Supervisor: Heather Webb

 

Research Topic: Virgil’s revival from ‘ombra fioca’ to ‘dolcissimo patre’: the construction of the Virgil-Dante affective relationship through gestures

 

Ruoci Song started her doctoral studies in 2023 at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Her research delves into the gestural interpretation of the emotional relationship between Virgil and Dante. She obtained her master’s degree with honours in Italian Studies in 2022 from the University of Bologna, under the supervision of Giuseppe Ledda and Francesco Santi, where she also completed her undergraduate degree in Humanities and another master’s degree in clinical Linguistics. Ruoci has presented her undergraduate thesis, “The Embraces in the Comedy,” and her master’s thesis, “The Appellations of Virgil,” at various international conferences. She has a cat that names Virgilio.

 

Research interests:

· Appellations

· Bodies and Gestures

· Classical Reception

· Clinical Linguistics

· Dante Alighieri

· Dante in China

· Digital Humanities

· Emotions and Affects

· Intertextuality

· Neurodiversity

· The Divine Comedy

· Virgil

 

 

Scholarships/Prizes:

2023 Prize for participation in Summer and Winter Schools, Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna.

2022-2023 Grants for Foreign and Italian Citizens Living Abroad, awarded by the Italian Government, ranked 1st among all Chinese applicants.

Oct 2021 Scholarship holder of the conference ‘LVIII Convegno Storico Internazionale del Centro Italiano di Studi sul Basso Medioevo: Dante e il mondo. Tra realtà e poesia, tra storia e letteratura’, Centro Italiano di Studi sul Basso Medieoevo – Accademia Tudertina.

 

 

Conference Papers:

Apr 2024 ‘Dante’s Body as a Domain of Affect Display in The Divine Comedy: A Study of Gestures’, 15th Brown-Harvard graduate students conference: CHIASMI Contested Bodies in Italian Studies, Brown University.

Apr 2024 ‘Appellativi di Virgilio: un’indagine basata sulla linguistica del corpus nella Commedia con AntConc’, Incontro Internazionale Italianistica Digitale: La ricerca dei giovani studiosi, University of Macerata.

Mar 2024 ‘Queering The Divine Comedy: Genderqueered Vergil, non-binary Beatrice, and the degendered Dante’, Queer & Trans Philologies, University of Cambridge.

Jan 2024 ‘Vergil: The Pop Idol from Antiquity to the Present’, International Seminar Egypopcult: Reception of Antiquity in Contemporary Popular Culture, University of Lisbon.

Nov 2023 ‘Virgil’s revival from ‘ombra fioca’ to ‘dolcissimo patre’: the construction of the Virgil-Dante affective relationship through gestures’, Dante Futures: New Voices in The UK and Ireland, University of Leeds.

Sep 2023 ‘Dante's Multifaceted Affection for Virgil Expressed through Appellatives’, 2023 SIS Themed Conference 'Affect, Sensation, Emotion’, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.

Jul 2023 ‘Gli appellativi di Virgilio nella Commedia,’ International Medieval Congress 2023, University of Leeds.

May 2023 ‘Gli appellativi di Virgilio,’ Alma Dante 2023 – International Dante Conference, University of Bologna.

Sep 2021 ‘Gli abbracci nella Commedia,’ Alma Dante 2021 – International Dante Conference, University of Bologna.

Nov 2019 ‘«Va, ch’io son forte e ardito»: Per scendere e salire le scale nell’Inferno,’ 第七届全国文艺复兴思想论坛 (=VII National Forum for Renaissance Studies), School of International Studies, Zhejiang University.

 

 

Publications:

Monograph (in Chinese translation)

- Leggere la Commedia. (Original work by Giuseppe Ledda, published in 2016; in press with Commercial Press, forthcoming.)

Articles

- Dante in a Distant Land: Exploring the Echoes of Dante's Divine Comedy in Contemporary Chinese Culture, in On a Transcultural Dante: Reception, Translation, and Rewritings in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (edited volume), Brill, Forthcoming.

- Gli abbracci nella Commedia, in SACRA DOCTRINA. OMAGGIO A DANTE. Saggi di studiosi cinesi in commemorazione del DCC anniversario della morte di Dante Alighieri 66,2 (2021), 167-215. https://www.edizionistudiodomenicano.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/9788855450324.pdf

- 但丁在人间 (=Dante nel mondo terreno), in 文汇学人, 25 Mar 2021; reproduced by the journal 青年文摘9, (2021) 38-39.

- 但丁怀乡之旅 (=Il viaggio pellegrinaggio di Dante), in 看世界 2021(4), 14-18.

 

 

Other activities and roles:

2023 Instructor of ‘Skills Workshop: The Uses of AI in Language and Literature Studies’, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

2023 Member of the Organizing Committee of ‘Echi Medievali. Dichiarazioni di guerra, d'amore, di pace: Annual Series of Meetings for the Promotion and Dissemination of Latin Middle Ages’, Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna.

2020-2021 Reader of Maratona Dantesca: European Researchers’ Night, Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna.

2019-2021 Interlocutor of ‘Workshop Lopereseguite 2013-2021 – Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Fonti, strutture, modelli’, Società Dantesca Italiana.

2018 Volunteer of ‘The XXIV World Congress of Philosophy’, Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie and Peking University.