The Odyssey
A Summer Seminar
saturday, June 27, 2026
Kuenzel Room
The Michigan Union
9 AM to Noon
Registration Required
Join us for a special morning seminar on Homer's timeless epic, "The Odyssey". Our event offers academically motivated high school and college students an opportunity to explore the original work, appreciate its lessons, and understand how it might be reimagined on the big screen by Christopher Nolan, when his much anticipated film is released on July 17.
"The Odyssey" tells the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaca and his long journey home after the Trojan war. Having fought for 10 years, he faces another 10 years of perilous wandering at sea. He and his crew encounter a series of incredible mythical dangers. Eventually all of his companions perish, leaving him alone. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his faithful wife Penelope is besieged by arrogant suitors who overrun his palace, consume his resources and pressure her to remarry. Their son Telemachus, now a young man, feels powerless until the goddess Athena inspires him to search for news of his father. Eventually, Odysseus returns disguised as a beggar. With help of Telemachus and the gods, he reveals his identity, slaughters the intruders and reunites with Penelope, at last reclaiming his crown and restoring order to his kingdom.
Historians and scholars date “The Odyssey” to sometime between 750-650 BC, emerging from a long oral tradition of Greek epic poetry. Hundreds of papyrus fragments from Egypt dating from the third century BC onward show that the poem was extremely popular in education and daily culture. The poem survived Antiquity through continued hand-copying in the Byzantine empire, where scribes transferred texts from papyri to more durable parchment. The earliest nearly complete medieval manuscripts of "The Odyssey" date to the 10th Century AD. From there, the texts passed from the Renaissance, when printed editions appeared, to modern critical editions based on careful comparison of manuscripts, papyri and ancient quotations.
Can there be any better way to spend a summer Saturday morning than learning about the greatest work of literature ever, a story that has thrilled audiences for thousands of years?
SCHEDULE
9 AM Welcome & Introductions
9:15 The Power of Words: Reading the Names in the Odyssey
10 AM Q+A
10:15 The First Action Hero: Odysseus & the Birth of the Epic Journey
10:45 Q+A
11 AM Translation as Unraveling: A 21st Century Odyssey
11:45 Q+A
Noon Conclusion
This event is offered with grant support
from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
course director
Rinju Chenet
Professor of Literature
Department of English
Fr Gabriel Richard High School, Ann Arbor
faculty
The First Action Hero: Odysseus & the Birth of the Epic Journey
Margaret Foster
Associate Professor of Classical Studies
University of Michigan
In this presentation, we'll spend time thinking about how Odysseus' particular "superpowers" are precisely what enable his complicated but ultimately successful journey home to Ithaca. To do so, we'll zero in on Odysseus' famous encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus
Translation as Unraveling:
A 21st Century Odyssey
Katie Hartsock
Associate Professor of English
Oakland University
Writers have translated Homeric epic into English for over four hundred years, but what new approaches will have emerged in our century?
In addition to traditional questions such as diction, tone, and poetic meter, we’ll consider how translation could invite readers more deeply into previously untranslated elements of epic, such as its ancient performances and audiences, or the presence of other kinds of poetry within epic itself, from prayer to pastoral.
In the Odyssey, Penelope famously unraveled her weaving to delay choosing a new husband; how can translation unravel common assumptions about this poem to reveal what’s ancient as new again?
The Power of Words:
Reading the Names in the Odyssey
benjamin yates
PhD Candidate
Department of Classics
University of Chicago
The Odyssey is a poem of great depth and power that still speaks to us today. One way it speaks to us is through its use of names. Similar to the Hebrew Scriptures, Homer uses names not only to distinguish his characters, but to teach us something about their character. In this talk I'll look at the Greek understanding of the power of the names, and how the names in the Odyssey help convey important lessons to readers today.
