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t is my pleasure to welcome you to the academic year that looms before us like one of the mythical lands on Odysseus’s journey: unknown, a little scary, and full of promise for the intellectual adventurer.
This is the seventh year that convocation has included a lecture on Homer’s Odyssey. For parents who read the text over the summer, I hope to provide one focus for your conference discussion tomorrow. And as a quick aside: for those of you who haven’t quite finished, jump ahead to book XXII and you should be fine. For students new to Reed – and, please, never do what I have just suggested that your parents do – the lecture will provide you a general introduction to Reed’s Humanities program. For faculty colleagues, staff members and guests who may never have read the Odyssey, well… I know that some of you have given in and read it. Welcome to the Humanities program!
I have chosen for my topic this afternoon images of violence in the Odyssey. I admit that I have had more than a few doubts about this topic which is, in many ways, contrary to our occasion and the promise of the new academic year. But violence is, of course, a topic that is in the air as we confront our country’s actions in Iraq or the continuing violence around the world, a perceived threat of terrorist violence in our cities and, the real violence which surrounds us and of which we are constantly reminded through newspapers, television news, movies, video games, and other media. It seems that just when we are steeled to one variety of violence a new form assaults us and shakes us anew. The photos of Iraqi prisoners and their torture by US soldiers serve as a recent example of the shock of the new. After these photos circulated last Spring, Susan Sontag wrote in the New York Times Magazine: “The horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken – with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives.” I believe that
This is the seventh year that convocation has included a lecture on Homer’s Odyssey. For parents who read the text over the summer, I hope to provide one focus for your conference discussion tomorrow. And as a quick aside: for those of you who haven’t quite finished, jump ahead to book XXII and you should be fine. For students new to Reed – and, please, never do what I have just suggested that your parents do – the lecture will provide you a general introduction to Reed’s Humanities program. For faculty colleagues, staff members and guests who may never have read the Odyssey, well… I know that some of you have given in and read it. Welcome to the Humanities program!
I have chosen for my topic this afternoon images of violence in the Odyssey. I admit that I have had more than a few doubts about this topic which is, in many ways, contrary to our occasion and the promise of the new academic year. But violence is, of course, a topic that is in the air as we confront our country’s actions in Iraq or the continuing violence around the world, a perceived threat of terrorist violence in our cities and, the real violence which surrounds us and of which we are constantly reminded through newspapers, television news, movies, video games, and other media. It seems that just when we are steeled to one variety of violence a new form assaults us and shakes us anew. The photos of Iraqi prisoners and their torture by US soldiers serve as a recent example of the shock of the new. After these photos circulated last Spring, Susan Sontag wrote in the New York Times Magazine: “The horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken – with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives.” I believe that