We were pleased to welcome Professor Joel Christensen (University of Texas, San Antonio) who returned for our first 2015 Open House discussion, when we discussed the children of Odysseus, and multiformity in myth.
To prepare for the discussion, participants might like to follow these links to posts in Sententiae Antiquae:
- Odysseus’ Children: Fourteen and Counting!
- The Sons of Odysseus, Part 1: Evidence from Hesiod, Eustathius and Dionysus of Halicarnassos
- The Sons of Odysseus, Part 2: Penelope’s Child(ren), Telemakhos and Arkesilaos/Ptoliporthes
- The Sons of Odysseus, Part 3: Kirke’s Children (except for Telegonos)
- The Sons of Odysseus Part 4, Telegonos
- The Sons of Odysseus, Part 5: Kalypso’s Brood
You may watch the video discussion on our YouTube channel, or below:
Also mentioned during the discussion: The Battle of Frogs and Mice (Batrakhomuomakhia). You can read more on the following page and from there follow the links to Parts 1–11:
If you have comments, questions, or observations about the passages and themes discussed, members can start and continue the conversations associated with this event in this Forum thread.
For further videos please visit the Watch page.
Joel Christensen
Dr. Joel Christensen received his BA from Brandeis University in Classics and English and his PhD in Classics from New York University, earning an additional Certificate in Poetics and Theory. He is actively engaged in research that explores the development of literature and language in ancient Greece. His dissertation, “The Failure of Speech: Rhetoric and Politics in the Iliad“, an examination of the Iliad‘s internal conception of effective speech and the political importance of language, has developed into a series of articles on the use of language in Homer and the relationship between our Iliad and a putative poetic tradition.
In addition to explorations of language in the Iliad, Dr. Christensen also collaborates with E.T.E. Barker (Open University, U. K.) on rivalry and generic relationships in Archaic Greek poetry. Together they have published articles on the new Archilochus fragment, Oedipus in the Odyssey and are in the midst of a long-term project on the use of Theban myths in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Barker and Christensen have published a Beginner’s Guide to Homerand plan to publish their second book (Homer’s Thebes) within the next few years. In conjunction with his teaching and research interests, Dr. Christensen also writes on myth and its relationship with literary representations: he has published on the Gilgamesh poems, Greek myth and modern science fiction. In addition to being an active researcher, Dr. Christensen also has interests in New Media and conventional publications; he has recently started serving as the book review editor for The Classical Journal.
Selected Publications
Forthcoming — “Time and Self-Referentiality in the Iliad and Frank Herbert’s Dune,” in Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens (eds.). Oxford, 2015.
Forthcoming — (with E. T. E. Barker) “Odysseus’ Nostos and the Odyssey’s Nostoi.” G. Scafoglio (ed.). Studies on the Greek Epic Cycle. 2015.
Forthcoming — “The Hero Herself: From Death-Giver to Storyteller in Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” in Ancient Women and Modern Media, William Duffy and Krishni Burns, eds. Cambridge Scholars Press, est. 2015.
Forthcoming – (with E. T. E. Barker) “Even Herakles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality and the Epic Tradition”. Special Issue Trends in Classics: Homer and the Theban Tradition (Christos Tsagalis, ed.; 2014)
Forthcoming – “Diomedes’ Foot-wound and the Homeric Reception of Myth,” In Diachrony, Jose Gonzalez (ed.). De Gruyter series, MythosEikonPoesis. est. 2014.
Beginner’s Guide to Homer (with E. T. E. Barker), One World Publications (July, 2013)
“Aorist Morphology,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, ed. G. Giannakis, Brill. est. 2013.
“Innovation and Tradition Revisited: The Near-Synonymy of Homeric ΑΜΥΝΩ and ΑΛΕΞΩ as a Case Study in Homeric Composition.” The Classical Journal 108.3, 257-296.
“Ares: ἀΐδηλος: On the Text of Iliad 5.757 and 5.872.” Classical Philology 107.3, 230-238.
(with E.T.E. Barker) “On Not Remembering Tydeus: Agamemnon, Diomedes and the Contest for Thebes.”Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici 66, 9-44.
“First-Person Futures in Homer.” American Journal of Philology 131, 543-71.
For a complete list of publications, please see Dr. Christensen’s C.V.