William Franke is a philosopher of the humanities, a Dante scholar, and professor of comparative literature and religion at Vanderbilt University. He has also been professor of philosophy at the University of Macao (2013–16); Fulbright-University of Salzburg Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religion; and Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung research fellow at the University of Potsdam.In addition to two monographs on Dante—Dante’s Interpretive Journey (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and Dante and the Sense of Transgression: “The Trespass of the Sign” (Bloomsbury, 2013)—Franke’s critical theory books include Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language (Stanford University Press, 2009) and A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities (Cascade, 2017). These works follow up on books tracing prophetic poetry from Homer and Virgil to Dante (The Revelation of Imagination: From Homer and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante, Northwestern University Press, 2015) and then forward from Dante through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Leopardi, to more recent modern classics including Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Yeats (Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante, Ohio State University Press, 2016). Two forthcoming books from Cambridge University Press deal with the Vita nuova and the Paradiso as poetics of revelation and theophany respectively.Franke’s more strictly philosophical works include A Philosophy of the Unsayable (Notre Dame University Press, 2014) and his reconstruction of what he presents as the apophatic tradition of discourse in On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts (Notre Dame University Press, 2007, 2 vols.). His Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions without Borders (SUNY Press, 2018, series on Chinese Philosophy and Culture) extends this project into an intercultural philosophy, taking it to sources in Asian thought. Most recently, The Universality of What is Not: The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking (Notre Dame University Press, 2020), applies this philosophy to address otherwise intractable critical dilemmas in media studies, identity politics of race and gender, and cognitive sciences in their struggle with the humanities.Franke teaches, lectures, and carries on public dialogue with students and researchers in multiple disciplines and languages (Italian, French, German, Spanish, English) across four continents.Read more about this authorRead less about this author