Barbara Graziosi, Professor of Classics at Princeton Univeristy, will deliver three Townsend Lectures in the Fall of 2019 on ‘Homecoming and Homemaking in the Ancient Mediterranean.’ In this series of lectures, Prof. Graziosi asks what it means ‘to go back where you came from’ and what it takes to make a new home somewhere. She returns to the most influential ancient narratives of homecoming and foundation, Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, in order to address a set future-oriented questions:
September 10, 2019 - Reading the Odyssey, with Virginia Woolf
Who gets to go home? And what makes for a satisfying story?
September 13, 2019 - Finding Italy, with Lycophron and Virgil
How do you commit to a narrative of progress? How can you love a home you do not yet have?
September 17, 2019 - Giving up on Ithaca, with Ugo Foscolo
What are the links between nation-building and nostalgia?
