Hellenic Studies Seminar – Contemporary Readings of Antiquity: Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey

When:
Monday, October 26, 2026 | 18:00

Where:
Deree Faculty Lounge, The American College of Greece

Organized by:
The Institute for Hellenic Culture and the Liberal Arts, The American College of Greece

Moderator:
Haris Vlavianos, Chief Consultant and Head of the Advisory Board, IHCLA

About the seminar

The panel discussion will explore how one of the most influential works of ancient literature is reimagined for contemporary audiences. Using Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of the Odyssey as a starting point, the discussion will consider not only how Homer’s epic is transformed on screen, but also why the Odyssey continues to resonate so powerfully today. Moving beyond questions of simple “faithfulness” to the ancient text, the discussion will consider what is gained, altered, or lost when the Odyssey is translated from ancient epic into modern cinema. Discussion themes will include heroism, identity, memory, homecoming, war, the role of the gods, and the relationship between myth and history. The panel will also reflect on the choices involved in bringing the ancient world to life for modern viewers and on what new adaptations of ancient texts can tell us about the values, questions, and concerns of our own time.

About the panelists:

K. Scarlett Kingsley is Associate Professor of Classics at Deree – The American College of Greece and an intellectual historian of ancient Greece. She is the author of Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century BCE (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Tobias Myers is Associate Professor of Classics at Deree – The American College of Greece and a specialist in Homeric poetry and ancient Greek literature. He is the author of Homer’s Divine Audience: The Iliad’s Reception on Mount Olympus (Oxford University Press, 2019).