For seniors of Ms. Margaret Gonzalez’s AP Literature class, room 4D1 was hell.

The students, who have been reading Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, were tasked with creating modern representations of what a journey through the underworld might look like. The results were half horrifying, half hilarious, but the projects displayed a keen understanding of Dante’s version of hell. The poet’s hell is populated by famous figures from history, popular culture, and even contemporary life – he derived the material of Inferno directly from the political and cultural landscape he existed in, and harshly railed against the many vices he saw in Italy.

Seniors did the same, though none tried their hand at a terza rima structure. One project created the “Infern-bro,” which committed to hell all people who vainly sought attention on social media sites, acted rudely and used too many "hashtags." Each group selected sagacious guides to illuminate the way through their versions of hell, such as Harry Potter’s Albus Dumbledore or their very own Ms. Gonzalez.

“While some of the AP projects are exaggerated and humorous it still caused the students to be reflective and judicious about what is considered living a good life today,” said Ms. Gonzalez, “They argued over questions about morality, religion, the role social media plays in today's world and a host of other things relevant to them.” Students from other English and Italian classes toured the projects while they were displayed in the teacher’s room on Wednesday.

The project has evolved over the four years of its existence in the AP Literature curriculum. Two groups this year created videos narrating their form of hell, one included a Twitter feed of updates from the underworld, and many chose three-dimensional sculptures. In one of the latter sculptures, Lucifer sat at the middle of a spinning 45 rate-per minute record player, whose record consisted of the laments of the damned (the damned being musical flops, such as Nikki Minaj, Britney Spears, Robin Thicke and, the project designer displaying their youth, Van Morrison).

The Inferno project showed what students are capable of when asked to combine a thorough understanding of a text with the real-world application of understanding, and the class ran with it successfully. If you’re asking these students how achieve salvation, though, the best instruction you might get is, "Avoid selfies.”