Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Reflects On The Odyssey in Several Publications

Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn, who published a translation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey in 2025, was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria of CNN about the lasting impact of The Odyssey on the occasion of Christopher Nolan’s new movie adapting the poem. He also wrote two opinion pieces about the movie, one for the New York Review of Books about Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s narrative, and one for the New York Times refuting the idea that the movie is historically inaccurate because of its casting. “[Nolan] is using Helen just as the Greek authors did: to provoke, challenge and discomfit how we think about beauty and identity, about who we are and how we relate to our world,” he writes for the New York Times. Speaking to Zakaria, Mendelsohn said, “Of the two Homeric poems, The Odyssey is the one we can’t let go of. It’s a story that continues to speak to the way we live. [It’s] a modern dilemma: how do you balance home and adventure?”

Bard’s Classical Studies Program seeks to understand the languages, literatures, histories, and visual and material cultures of the premodern Mediterranean world. The program approaches these ancient societies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including linguistics, art history, archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, while also considering the long and complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome in art, language, politics, and culture from antiquity to the present day.
Watch the CNN Interview Read in the New York Times Read in the NYRB

Post Date: 07-22-2026