ETERNALSOLDIER
Events & Workshops
Virtual and in-person events are planned for the coming months! Subscribe to our occasional newsletter. Never miss a Veteran event.
Homer and Beyond
Tuesdays Sept 13-Nov 15 2022
6:30-8:00 pm
Virtual over Zoom
Are you a Woman Veteran interested in women warriors in history and literature?
Eternal Soldier presents a virtual book group for Women Veterans, Homer and Beyond. This book group will examine Homer’s Iliad, one of the western world’s most compelling testaments to the experience of war. We will also take a deep dive into modern material inspired by Homer:
plays, essays and poetry.
Learn more from a Veteran's experience of Veterans Read Homer book group here.
Eternal Soldier's 12th book group Homer and Beyond will take place Sep 13-Nov 15 2022 virtually over Zoom. This book group is open only to Women Veterans, and will meet for ten weekly sessions. Led by Dr. Sheila Murnaghan, Penn Professor of Greek , we will also be visited by Ellen McLaughlin, celebrated author of Ajax in Iraq, a powerful Iliad-inspired drama about a female American soldier betrayed by her commanding officer.
The virtual workshop is free.
Interested in being a part of this?
Send a brief e-mail to info@eternalsoldier.org.
UPCOMING EVENT
Veteran Experience:
Past and Present
Penn Museum Tour
November 2022 - time TBD
3260 South Street, Philadelphia
Join Eternal Soldier for a guided tour of the Penn Museum designed especially for Veterans. Explore links between ancient and modern veteran experience. The tour will be hosted by
C. Brian Rose PhD, Professor and Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section and former Director of Excavations at Troy (site of the famous Trojan War).
Veterans tell us:
"The tour helped me make a connection to history in
many very meaningful ways."
"The explanations given by Dr. Rose married the experiences of ancient warriors to those experienced by Veterans today in a way I was not expecting.
It was fascinating."
Open to Veteran AL/VFW Posts and other groups
To sign up, E-mail: info@eternalsoldier.org
Eternal Soldier Book Group
Archived Event
TOUCHING HISTORY:
Veterans Archaeology Workshop
at Valley Forge
Valley Forge National Historical Park, Valley Forge PA
Valley Forge National Historic Park has a large public archeology program and welcomes Veterans to participate. More details to come shortly about this exciting opportunity!!
Soldier Quarters, Valley Forge National Historic Park. Wikimedia Commons.
Valley Forge National Historic Park is the site of the third military encampment of the Continental Army, where over the course of a severe winter and a very wet spring of 1777-78 the various militias of the 13 colonies matured into the professional army capable of winning the American Revolutionary War.
Valley Forge was a kind of army city with living quarters made of wood, and where equipment was repaired, recruits were enlisted and training took place from a location where any enemy advance could be observed. Having Veterans participate in the on-going archeological work at Valley Forge provides the chance to “touch history”: to understand the soldiers of the Continental Army, their conditions of service, why they joined and what they accomplished. Current research centers on the portion of the park near Mount Joy and General Henry Knox’s Quarters that housed Woodford’s Brigade, a cohort of approximately 1200 men under the command of General William Woodford of Virginia.
Contact us at info@eternalsoldier.org for details and registration
Eternal Soldier Ideas Discussion Session with Veterans and Historians
Veterans in seminar with the Penn Museum's original 1st cent. AD copy of Homer's Odyssey
ARCHIVED EVENT:
ROBERTA STEWART, PHD
Department Chair and Professor of Classics
Dartmouth College
Dr. Stewart will describe her work reading Homer with combat Veterans
The Value of Homer?
Reading the Iliad and
the Odyssey with
Combat Veterans
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Phila VA Medical Center
1-2 pm
Room 7A141
In a talk geared for Veterans and VA staff members, Dr. Stewart will discuss reading Homer, with examples from the texts and discussions. Her reading courses for combat Veterans "From Ancient Greece to Iraq: Warfare and Homecoming in Homer" and "Homer's Iliad" have been offered at the VA MedEternal Soldier Program Director and Facilitatorical Center in White River Junction, VT and at Dartmouth. She has spoken to clinicians there, and at the West Haven VA Medical Center in addition to her many other papers, books and scholarly presentations.
War Stories, from Troy to Baghdad
(and beyond)
Reading Homer with Combat Veterans
Thursday, March 26, 2015
402 Claudia Cohen Hall
249 south 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
4:30-6 pm
In this talk, Dr. Stewart presents the work of an experimental reading course, a book group, designed for combat veterans. Since 2008 she has read Homer, Odyssey and Iliad, with combat veterans and used the ancient texts to explore the soldier's experience of combat and return from war. The talk will summarize the course (its premises, design, logistics, and sessions), explore the particular value of Homer, and suggest next steps for reading ancient literature with vets.
The views expressed on this site in no way reflect those of the US Government or the Department of Veterans Affairs.