UCSC professor Martin Devecka thinks a 3,000-year-old strategic schemer named Odysseus has something to teach students trying to navigate 2026.
Christopher Nolan isn’t the first storyteller to hook us on The Odyssey. Homer, or whoever Homer was, did it nearly 3,000 years ago. This winter, UC Santa Cruz Associate Professor Martin Devecka will bring both versions into LIT 81A, Introduction to Homer’s Odyssey. Devecka expects many students will walk into his class knowing Nolan’s movie better than Homer’s poem. He’s cool with that. “The movie can be a way into the poem.”
Nolan’s movie may be a doorway, but Devecka is excited about what this ancient poem might have to say to 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds trying to figure out their own way through a world that looks increasingly difficult to navigate; as AI reshapes the professions they’re preparing to enter and the concern of whether an expensive college education still guarantees anything resembling the old college-to-career path.
“You have a whole generation growing up in a situation that is very much like the one that Odysseus faces time and time again throughout this poem,” Devecka says. Odysseus is perpetually outgunned. The Cyclops is bigger. The Laestrygonians, a tribe of man-eating giants, are stronger. The suitors outnumber him. Again and again, brute force cannot save him. What does metis, a Greek word that can mean cleverness, cunning or practical intelligence.
The most famous example comes when Odysseus is trapped by the Cyclops Polyphemus and says his name is “Nobody.” After Odysseus blinds him, the Cyclops screams to his neighbors that Nobody is attacking him. Devecka points out there is a second joke when Greek words create another pun involving metis. The Cyclops effectively says that “cleverness” defeated him.
Devecka says, “Students this year will have more to learn from Odysseus than students in previous years ever have.” But metis alone could produce a pretty bleak lesson: The world is dangerous. You’ve got to outsmart everybody.
That’s where another Greek word becomes important in Devecka’s class. Xenia. Usually translated as hospitality or guest-friendship, xenia describes obligations between strangers: I welcome you to my home. I feed you. I don’t hurt you. You don’t trash the place. Civilization continues. When I asked Devecka what he hoped might stick with a student after LIT 81A was over, he said, “hospitality and openness.” He hopes students think about “the possibility of building a world around that.”
When metis asks, “How do I make my way through this world?” and xenia asks, “What kind of world do we want to build once we get there?”, Devecka’s class begins to look relevant to 2026.
That said, LIT 81A will not be ten weeks of solemn contemplation of the fate of Western civilization. Devecka said the fundamental purpose of Homer was essentially the same as Nolan’s movie, to entertain the audience.
And Devecka realizes the fun parts; the Cyclops cave, Odysseus fighting a beggar and the famous bow scene. One of Devecka’s favorites is the athletic competition in Book 8. Devecka said, “It seems like one of the throwaway books in the Odyssey, because it’s just a track and field day, right?” Underneath what looks like an ancient track meet, Devecka sees an intricate social negotiation involving strangers and hosts, competition, status and power, “…a really intricate kind of social interaction.” Odysseus is a stranger among the “xenophobic”.
Phaeacians and needs their help getting home, he has every reason to be polite. Then one of his hosts basically calls him a loser who doesn’t lift. Odysseus insults the guy back and hurls a discus farther than everyone else. Then he muses about other sports he’s good at, like stabbing people with spears. The hosts decide maybe dancing would be more fun.
Nolan gives modern audiences a more comfortable Odysseus, a hero who experiences remorse, cares about his crew and wrestles with the moral consequences of his actions.
Homer’s guy? “He doesn’t feel remorse for anything,” Devecka says. When I asked what Odysseus ultimately learns from his journey, Devecka said, “In Homer’s fiction, I would say nothing.” Odysseus learns facts; who betrayed him, who remained loyal, whom he can trust, but he doesn’t undergo the Hollywood transformation into a better man.
“It’s not about learning ethical lessons that can be on Sesame Street,” Devecka says. “It’s about learning to learn about the world. Learning to investigate the world.”
For a generation that is being told to compete harder, adapt faster, master new technologies and somehow build a meaningful life, that may be the real draw of LIT 81A. Students have legitimate reasons to wonder whether the old map to adulthood still works. When the map stops working, maybe learning how Odysseus navigates isn’t such an antiquated idea.
