For nearly three thousand years we’ve been obsessed with wandering heroes and the monstrous obstacles they encounter on their epic journeys ‘home’. From Christopher Nolan’s IMAX blockbuster The Odyssey to Ralph Fiennes’ gritty film The Return, the ancient Greek myth The Odyssey continues to hold a grip on our collective imagination.
On the next Fiat Lux Redux, Tuesday, September 1 at 9 AM, UC Berkeley professors James Porter and Mario Telò present a thought-provoking panel called The Unclassical Homer that looks past Hollywood’s CGI to unpack what makes The Odyssey truly tick, how it has been reshaped, and what happens when we challenge it.
Ancient oral traditions were far more fluid and multi-voiced than the versions we read today. Rather than treating Homer as a single author who wrote down a definitive text, the lecture explores the “unmaking” of an authoritative Homer. It traces how The Odyssey has been continuously reconstructed across different eras forcing us to question how modern institutions use ancient stories to construct authority and identity. Each era projects its own cultural values, anxieties, and desires onto the epic.
Mario Telò is Professor of Rhetoric, Ancient Greek & Roman Studies, and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. His scholarship focuses on bringing classical antiquity into conversation with modern critical theory, exploring ancient drama and literature through frameworks such as object-oriented ontology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, affect, and critical race theory. He is the author and editor of numerous influential books, including Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy (2016), Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy (2020), Resistant Form: Aristophanes and the Comedy of Crisis (2023), Reading Greek Tragedy with Judith Butler (2024), and Roman Comedy against the Subject (2025).
James Porter is Irving Stone Professor in Literature and Distinguished Professor in Rhetoric and Classics at UC Berkeley, whose work spans classical antiquity, modern philosophy, and critical theory. His scholarship ranges from studies of Friedrich Nietzsche to explorations of aesthetic experience in ancient Greece and Rome, including The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece and the award-winning The Sublime in Antiquity. His recent book, Homer: The Very Idea, reflects his ongoing interest in classical reception and the enduring, evolving figure of Homer.
The Unclassical Homer was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities and took place on May 20, 2026. This program was edited for KALX by Erin Foster. If you have questions or comments about Fiat Lux Redux, contact our executive producer: lisa.katovich@gmail.com.
Fiat Lux Redux presents previously aired lectures, conversations, and podcasts originating on the campus of UC Berkeley every other Tuesday from 9am to 9:30am. These often-lengthy original programs have been edited to a 30-minute format by experienced KALX producers. The show’s name, Latin for “Let there be light”, is a reference to the University of California’s motto, which is also Fiat Lux. The show’s goal is to provide listeners with a window into the intellectual and cultural life of UC Berkeley and to showcase the wide range of subjects and diversity of thought and ideas that are present at UC Berkeley.
