The Dante Society of America

President
Albert Russell Ascoli
University of California, Berkeley

Vice President
Kristina Olson
George Mason University

Treasurer
Michael Sherberg
Washington University in St. Louis

Secretary-Librarian
Christian Dupont
Boston College

Councilors
William Caferro Vanderbilt University	Martin Eisner Duke University
Alison Cornish University of Michigan	Antonio Rossini University of Windsor
Francesca Southerden University of Oxford

The Dante Prize and the Charles Hall Grandgent Award

Since 1887 the Dante Society of America has presented annual prizes for the best student essays on a subject related to the life or works of Dante Alighieri. The Dante Prize of five hundred dollars is offered for the best essay submitted by an undergraduate enrolled in any college or university in the USA, US territories, or Canada, or by anyone not enrolled as a graduate student who has received an undergraduate degree from a college or university in the USA, US territories, or Canada within the past year. The Charles Hall Grandgent Award of seven hundred and fifty dollars is offered for the best essay submitted by a student enrolled in any graduate program in the USA or Canada. Undergraduate essays should be no longer than 7,500 words and graduate essays should be no longer than 10,000 words. The essay submitted can be a self-standing work or a portion of a larger work. In the latter case, writers are asked to include in the submission a description of how the essay fits within the larger whole. That description will not count towards the essay’s overall word limit, but should not exceed 750 words for undergraduate essays and 1000 words for graduate essays. The deadline for submissions is June 30 of each year. All submissions must be sent as e-mail attachments to the Dante Society of America at dantesociety@gmail.com. Files should be saved as documents with either a ‘.doc’, ‘.docx’, or a ‘.rtf ’ extension. No hardcopy submissions will be accepted. Each author should provide a cover page (as the first page of the file) giving her or his name; institutional affiliation; local, permanent and e-mail addresses; and the title and category (undergraduate or graduate) of the essay. The author’s name should not appear on the essay title page (to follow the cover page) or on any other page of the text since the essays are submitted anonymously to the readers. Quotations from Dante’s works should be cited in the original language, and the format of the essay should conform to either the Chicago or MLA Style Sheet guidelines. A special committee of the Society will judge the submissions. In either competition, the committee may, at its discretion, split the award between two contestants (each to receive one half of the prize), or it may make no award. The announcement of the winners and their essay titles will be made in early autumn and published in the fall issue of the Society’s Newsletter, and in the Society’s Annual Report. The essays remain the intellectual property of their authors.

The Durling Prize

Established in 2016 in memory of our late colleague Robert M. Durling, this award recognizes excellence in the teaching of Dante’s life, time, and works by educators working in North American secondary schools (i.e., high school and middle school). The prizewinner receives a monetary award in the amount of one thousand dollars. The Durling Prize is awarded to an educator who demonstrates effective and innovative pedagogical approaches to teaching Dante, whether in a single unit, or a course of a semester or an academic year. Nominations for the prize—either self-nominations or nominations submitted by someone who is not the applicant—must be received by July 1 of each year. Nominated parties will be contacted by The Dante Society of America and asked to submit a complete dossier by September 1.

Dossiers submitted must include the following items: 1) a two-page maximum resume that highlights the instructor’s involvement with Dante; 2) a description of the applicant’s involvement with Dante (between 500 and 1,000 words in length); 3) an annotated syllabus and...