"Songs Beyond Mankind: Poetry and the Lager from Dante to Primo Levi" is the eighteenth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures that have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious, and intellectual periods.

Professor Pertile's lecture, "Songs Beyond Mankind," asks whether there is a degree of suffering and degradation beyond which a man or...