The Long Way Home: Reading Homer’s Odyssey
Last Chance
Online
The Long Way Home: Reading Homer’s Odyssey
12:30am - 2:20am
Retreat Highlights
- Travel through all twenty-four books of The Odyssey over five weeks.
- Read or listen to the whole poem, or follow a shorter route through key passages.
- Receive weekly story and passage guides.
- Work closely with Homer through short lectures and guided close reading.
- Join through discussion, chat, or attentive listening; speaking and cameras are optional.
- Receive private access through October 6 to the recorded first 50 minutes of each meeting.
About this Retreat
Your Guides
Carolyn Sinsky received a PhD in comparative literature from Yale, where she was awarded the Vardis & Opal Fisher Fellowship and the Prize Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching literature and writing. She has taught at Yale, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Great Books Summer Program at Stanford, and Stanford Continuing Studies.
Her teaching and writing focus on the stories people tell about identity, intimacy, power, memory, mortality, and return. She is especially interested in what happens when an image returns, a voice changes, or a familiar story suddenly becomes strange.
Carolyn’s independent courses and tutorials are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or administered through Stanford Continuing Studies or any other institution where she has taught.
Teaching approach
Each course begins by making the work navigable: who is speaking, where the story has taken us, and what historical or literary context helps the passage come into view. From there, Carolyn slows the reading down. A word, image, contradiction, change in register, or turn in the story becomes the beginning of a larger interpretive question.
Her teaching combines concise introductions with guided close reading and conversation. Participants are invited to test ideas against the text rather than search for a single approved interpretation. No one is called on unexpectedly, and cameras and speaking may remain off. The atmosphere is intellectually serious but welcoming, with room for curiosity, uncertainty, humor, and revision.
Details of this retreat
A five-week live online course through all twenty-four books of Homer's Odyssey, with story guides, close reading, literary context, and discussion.
Most of us first encounter The Odyssey in fragments: the Cyclops, the Sirens, Penelope at her loom, a man struggling to reach home. This five-week live online course returns to Homer's poem itself—to its active gods, nonlinear storytelling, divided hero, unsettled household, and difficult ending.
Read as a whole, the poem is stranger than its familiar reputation suggests. Odysseus survives partly by telling stories, but the poem repeatedly asks what stories conceal as well as what they reveal. Hospitality sustains human life while leaving strangers vulnerable. Recognition reunites families while exposing differences of status and power. Homecoming promises restoration but culminates in extraordinary violence.
Over five Tuesday evenings, we will travel through all twenty-four books using Emily Wilson's translation as our common text. You may read or listen to the whole poem or follow the course through a weekly guide to central passages. Reading every page is not required.
Each meeting begins with a story guide, short interpretive lecture, and instructor-led close reading. After a break, participants turn together to several passages before ending with a final question. Speaking and cameras are optional, and no one will be called on unexpectedly.
No knowledge of Greek, classics, or literary criticism is required. Necessary literary, historical, and cultural context will be introduced as we read.
What participants will explore:
What kind of agency remains to mortals in a world of active gods?
What changes when Odysseus becomes the teller of his own story?
How are hospitality and power intertwined?
What do disguises allow characters—and readers—to see?
What does Penelope know, and how does she change?
Why is homecoming not a simple triumph?
Who this is for:
This course is for adult readers encountering Homer for the first time or returning after many years. No prior knowledge of The Odyssey, ancient Greek, classics, or literary analysis is required.
Private tutorial option:
For readers who would like sustained one-to-one work with the poem, the $1,750 option includes the complete five-week group course plus five additional 90-minute private online tutorials. After the first tutorial, Carolyn develops an individualized reading path around the reader’s interests, questions, and experience with the poem. Private meetings are scheduled individually after registration and are not recorded; plan for approximately 1–2 hours of additional reading between meetings.
Schedule:
August 25 — Books 1–4: The Hero Who Is Not There
Divine action, Telemachus, inheritance, absence, and stories about Odysseus.
September 1 — Books 5–8: A Stranger at the Threshold
Calypso, Nausicaa, hospitality, identity, appearance, and recognition.
September 8 — Books 9–12: Odysseus Tells His Own Story
Monsters, memory, perspective, self-invention, and narrative authority.
September 15 — Books 13–18: Home in Disguise
Return, concealment, Penelope's household, hospitality, labor, enslavement, and Ithaca seen from below.
September 22 — Books 19–24: Penelope's Transformations
The scar, bow, slaughter, marriage bed, recognition, justice, and the unsettled ending.
Time: 5:30–7:20 p.m. Pacific / 7:30–9:20 p.m. Central / 8:30–10:20 p.m. Eastern.
Emily Wilson's translation is the common edition. Print, ebook, audiobook, and library copies are all welcome. Weekly guides identify the passages central to each meeting, and brief excerpts needed for close reading and translation comparison are supplied.
Reading or listening to the complete weekly assignment generally takes about 2½–3½ hours. Participants may instead follow the shorter passage route and still follow the lectures
Most of us first encounter The Odyssey in fragments: the Cyclops, the Sirens, Penelope at her loom, a man struggling to reach home. This five-week live online course returns to Homer's poem itself—to its active gods, nonlinear storytelling, divided hero, unsettled household, and difficult ending.
Read as a whole, the poem is stranger than its familiar reputation suggests. Odysseus survives partly by telling stories, but the poem repeatedly asks what stories conceal as well as what they reveal. Hospitality sustains human life while leaving strangers vulnerable. Recognition reunites families while exposing differences of status and power. Homecoming promises restoration but culminates in extraordinary violence.
Over five Tuesday evenings, we will travel through all twenty-four books using Emily Wilson's translation as our common text. You may read or listen to the whole poem or follow the course through a weekly guide to central passages. Reading every page is not required.
Each meeting begins with a story guide, short interpretive lecture, and instructor-led close reading. After a break, participants turn together to several passages before ending with a final question. Speaking and cameras are optional, and no one will be called on unexpectedly.
No knowledge of Greek, classics, or literary criticism is required. Necessary literary, historical, and cultural context will be introduced as we read.
What participants will explore:
What kind of agency remains to mortals in a world of active gods?
What changes when Odysseus becomes the teller of his own story?
How are hospitality and power intertwined?
What do disguises allow characters—and readers—to see?
What does Penelope know, and how does she change?
Why is homecoming not a simple triumph?
Who this is for:
This course is for adult readers encountering Homer for the first time or returning after many years. No prior knowledge of The Odyssey, ancient Greek, classics, or literary analysis is required.
Private tutorial option:
For readers who would like sustained one-to-one work with the poem, the $1,750 option includes the complete five-week group course plus five additional 90-minute private online tutorials. After the first tutorial, Carolyn develops an individualized reading path around the reader’s interests, questions, and experience with the poem. Private meetings are scheduled individually after registration and are not recorded; plan for approximately 1–2 hours of additional reading between meetings.
Schedule:
August 25 — Books 1–4: The Hero Who Is Not There
Divine action, Telemachus, inheritance, absence, and stories about Odysseus.
September 1 — Books 5–8: A Stranger at the Threshold
Calypso, Nausicaa, hospitality, identity, appearance, and recognition.
September 8 — Books 9–12: Odysseus Tells His Own Story
Monsters, memory, perspective, self-invention, and narrative authority.
September 15 — Books 13–18: Home in Disguise
Return, concealment, Penelope's household, hospitality, labor, enslavement, and Ithaca seen from below.
September 22 — Books 19–24: Penelope's Transformations
The scar, bow, slaughter, marriage bed, recognition, justice, and the unsettled ending.
Time: 5:30–7:20 p.m. Pacific / 7:30–9:20 p.m. Central / 8:30–10:20 p.m. Eastern.
Emily Wilson's translation is the common edition. Print, ebook, audiobook, and library copies are all welcome. Weekly guides identify the passages central to each meeting, and brief excerpts needed for close reading and translation comparison are supplied.
Reading or listening to the complete weekly assignment generally takes about 2½–3½ hours. Participants may instead follow the shorter passage route and still follow the lectures
Schedule
50 minutes — recorded: story guide, lecture, and guided close reading
10 minutes — break
45 minutes — participant close reading and discussion
5 minutes — closing reflection
10 minutes — break
45 minutes — participant close reading and discussion
5 minutes — closing reflection
Note: Schedule is approximate and may change
What's Included
- Five live 110-minute Zoom meetings
- Five weekly reading and story guides
- Interpretive lectures and guided close reading
- Participant discussion, with speaking and cameras optional
- Selected translation comparisons
- First 50 minutes of each meeting privately available through October 6
- Automated captions and accessible digital materials
What's Not Included
- A copy of The Odyssey
- Recordings of the break or open discussion
- Makeup meetings or individual recaps
- Grading or written assessment
- One-to-one tutorial meetings
- Participant recording, transcription, screenshots, or redistribution