Touching Distant Sands with Tales of Brave Ulysses*, Classics Symposium

3-4 pm
James V. Morrison, H.W. Stodghill, Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill professor of classics, Centre College. "Shipwreck, Survival, and Storytelling in Homer, the Renaissance, and the Modern World." This talk will cover the basic features of shipwreck narratives as found in Homer's The Odyssey, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with particular emphasis on potential transformations of the shipwrecked survivor. Challenges to the survivor and the importance of storytelling by survivors will be explored in greater depth.

4:30-5:30 pm
Robert O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston professor of English, Columbia University. "Romare Bearden Plays Ancient Homer and Modern Jazz." In the late 1970s, the African American painter Romare Bearden created 20 collages based on Homer's classic epic, The Odyssey. As a Harlem jazz painter (with Deep South roots), Bearden played his own improvisations on the ancient tale. He Harlemized it and Africanized it and Asianized it-reclaiming the universal as available and urgently pertinent to a cosmopolitan modernity. This talk will explore Bearden's remaking of the old tale as it examines jazz as a model for creative action.

*Eric Clapton 1988, Crossroads