Learn more about the way we think about Penelope, Queen of Ithaka.

In this talk, Homeric scholar and filmmaker Ben Ferris examines some of the most compelling portraits of Penelope across literature and film. Ferris argues that, from Homer onwards, gaps and ambiguities emerge in our understanding of the famously faithful and patient wife of Odysseus. It is within these very gaps that subsequent writers, from James Joyce to Margaret Atwood, and filmmakers, from Jean-Luc Godard to Christopher Nolan, have constructed their own formidable—and yet radically different—versions of Penelope. Along the way, Ferris will share his own interpretation of the character, screening excerpts from his 2009 feature film Penelope, set in Croatia during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.