Event

Title: "Why Read Homer in 2021?"

Abstract: The talk will trace ten ways in which the Homeric poems might feel particularly urgent and resonant for US readers at this particular moment in our social and political history.  I will discuss the fallacy of treating ancient Greek literature as if it were eternally relevant for every later culture in exactly the same ways, while also emphasizing that these particular poems from a distant, alien culture can invite a fresh critical awareness of our own society at this particular time in history.  Themes discussed will include leadership, empathy, community, violence, migration, cultural difference, trauma, power, gender, and language.  I will interweave my discussion with very short readings from my translation of the Odyssey and in progress translation of the Iliad, and I will also talk a little bit about my goals and process as a translator.  I will leave plenty of time for q and a.

Note: photo shows me as Odysseus massacring the suitors.  For this talk, I will be in character as a non-homicidal professor.

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