Alison Cornish is chair of the Department of Italian Studies at NYU and president of the Dante Society of America. Before coming to NYU, she taught in the Department of Italian at Yale University and in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has held a University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities Fellowship, a Harvard University Villa I Tatti Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship in Italy. Professor Cornish's research interests are primarily in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, particularly Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, with a focus on scholarly, philosophical and theological issues and their translation into the vernacular. At NYU's Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, he initiated a lecture series entitled "Dante and..." featuring scholars and experts investigating Dante's relevance to different areas of study and interest, with particular relevance to today's world. In addition, in collaboration with Casa Italiana and the Dante Society of America, it promoted a year-long project of short conversations among different people on each of the 100 cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy.