Research Symposium

BIO

Charlotte Stuart-Tilley is a second-year student studying International Affairs and French, minoring in Religion. She is interested in post-colonial francophone identities and politics, with a special focus in West African francophone countries. After graduation, she hopes to work in a human rights-related field and one day travel the world. At FSU, she is involved with Pi Delta Phi (the French Honor Society) and is planning to begin research in Accra, Ghana, in summer of 2025.

Dante Today: The Divine Comedy in West Africa

Abstract

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy has profoundly influenced artists and writers worldwide since its publication in 1321. The Divine Comedy and Dante’s persona have shaped art, literature, religion, and philosophy, resulting in many subtle and overt references to Dante. To catalog the variety of references to Dante and The Divine Comedy across mediums and places, Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall and Dr. Arielle Saiber started Dante Today, a crowd-sourced digital archive of Dante “sightings.” Sightings range in age and form, including examples of graffiti, performance art, and news articles. While the archive features many references from European and North American creators, a limited number of contributions by African creators exists, particularly from West Africa. To add to the archive’s collection of African references to Dante, I conducted research online and submitted potential Dante sightings from West African creators. Through my research, I identified ten sightings, which I have submitted to the database. Identifying and adding these sightings enriches the archive's representation of West African creators and references to Dante, contributing to international scholarship of The Divine Comedy.

Keywords: Dante, Africa, Art, Ghana, Inferno