First was The Iliad and Troy. Then came Beowulf and Sutton Hoo. Now, The Odyssey and Odysseus' Ithaca. According to a Sept. 27, 2005 article in the Madera Tribune, Odysseus' tomb and his Ithaca was on the Island of Kefalonia rather than the modern day islet that bears its name.

POROS, Island of Kefalonia, Greece - The tomb of Odysseus has been found, and the location of his legendary capital city of Ithaca discovered here on this large island across a one-mile channel from the bone-dry islet that modern maps call Ithaca.

This could be the most important archeological discovery of the last 40 years, a find that may eventually equal the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann’s 19th Century dig at Troy. But the quirky people and politics involved in this achievement have delayed by several years the process of reporting the find to the world.

Yet visitors to Kefalonia, an octopus-shaped island off the west coast of Greece, can see the evidence for themselves at virtually no cost. Read the whole story.

via Jerz's Literacy Weblog
Cross-posted to Machina Memorialis

archeology | Homer | Iliad | Odysseus | Odyssey

9/26 Update: Talking with my boss today, I learned that Jack Foley had sent us this material back in August 2003. At that time my boss knew they'd be hiring someone to process the collection, so he put it aside and forgotten to pass it on when I was started the job almost a year later. When I posted this last week, I saw the August 28 date on the accompanying letter and didn't pay attention to the year. The show was broadcast on March 10, 2004 and is available as both streaming audio or .mp3 download.

I learned today that Jack Foley will have a radio show tribute to Fr. Ong broadcast on November 5 at 3:30-4:00 p.m. PST on the Berkeley, CA station KPFA-FM as part of his weekly "Cover to Cover with Jack Foley" show. It may be broadcast via streaming audio at that time, and after the show it should be archived at http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=106.

Foley also recently published an article on Fr. Ong, "Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003): In Memoriam" in the online magazine Alsop Review.

Cross-posted to Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archive.

Jack Foley | Walter Ong | Walter J Ong

VirtualDayz has a number of posts on memory, new media, and memory and new media make it a blog to keep an eye on. The focus is on personal memory and narrative rather than the cognitive and social, which are my particular interests, but it's difficult to build strong walls in memory studies. Personal memory is always socially constructed and social is always, in some ways, personal. And the cognitive is never far away no matter what type of memory you're considering.

For instance, this entry on Annette Kuhn's Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, which is summarized as:

I've been reading Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, a memoir by British film scholar Annette Kuhn (1995/2002). A blend of cultural criticism and cultural production that engages both the psychic and the social, the hybrid text brings together a series of autobiographical case histories that use private and public images from Kuhn's past as prompts for “memory work,” which Kuhn defines as “a method and a practice of unearthing and making public untold stories” (9-10). In a manner reminiscent of Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Kuhn reflects on her family album, as well as on news photographs and film scenes, to “unravel the connections between memory, its traces, and the stories we tell about the past, especially-though not exclusively-about the past of living memory” and in the process to reveal “the collective nature of the activity of remembering” (Kuhn, 4, 6).

In part, Kuhn is interested in "how images make meaning," and we read images both as individuals and as members of a social group/mnemonic community.

I talk more about the blog and that post in particular over at Machina Memorialis.

Annette Kuhn | autobiographical memory | memory | social memory

Of late, I've been reworking through old stuff, meaning that I'm making a second pass through Fr. Ong's papers to divide the collection up into its permanent folders (we want, roughly, no more than 25 items per folder -- right now, some folders have well over 100 items) and to begin the process of describing the collection, which, for the most part, is done at the folder level. I'm sure I'll come across new gems as I do this, but I've already found much of the cool stuff. I haven't mentioned many items, so I'll try to remember to do so as I'm making this second pass.

With the start of the new academic year this past week, I have a new intern assistant, this time from the English rather than the History department. We're still trying to figure out how best to have her work without the work being too boring. While someone has to replace all the rustable staples with stainless steel ones, I don't want that to make sure there's interesting work to do when such activities start driving her mad.

I also learned today that the Ong exhibit, put together for the conference in April, is to remain up through mid-October after the annual Manuscripta conference. Most exhibits are up for three months, so this is a long run.

Archives | Walter Ong | Walter J Ong | Walter J Ong Archives