This panel will explore Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and related texts at MLA 2027 Convention in Los Angeles. Please send your 250 word abstract on relevant themes like homecoming and the oceanic by August 30, to Ennuri Jo (she/her) at ennurijo@upenn.edu. 

Christopher Nolan’s much-awaited film The Odyssey was released in IMAX on July 17, 2027.

This panel will be submitted as a just-in-time proposal to the 2027 convention. The idea of a hero's journey home bears a strong political rhetoric that is applicable to ideological wars and genocides happening today-- whether one’s body or one’s country, all are struggles over who gets to call a place home. The IMAX format also calls for a discussion of a homecoming of the medium; in a world of streaming platforms and tiny portable screens, where is cinema's home? 

This panel welcomes abstracts that offer critical readings of Nolan’s film, and/or comparative readings that examine the film alongside other works including but not limited to various translations, other literary and filmic texts that follow Odyssean motifs in one way or another (for example, like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or After Hours (1985)). The Homeric epic has been retold in many forms across the ages: what story is the latest filmic adaptation telling? What is the significance of homecoming in the current political climate, or in a film that requires spectators to return to the theater? Any and all discussions about The Odyssey by Nolan and by other translators and writers are welcome: can we read the film through an environmental lens, given the motif of the ocean? What can be said about women characters in the film -- a topic many critics of Nolan often comment on? What is the film's contribution to adaptation studies?