Event

Speaker: Tom Sapsford, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Boston College

Abstract: In Odyssey book 4 Helen administers a drug to Telemachus and others present at Sparta before the assembled company are told of the wooden horse that led to Troy’s downfall. Helen’s pharmakon allows those who imbibe it to experience the narration of upsetting events without feeling their emotional effects. This talk explores how three figures from the gay underground—writer, William S. Burroughs, filmmaker, Derek Jarman, and performance artist, Ron Athey— similarly applied classical culture as a remedy, balm, or antidote at specific moments during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. Moreover, each of these three artists engages with the Homeric journey or episodes from the Trojan cycle as they create works that process their current moment’s precarity.