Lectures on Tap - Rethinking the Odyssey: Heroism, Homecoming, Humanity

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Rethinking the Odyssey: Heroism, Homecoming, Humanity"

🎙️ Speaker: Sydney Mitsunaga-Whitten

Join us for an evening that journeys beyond monsters and battles to uncover what the Odyssey is really about: how we live with others. We often picture Odysseus as the clever conqueror, the man of many tricks and sacker of cities. But this lecture proposes a different reading: the Odyssey is not, at its heart, a story of conquest, but a profound exploration of human connection.

With Christopher Nolan’s big-screen adaptation arriving in July 2026, there’s no better moment to return to Homer’s epic. We’ll revisit each of Odysseus’s adventures as encounters with radical difference that test not his strength, but his humanity—and we’ll see why homecoming, the supposed reward of the journey, proves to be the most challenging and surprising trial of all.

This is the Odyssey as an epic of ordinary heroism: the courage to face difference, to remain many-sided without losing yourself, and to recognize that the home you seek is never quite the home you left.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

7:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key. Please note that this is an OUTDOOR VENUE!

7:55 PM – Host introduction

8:00 PM – Lecture begins

8:45 PM – Audience Q&A

9:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

9:30 PM – Wrap up.