Homeric Poetry and the Construction of Humane Understanding
By Eden Riebling
In recent years, an interdisciplinary subfield sometimes called Empathy Studies has become central to the literature on diversity, equity and inclusion. Yet empathy remains an elusive concept, more easily praised than implemented or understood. The Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings, experience, etc.
Trans Achilles Among the Maenads: Queer Movement on Skyros
By Katherine O’Neal
Within Statius’ Achilleid, Achilles reveals his true gender twice. Both times come after an expression of gendered movement, which in the text are called “Bacchic rituals.” Gender expression is thus tied to movement in the Achilleid, but this movement is paradoxical, something that Kelly Nguyen identifies, wherein “mobility [is] both a preserver and a disruptor of heteronormative, patriarchal structures.”1 Nguyen is drawing from queer diasporic theory (the queer nature of movement across boundaries, especially borders, e.g., through immigration), but the basis of her analysis, her focus on the act of movement, reflects Statius’ treatment of Skyronian dance…
Pat Barker’s Classical Tradition
By Catherine Sorrentino
From the first sentence of Pat Barker’s novel The Silence of the Girls, it is obvious that she will not be aligning herself with “white male” classical tradition. “Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles…
Iliad 18.490-508
By Stephen Jagoe
In this passage, Homer describes Achilles’ shield and the scenes that decorate it, specifically the “town in peace.” The imagery stands in direct contrast to the rest of the poem’s theme of war. It reminds the reader of the bygone days before the fighting started, and gives him hope that someday the fighting will stop…