Beth Coggeshall

Assistant Professor

Beth Coggeshall

Contact Information

Office Location
Diffenbaugh 357B
Program
Italian
Office Hours

Wednesday 2-4pm via Zoom

Assistant Professor, Italian
Faculty Adviser, Italian Club
Faculty Adviser, Gamma Kappa Alpha Honor Society
Coordinator, Medieval Studies Workshop

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 is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press. 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. In addition to this research, she is also the co-editor (with Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College) 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. She was part of the inaugural class of faculty fellows in FSU’s Demos Institute for Data Humanities, 2019-2020. She was honored to receive a University Teaching Award for undergraduate teaching in 2019 and the Undergraduate Research Mentor Award in 2020. Beth currently serves as the Vice President of the Dante Society of America (2021-2023). In addition to her work on the DSA Council, she also serves on the Education and Outreach Committee and is part of the DSA’s Dante Speakers Bureau.


Research Interests

13th and 14th Century Italian Literature, History, and Culture

The tre corone (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch)

Reception Studies

Digital Humanities


Courses Taught

Dante’s Inferno (Ethics; in English)

La Commedia di Dante (in Italian)

Trecento Writers (in Italian)

Survey of Italian Literature, from the Origins to the 18th Century (in Italian)

Advanced Grammar and Composition (in Italian)


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

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.
  • “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