Event

Joe Goodkin: "The Blues of Achilles"

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 • 7:30 pm

Chicago-based musician Joe Goodkin will perform selections from his 17-song adaptation of Homer's "Iliad," a project steeped in ancient and modern war literature as well as interviews and his experiences playing music at VA hospitals as part of recreational therapy for veterans experiencing PTSD and other related war traumas.

Sung from the first-person perspective of Achilles, Helen and other key characters, "The Blues of Achilles" captures the horror, grief and love that permeate the "Iliad" and the combat experience of today's veterans, evoking "the truths that the Iliad conveys [through] songs that [are] real and now," in the words of Tom Palaima, Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin.

This event is presented by the Classics Department.