USA Fullerton Becker Amphitheater California State University Fullerton Iliad Reading Festival [20190322]

Cal State Fullerton joined universities around the world to host public readings of portions of Homer's Iliad in an international festival celebrating this epic poem. The famous opening (proem) was read in over a dozen languages and versions, while rhapsodies 1 and 24 was read in their entirety from Fagles’ English translation. Cal State Fullerton will notably be the only university in the Western United States participating in this event. For more details about this international celebration, see http://festival-latingrec.eu/english-public-reading/. For general questions about our local event, please email Mark Bilby ( mbilby@fullerton.edu ).Event OrganizersMark G. Bilby (Pollak Library, Religious Studies), Stephen O'Connor (History), and Marty Blaine (ECLL: English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics) organized this interdisciplinary event as part of a talented planning committee. This included several Librarians: Joy Lambert, who organized our event exhibit; Joy Sage, who ably handled marketing and communications; and Patricia Prestinary, who coordinated our many readers. Thank you also to the planning assistance and support of Megan Wagner (Library), Stephen Mexal (ECLL), and Jochen Burgtorf (History).Event SponsorsThe organizers wish to thank Emily Bonney (Dean of the Pollak Library), Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi (Chair of the History Department) and Stephen Mexal (Chair of the English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics Department) for sponsoring this event.Post-Event: Thank You Readers!A heartfelt thank you to our readers of the proem (Rhapsody 1, Lines 1-7, i.e., the invocation of the muses) for covering so many versions: Mark Bilby and Kat Zukaitis (original metrical Homeric Greek, recorded), Mark Stohs (English), Patricia Schneider-Zioga (Modern Greek), Mark Filowitz (Modern Hebrew), Charles Cauffman (Latin), Mahmoud Almutairi (Arabic), Sepher Sobhani (Farsi), Joe Burgtorf (Italian and German), Guillermina Vega (Spanish), Stephen O'Connor (Irish Gaelic), Andre Zampaolo (Portuguese), Wei Shao (Mandarin), Satoko Kakihara (Japanese), Chan Kang (Korean), Gayle Brunelle (French), Olga Poklisetskaya (Russian), and Marty Blaine (versified English by Alexander Pope). Our proem readings totaled 18 versions encompassing 16 different languages, 17 if one counts Homeric Greek and Modern Greek as different languages. This almost certainly made ours the most linguistically and culturally diverse performance out of more than 200 participating institutions.He