Who We Are

The Dante Atlas Network - DAN is a collaborative digital humanities project born from a desire to rethink how students engage with Dante’s Divine Comedy in the contemporary classroom. Developed by Beatrice Maria Rosso, Teaching Assistant for Dante II at the University of Notre Dame, the project brings together literary study, spatial thinking, and digital experimentation.

At its core, the project responds to a pedagogical need: to move beyond traditional assignments that no longer fully capture how students read, think, and create in the age of digital tools and artificial intelligence. By transforming close reading into a visual and collaborative practice, DAN encourages students to engage critically with the text while contributing to a shared scholarly resource.

The project emphasizes visual learning, interdisciplinary inquiry, and collaboration. Students map Dante’s imagined geography, connect literary passages to real and symbolic places, and reflect on how space, movement, and meaning interact throughout the Commedia. In doing so, they participate in a living archive that grows with each new contribution.

The Dante Atlas Network is both a pedagogical experiment and an evolving scholarly platform, one that invites students, instructors, and researchers to explore, interpret, and reimagine Dante’s world together.