Modules
Homer's Odyssey and the Caribbean (CLAM261)
15 credits
This module focuses on Homer’s Odyssey, and how the epic poem has been read and re-imagined from Caribbean points of view in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Far from being an exclusively European classic, we will examine the role the Odyssey has played in how Caribbean thinkers, artists, and poets have described voyages of colonial displacement, theorized revolution, and understood their place in history. We will explore the Odyssey in translation, paying particular attention to how Odysseus’ wanderings in the first half of the poem can be read as colonial encounters in describing and categorizing difference. Alongside this reading we will look at various receptions of the Odyssey by thinkers from all over the Caribbean including C.L.R. James, Dionne Brand and Sylvia Wynter, memoirists Gaiutra Bahadur and Edgar Nkosi White, and poets Kai Miller and Derek Walcott.
This course is for you if you are interested in taking an imaginative and critical look at the relationships between Classics and colonialism, race, and global modernity. Prior knowledge of Homer’s Odyssey is desirable. No prior knowledge of Caribbean history or culture is required, but enthusiasm for learning about the Caribbean as a place that produces culture is necessary.