Why Dante Still Matters with Mark Scarbrough

Why does Dante still matter? How can this late-medieval poet still speak to us post-modern people of a digital, fragmented age? What was Dante’s “secret” for creating a work that has lasted (globally!) for over 700 years? And how did a poet who was so focused on political matters in the central Italian peninsula and who had written mostly middling and often unfinished works before the COMEDY come to write an undisputed masterpiece? Why this popularity?

Utterly non-religious Mark Scarbrough has read Dante’s COMEDY starting on 1 January every year for the past twenty or so years. He’s also taught the COMEDY at adult-ed centers across New England—including one seventeen-week trek through all 100 cantos with over 150 participants. Yet he’s always felt rushed. In the middle of the pandemic lockdown, he started a podcast called WALKING WITH DANTE, mostly to take the COMEDY at his own rate, a few lines at a time. It’s taken over two years to get near the end of INFERNO and start thinking about PURGATORIO. The podcast now ranks among the top arts podcasts in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia, with thousands of downloads a month even in the U. S.

A former academic who can still talk game about books, Mark Scarbrough dropped out of seminary to do his doctoral work in nineteenth century American literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After a dissertation about the body as the locus of history in nineteenth-century African-American novels, he stayed on as staff for several years before accepting his first tenure-track job at Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He has given papers on medieval literature at the International Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and on American literature at both the MLA and regional MLA conferences. He has also written screenplays for various production companies and developed most of the original food content in the early 1990s for a small internet start-up called America Online. In 1996, he resigned his academic position and with his husband, chef Bruce Weinstein, is now the writerly half of a thirty-five title (and thriving) cookbook career. They’ve been columnists for Eating Well, Cooking Light, and weightwatchers and have won awards from The International Association of Culinary Professionals and at the Paris Book Show. In 2020, Mark published his memoir, “Bookmarked: How The Great Works Of Western Civilization F*cked Up My Life,” which Will Schwalbe called “equal parts charm, wit, and withering self-reflection.” Having left the classroom, Mark again finds himself enmeshed in literature, leading grant-sponsored book groups and six- to eight-week literary seminars across Litchfield county, Connecticut, and Berkshire county, Massachusetts. He currently hosts the only podcast slow-walking through Dante’s COMEDY, “Walking With Dante,” now in its third year, nearing the end of INFERNO with PURGATORIO in the offing in January, 2023. A displaced Texan, Mark looks for his peace in the wilds of Colebrook, Connecticut, where he shares his acres with Bruce and two irascible collies.

Tickets sold at the door on Saturday--cash and checks preferred.