Death and Nostalgia in the Odyssey

Alexander Loney, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Classical Languages at Wheaton College

Thursday, April 25, 2019
4:00pm in Curtin Hall, room 866

Dr. Loney will be presenting his current research on the intertwined themes of death and nostalgia in the Odyssey. His approach to this topic is in part informed by one strain in contemporary psychology (“Terror Management Theory”), which argues that nostalgia arises as a way to combat a fear of death. But Dr. Loney will argue that Odysseus, the first literary nostalgic, has a more ambiguous relationship with death. Paradoxically, his nostalgia leads him to embrace death in order to overcome it.

WAMS is supported by the departments of Anthropology, Art History, and the program in Classics within the department of Foreign Languages and Literature at UWM, and the History Department at Marquette University.