Dante From Two Perspectives: The Sienese Connection is the 15th in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures which have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious and intellectual periods.

In Dante From Two Perspectives, Cook and Herzman start from the perspective provided by several decades of collaboration in which they have combined the two disciplines of History and Literature in their teaching and writing about Dante, and the perspective that several decades of living, studying, and teaching in Siena have given to their understanding of Dante and the Commedia. They attempt to deal in a formal way with the implications of a document found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena which affirms a connection between Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine conspicuously encountered by Dante the pilgrim in Inferno 10, and the Sienese Ghibellines with whom he and his fellow Florentine Ghibellines joined, in an alliance which produced the Sienese victory at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.