Abstract
Homer's Odyssey has long been recognized as the West's quintessential founding text on voyages of discovery, serving as a model for works as varied as Dante's Inferno and television'sStar Trek. For, in the course of his decade-long return from the Trojan War, the epic's hero, Ulysses, encounters strange (and sometimes monstrous) forms of life and different types of civilization, some more advanced and others more primitive than his own, each of which forces him to assess the nature of the home to which he so fiercely aspires to return. But by the time he returns home, his harrowing deprivations and experiences as a captive and beggar seem to have left an indelible mark. In this lecture, Daniel Mendelsohn examines the Odyssey's ancient journeys and how they can illuminate today's pressing issues: migration, refugees, citizenship, and what it means to map one's identity, both personal and political, in a world of shifting borders.
