia

International Philosophy Symposium, University of Macao, May 8-10, 2014

 

*“Knowledge and the Humanities”

(With Dean Martin Montgommery, Chair Professor of English)

Faculty Seminar for Faculty of Arts and Sciences,

University of Macao, April 30, 2014

 

*“Religion and Literature: Method and Meaning or

Porphyry’s Hermeneutics of Revelation and the Philosophical Criticism of Literature”

Humanities Research Seminar in Religion and Literature

Chinese University of Hong Kong, April 11, 2014

 

“Rethinking Cultural Universality Today”

International Conference on Arts and Humanities

The International Institute of Knowledge Management

Colombo, Sri Lanka (2014), April 3, 2014

 

“Rethinking Cultural Universality Today and the Question of Theological Transcendence”

International Conference on “Cultural Spaces, Cultures of Difference”                                                                           Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Andrha Pradesh, India, 27-29 January, 2014

 

2013

 

“From Epic Wholeness to Anamorphic Imagination: A Poetic Epistemology of the Humanities”

International Colloquium on “The Force of Imagination”

University of Macao, December 14, 2013

 

“Natural Cognition and its Cultural A Prioris: Macau as the Double Swinging Door between Cultures”

Introductory Address for International Conference on “Natural Cognition: Logic, Evolution, Organisms”

Program in Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Macau, December 14, 2013

 

“Amphibolies of the Postmodern: Hyper-Secularity or the Return of Religion”

Annual International Conference on Advances in Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCS)

Singapore, December 9-10, 2013

 

* “The New Apophatic Universalism:                                                                                                  Deconstructive Critical Theories and Open Togetherness in the European Tradition”

ASCP (Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy) Annual Conference

Response Session to my paper, with respondent (Prof. Chris Hackett)

University of Western Sydney, Paramatta, Australia, December 3-5, 2013

 

* “Des pistes apophatiques menant de l’Europe en Chine: En cheminant avec François Jullien”

Bilingual (French-Chinese) Conference-Workshop with François Jullien

(with simultaneous translation into Chinese)

Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, November 7-8, 2013

 

*INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON DANTE AND THE SENSE OF TRANSGRESSION

“Transgression and Transcendence: What Makes Religion Radical? A two-day symposium to discuss Prof. William Franke’s book Dante and the Sense of Transgression: ‘The Trespass of the Sign’”

Institute for Christianity and Culture,

International Christian University (ICU), Tokyo, Japan, October 11-12, 2013

 

* “The Humanities and the Ideal of Wholeness—Epic Pasts, Partisan Presents, Plural Futures”

International Speakers Series on “The Future of the Humanities”

International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan, October 12, 2013

 

* “L’éloge de la fadeur et la litote du neutre: Entre François Jullien, Maurice Blanchot et Roland Barthes” [The Eulogy of Blandness and the Litotes of the Neutral:

Between François Jullien, Maurice Blanchot, and Roland Barthes]

Colloquium: “Des possibles de la pensée : Autour des travaux de François Jullien”

CERISY-la-Salle (France), September 14-21, 2013

 

“Thinking in the Gap between the Cultures of Greece and China: Apophatic Universalism”

23^rd World Congress of Philosophy: Philosophy as Inquiry and as Way of Life

School of Philosophy, University of Athens, Greece, August 2-11, 2013

 

“Agamben’s Logic of Exception and its Apophatic Roots and Offshoots”

International Conference “Except Asia: Agamben’s Work in Transcultural Perspective”

Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University,

Taipei, Taiwan, June 25-27, 2013

 

* “Dante’s Theology and Contemporary Thought,” featured lecture-workshop at:

International Seminar “Dante’s Theology” sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Leeds Center for Dante Studies, and the Devers Program for Dante Studies, University of Notre Dame,

Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem, Israel, June 21, 2013

 

* “All or Nothing? The Question of Nature as Bond between the Chinese Classic Past and the Global Future,” Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung sponsored Philosophy Colloquium:  “Nature-Time-Responsibility,” University of Macao (China), April 14, 2013

 

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

Third Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion, and Philosophy, IAFOR

“Connectedness and Alienation: The 21^st Century Enigma”

Osaka, Japan, March 30, 2013

 

“François Jullien and the Notion of Immanence:  Chinese compared with Western Thought and Culture”

Asian Studies Association of Hong Kong (ASAHK), 8^th Annual Conference: “Transformations, Development and Culture in Asia: Multidisciplinary Perspectives”

University of Hong Kong, March 9, 2013

 

2012

 

“Religious Literature’s Secular Vocation:  Dante and Postmodern Thought”

Conference on Italian Literature and Religion

Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto, October 11, 2012

 

* “Trauma and Silence in the Post-Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan”

International Forum for Advanced Research in English:

“Suffering in Literature and Trauma Studies”

English Department, University of Macao, August 23-26, 2012

 

* “Der Übergang zum ‚anderen Zustand‘ als literarisches Motiv“

Invited Research Conference: “Ende oder Umbau einer Erlösungsreligion? Verschiebungen in der Vorstellung eines nicht nur endlichen, sondern ‘ewigen’ Lebens”

Evangelisch-Theologisch Fakultät, Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany, July 12-15, 2012

 

“The New Apophatic Universalism: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and Open Togetherness in the European Tradition”

International Conference on Interrogating Cosmopolitan Conviviality:

New Dimensions of the European in Literature

University of Bamberg, May 24, 2012

 

* “The Art of Memory or the Forgetting of Art? The Visionary Moment in Dante and Blanchot”

KEYNOTE SPEECH for International Conference: “Memory: Impressions, Expressions, Reflections: An Interdisciplinary Conference,” The Department of English Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria, March 28, 2012

 

“The Apophatic Experiential Grounds of Philosophy of Religion”

Wesleyan Philosophical Society, annual meeting on Philosophy and Religious Experience

Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, March 1, 2012

 

* “Christian Figuralism and Kenosis: From Otherworldliness to the Becoming Worldly of Otherness”

MLA National Convention, Religion and Literature Section, Panel on “Secularism”

Seattle, Washington, January 6, 2012

 

2011

 

* “The Holistic Ideal of the Humanities and Religious Revelation:

Linguistic-Cultural Diaspora or a New Universality?”

Lecture for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures,

University of Hong Kong, November 7, 2011

 

* “Epic Imagination and the Unlimited Vision of Literature”

Distinguished Lecture Series, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

University of Macao, October 27, 2011

 

* “Reading Emily Dickinson: Three Approaches to One of her Poems,”

with linguist Martin Montgomery and translator Zhang Meifang, Department of English Seminar Series,

University of Macao, October 21, 2011

 

* “L’itinéraire du corps dans la Divine comédie de Dante”

(“The Itinerary of the Body in Dante’s Divine Comedy”)

Lecture and seminar for the Faculty of Philosophy, Catholic Institute of Paris, September 23, 2011

 

* “Le commencement et la fin de la philosophie dans le mysticisme apophatique:

de Platon au postmodernisme”

(“The Beginning and the End of Philosophy in Apophatic Mysticism: From Plato to Postmodernism”)

Lecture at colloquium on “Philosophie et Mystique: Autour de Stanislas Breton,”

CERISY-la-Salle (France), August 27, 2011

 

* “Dante e la teologia negativa” [Dante and Negative Theology]

ISSR (Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose),

University of Urbino Carlo Bo, August 18, 2011

 

“Canonicity, Creativity, and the Total Revelation of Literature”

The Hospitable Text Conference: New Approaches to Religion and Literature,

London, July 14-17, 2011

 

“The Paramount Importance of What Cannot Be Said in Public Theological Discourse”

International Conference on Contextuality and Intercontextuality in Public Theology

GNPT (Global Network for Public Theology)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Research Center for Public Theology

University of Bamberg, June 24, 2011

 

* “A Philosophy of the Humanities: Their Classical Roots and Contemporary Relevance”

Lecture sponsored by Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

University of Macao, May 5, 2011

 

* KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “Letargo and the Argo: Total Forgetting as the Moment of Truth at the Climax of Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Christian Epic Tradition”

4. Internationale Nachwuchstagung des DFG-Graduiertenkollegs: Generationenbewußtsein und Generationenkonflikte in Antike und Mittelalter: “Erfahren, Erzählen, Errinern: Narrative Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter”

[4th International Postgraduate Colloquium, DFG [German Research Foundation]: “Record, Relate, Remember: Narrative Constructions of Memory and Generation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”]

Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, March 2- 4, 2011

 

2010

 

Response to Mary Watt lecture, “Dante, Columbus, and Stigliani’s Mondo Nuovo: Literary construction and spiritual imperialism.” Religious History Colloquium.

Vanderbilt Divinity School, September 15, 2010

 

“Don’t Mention It: Emily Dickinson’s Poetics of ‘Still Appreciation’” (read by Gary Stonum)

Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) International Conference

Oxford University, August 8, 2010

 

* PLENARY ADDRESS: “The Scientific Paradigm and the Poetic Epistemology of the Humanities”

12^th International Conference of ISSEI (International Society for the Study of European Ideas):

“Thought in Science and Fiction”

Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey, August 4, 2010

 

“Porphyry and the Philosophical Interpretation of Literature”

Session on Literary Philosophy and Philosophical Literature

ISSEI (International Society for the Study of European Ideas)

Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey, August 3, 2010

 

“Poetic Revelation:  Between Language and Apocalypse”

Tools of the Sacred, Techniques of the Secular: Awakening, Epiphany, Apocalypse and Doubt in Contemporary English-Language Verse

Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Brussels, Belgium, May 7, 2010

 

2009

 

* KEYNOTE SPEECH: “‘Il Trapassar del Segno’: Language and Transcendence in Dante’s Paradiso”

The Fourth Interdisciplinary Conference of the Nordic Dante Network: “Dante and Transgression”

University of Tampere, Finland, August 20, 2009

 

2008

 

“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, November 1, 2008

 

“Existentialism:  A Christian Philosophy or the Ultimate Atheism?”

The Fourth World Congress of Phenomenology:

The Phenomenology and Existentialism of the Twentieth Century

Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, August 18, 2008

 

* “Le Paradis de Dante et les conceptions monastiques du ciel au moyen âge”

Abbaye Saint-Wandrille, Normandy, France, July 22, 2008

+  “Lecture du Ciel de Jupiter dans le Paradis de Dante,” July 23, 2008

 

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

Conference on Stanley Cavell and Literary Criticism

Edinburgh University, May 11, 2008

 

2007

 

“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”

Invited Lecture in the Institute for 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 anschließender Diskussion auf Deutsch”)

University of Salzburg, May 9, 2007

 

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

Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film

Tallahassee, Florida, February 3, 2007

 

2006

 

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

9th International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory,

Udaipur, Rajasthan (India), December 16, 2006

 

* “Scripture as Theophany in Dante’s Paradiso”

2006 Annual Lecture in Religion and Literature,

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

 

2005

 

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

Lecture for Department of Comparative Literature Seminar Series, 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

 

* “’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

 

2004

 

“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

 

2003

 

“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”

Division 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 Jabès”

(“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-la-Salle, 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: “Imagining Rome”

California State University, Long Beach, March 15, 2003

 

“Dante: Prophet and Pioneer of Secular Humanism”

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

 

2002

 

“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

 

2001

 

“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

 

2000

 

* “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

 

1999

 

“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 Committee 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

 

1998

 

“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

 

1997

 

“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

 

1996

 

“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

 

1995

 

* “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.

 

1994

 

“Truth and Interpretation in the Divine Comedy”

Ninth Biennial New College Conference on Medieval -Renaissance Studies,

Sarasota, Florida, March 11, 1994

 

1993

 

“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

 

1992

 

“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

 

1991

 

“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 (perfectly fluent)

French (perfectly fluent)

German (perfectly fluent)

Spanish (fluent)

 

Ancient

Greek

Latin

 

Medieval

Middle English

Old French

Occitan (Langue d’oc)

Middle High German

 

Asian

Mandarin Chinese (basic speaking)

 

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