This event is free and open to the public.

Racecraft in the Odyssey and Argonautica

Although products of a different time and place, the ancient epic poems, Homer’s Odyssey and Apollonius’ Argonatuica, can help us think about the logic and practices of racial supremacy today. Their status as classics venerated for millennia in western culture has embedded their value systems deeply in modern racism. This talk offers readings of these texts that uncover the forces that created racial supremacist ideology and the ways that ancient epic storytelling reinforced and naturalized it. Dr. Jackie Murray will expose how ancient epic depictions of enslavement and collective extermination reinforce the oppressive hierarchies of colonialism and imperialism linked to heroic action.

Sponsored by the Ancient Studies Department and the Dresher Center for the Humanities