Beth Coggeshall

Associate Professor, Italian
Coordinator, Italian Program

Beth Coggeshall (PhD, Stanford University) specializes in the literature and culture of medieval Italy, with a particular focus on Dante. Her research centers on the intersections of literature, ethics, and cultural identity; medievalism and popular culture; and the transmedia reception of Dante’s works across contemporary global cultures. 

Her book On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2023. In her book, she argues that the disputes over the nature and uses of amistà (friendship) in medieval Italian literary culture pave the way for the wholesale recuperation of friendship in its many forms among the early humanists. She has discussed the book in more detail on two podcasts: The History of Literature and the New Books Network.

In addition to this research, she is also the co-editor (with Arielle Saiber, Johns Hopkins University) of the website Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture, a curated, crowd-sourced digital archive that showcases Dante’s sustained presence in contemporary culture. To further this research, she was part of the inaugural class of faculty fellows in FSU’s Demos Institute for Data Humanities, 2019-2020, and has participated in the FSU Libraries Pen & Inc program. 

She has been honored to receive awards for Excellence in Teaching from the Southeastern Medieval Association (2023) and the FSU Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (2024), as well as a University Teaching Award for undergraduate teaching (2019) and the Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (2020). Beth currently serves as the Director of Education and Outreach of the Dante Society of America (2023-present), through which she helps to administer the DSA’s Dante Speakers Bureau. 

Research Interests

13^th and 14^th Century Italian Literature, History, Culture
The tre corone (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch)
Reception and Adaptation Studies
Digital Humanities

Courses Taught

Literature and the World: An Invitation to Reading Across Modern Languages
Dante’s Inferno
La Commedia di Dante
A New Normal? Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Post-Pandemic World
Trecento Writers
Survey of Italian Literature, from the Origins to the 18^th Century
Italian Grammar and Composition (intermediate and advanced)

Digital Projects

Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Ed. with Arielle Saiber. Online since 2006.

Selected Publications

Books and Edited Collections

• On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy. University of Toronto Press, 2023.

• Missiles for the Future: Dante and DH. Ed. with Akash Kumar. Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies, vol. 5 (December 2022). Access the introduction here.

  

   

Articles and Book Chapters

• “The Hell Franchise: Dante’s Commedia in American Marketing.” In Dante Alive: Essays on a Cultural Icon. Eds. Francesco Ciabattoni and Simone Marchesi (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, 2023) Pp. 195-212.
• “Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante: Crowdsourcing and Transcultural Heritage.” Bibliotheca Dantesca 5 (December 2022): 253-272. Available for free download here.
• “Dante Today: Tracking the Global Resonance of the Commedia.” In Dante Beyond Borders: Context and Reception. Eds. Nick Havely and Jonathan Katz with Richard Cooper. Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2021. Pp. 324-337.
• "’Eternal Hate Created Me As Well’: In Search of Hate in Dante’s Commedia.” In Dante’s Volume from Alpha to Omega: Inscriptions on the Poet’s Universe. Eds. Carol Chiodo and Christiana Purdy. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021. Pp. 153-170.
• “Jousting with Verse: The Poetics of Friendship in Duecento Comuni.” Italian Culture 80.2 (2020): 99-118. Available for free download here.
• “Dante oggi. L’Inferno diffondibile.” Italianistica. Rivista di letteratura italiana 49.2 (May/August 2020): 73-88.
• “Dante’s Afterlife in Popular Culture.” In Approaches to Teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy, 2nd edition. Eds. Christopher Kleinhenz and Kristina Olson. MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series, New York: Modern Language Association, 2020. Pp. 185-191.
• “Dealing with Dante’s Audacity: Borges’s ‘Aleph’ and the Mystical Imperative.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 24.2 (Fall 2017): 103-114.

Public Writing and Media

• “Bad Apples and Sour Trees: Dante on Systemic Injustice, Rage, and Reform.” The Sundial (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies): September 15, 2020.
• “Dante Today.” Podcast with Matthew Treherne and Arielle Saiber. Leeds Dante Podcast. Centre for Dante Studies, University of Leeds (UK).
• “Purgatorio 16: The Poem’s Moral Center.” Podcast with Deborah Parker. Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in Our Time. Dante Society of America.