A three-week virtual course exploring the historical and archaeological world behind Homer's Odyssey, with live sessions on Tuesdays.
The Penn Museum is running a three-week virtual course called The Deep Dig: Reading the Ancient World this December, and it's built around Homer's Odyssey. It's not a book club—the whole point is to look at the people, places, and objects that lived behind the poem, using archaeology and history to see what was actually there. The sessions run on Tuesday nights, December 1, 8, and 15, from 6:30 to 8:00 PM ET.
Each week brings in a different specialist. Dr. Amelia Bensch-Schaus takes the first session, The Story, which focuses on the epic's characters, themes, and its particular brand of heroism. The second, The Evidence, is led by Dr. Sarah Linn and looks at Bronze Age material culture—the kind of things that actually survived, like weapons, armor, and painted vessels. Dr. Eric Cline handles the third, The Historical Context, which zooms out to the Late Bronze Age world and the disruptions that eventually brought it down. Cline is a National Geographic Explorer and a field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation under his belt, so he's coming at this from someone who's spent a lot of time in the dirt.
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Since it's virtual, you'll be using the Visual Experience Platform (VXP), which the Barnes Foundation developed. It lets you interact with artifacts and sites through deep zoom and 360-degree views, so you can get a close look at the objects they're talking about without having to be in the room with them. If you're a museum member, there's a free preview session on November 19 from 7:00 to 7:45 PM before the main course kicks off. Otherwise, it's $150 for the general public and $100 for members.
