With this talk, named in accordance with Suzan-Lori Parks' signature technique, repetition and revision, I narrate the backstory of a related set of my research articles to interrogate the racialized and gendered stakes of contemporary Classics scholarship. Suzan-Lori Parks’ 2015 drama, Father Comes Home from the Wars, is often marketed as an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Parks has repeatedly rejected this mantle. Using this rejection as a provocation, I explain how the play’s interest in the meaning and values that adhere to materials like metal and flesh responds to the politics of Homer’s Odyssey and, no less interestingly, to what Emily Greenwood has called Classics' 'scramble for diversity'.
Dr. Eccleston is John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor of Classics at Brown University, where she directs the Critical Classical Studies Postdoctoral/Post-MFA Fellowship Program and is affiliated with the Cogut Institute for the Humanities Initiative for Environmental Humanities. Her book Epic Events analyzes the chronopolitics of citizenship through instances of classicism and classical reception post 9/11 and is forthcoming from Yale University Press.
We have reserved Denny 258 for the lecture, and all are welcome to join us there.
Dr. Eccleston is joining us by Zoom. To attend on Zoom you need to register by clicking this link: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErceqpqzwrHdGG_BxyinGLVzHT...