Odysseus Meets Oscar: Homer's Odyssey from Hexameter to IMAX

Homer’s Odyssey has always been about the long way home — and in 2027 that road runs straight through the Academy Awards. Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation brings Odysseus to the screen at blockbuster scale, and this four-week class in which we read excerpts from the poem asks what happens when the oldest return-story in the Western canon becomes a contender for Hollywood’s highest honor. This is not a lecture series but a collaborative reading. Rather than passively receiving the poem, participants will actively wrestle with its timeless questions alongside fellow learners in an intimate Zoom environment, working through guided close readings and group discussion. Together we will read selections of the poem against the film, asking what the camera can do that the hexameter cannot — and what Homer still does that no film can touch. Nolan is a filmmaker whose gifts, as the Times put it, are excessively obvious — his filmmaking stirs us even when his characters don’t — and that tension between spectacle and interiority will be ours to unpack together. In our final session — held just after the Oscars — we’ll tally our predictions against the results and ask whether the Academy, like the suitors, backed the wrong man.
 
Continuing Education Units (CEU) : 0

You'll walk away with

• A fresh perspective on how Christopher Nolan’s cinematic spectacle adapts and reinterprets Homer’s epic themes for modern audiencesDeeper insights into the
• Odyssey’s timeless questions, gained through collaborative, guided readings
• The ability to analyze the creative tension between classic literature and blockbuster filmmaking ahead of the Academy Awards

Ideal for

• Those with an interest in the ancient world
• Anyone wishing to know more about classical literature and culture