Call for Papers, “Afterlives of The Odyssey” for the MLA International Symposium (23-25 July 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal)

In the recent translation of Homer’s The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, she writes that the “poem is concerned, above all, with the duties and dangers involved in welcoming foreigners into one’s home.” This panel aims to develop the significance of Homer’s epic in overcoming boundaries of different sorts—spatial, temporal, geopolitical, and cultural. We are interested in offering a global perspective on the legacy of Homer’s epic, and we seek papers that address various cultural and historical contexts. Particularly welcome are papers that recover the voices of less frequently discussed characters and illuminate lesser known aspects of The Odyssey.

Topics could include but are not limited to the following:

-Border-crossings (in terms of space, identity, culture)

-Hospitality, concepts of home, permanence and change

-Nostalgia, trauma, memory, theories of return and temporality

-Constructions of Homeric inspired masculinity and femininity in different contexts

-Representations of the Other, exilic spaces, and marginalized voices

-Motifs of the sea, travel, forms of mobility

Please submit a 250-word abstract and short bio by September 10 2018 to Dr. Myrto Drizou, Boğaziçi University (mdrizou@gmail.com) and Dr. Jacob Jewusiak, Newcastle University (jacobjewusiak@gmail.com)