The Dante Club is now a 10th Grade Academic Travel trip. Chris chaperones students to Florence where they walk the streets Dante walked some 650 years ago, see original manuscripts, and tour the city from which he was eventually exiled. “We get to understand him in a political and cultural context,” he says. “Students can touch on the physical, tangible markers that are found throughout the text.”
memorable; for example, the 10th Grade Honors students are asked to write a Modern Adaptation, where they are the protagonist of their own Danteesque voyage. They write their own canto and workshop their writing. For her Modern Adaptation, Aurelia Dochnal ’19 chose to combine ancient Chinese philosophy with the Polish anti-communist movement, her greatest interests. Although writing it was challenging, she thought the research and consideration necessary to write it were unforgettable. “I remember sitting at my desk, typing at my computer at 2 AM, deep in exploration of my own values and ideas. I hadn’t had this opportunity before: to evaluate my view on life and discover something more about my greatest interests.” Aurelia achieved a perfect grade on her Canto.
The soul of this trip echoes the crux of what the entire TASIS English program is about. “One of our central missions at TASIS is to stretch our students,” Chris says. “Their studies, sports, artistic pursuits, and social lives tax their time and energy. Why do they make time to read and discuss an early 13thcentury epic about the afterlife? It’s a question I can’t ignore. I think they make time for Dante because he forces them to seek meaning in life, and it’s this meaning that goes beyond the shallow exigencies of social media, predefined careerist ambition, and mere happiness.”
The Dante Club
Indeed, Dante has become quite trendy at TASIS. Three years ago, after Chris’s 10th grade Honors class finished reading Dante’s Inferno, they asked to form a club where they would continue reading the entire Divine Comedy, a request to warm any English teacher’s heart. They began Purgatory the following September, and in spring 2018 they began Paradise. As Alexander Secilmis ’19 says, “The way Dr. Love has guided us through Dante has made virtually everyone in our class join the Dante Club. He has an analogy-based way of explaining things that simplifies the text while simultaneously adding another layer of meaning.”
Literature Outside the Classroom
The English Department does its best to support English scholars with a variety of literature- and writing-based events. For example, the “Mini-Saga” contest celebrates microfiction: stories of exactly 50 words (not including the title, which may be up to 15 words) that must have a beginning, middle, and end. Winners are given special privileges. The Jacob Fund, donated in honor of alumna Linda Buchanan Jacob ’66, helps to develop the poetry program at TASIS through a biennial poet-in-residence program and an annual Poetry Prize. Student writers also feature in the Arts Festival each May where they are able to read and share their work with an audience, demonstrating their understanding and creativity in literature and film. Some are also asked to contribute to the TASIS Blog and TASIS Today with interviews, essays, and stories about their experiences at TASIS.
For Chris, the club’s success is a delight. “To see this merry band of Dante fans meet each month to discuss the intricacies of a profound but challenging epic is a testament to the importance of great literature in the lives of our students,” he says. “Dante forces us to ask the big questions, and he brings the full force of his erudition and his intellect to the task of formulating and pursuing ends rather than means. In wrestling with this forceful but subtle early Renaissance mind, my students understand the stakes of humanistic pursuit, but they also understand the disciplined delight of such an encounter.”
A great strength of TASIS is its global community, and the English Department exploits this by frequently including works of literature from around the world.
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