American Odyssey with Dr Patrick Deneen

The Odyssey is among the oldest-known written works, yet somehow profoundly contemporary. Its themes are inescapably human: the desire to strike out for new adventures, the aspiration to be more than human, the temptation to wallow in beastlike torpor, the impulse to exact vengeance, and the possibility that mercy might bring a violent cycle to an end. As political philosopher Patrick Deneen will explain, the Odyssey is also the most American of ancient texts. Like Odysseus, Americans are a people simultaneously animated by commitments to being at home and leaving home. With the United States' semiquincentennial and the release of the blockbuster film The Odyssey, Deneen reveals how Americans' Western inheritance contains a paradox that remains at the core of our divided souls.

About the Speaker:

Patrick J. Deneen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where his teaching and research focus on the history of political thought, liberalism and conservatism, constitutionalism, and the American political tradition. He is the author of several books, including Why Liberalism Failed (2018), which has been translated into more than twenty languages, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023), and, most recently, American Odyssey: What an Ancient Story Reveals about Our Divided Souls (2026). Before joining Notre Dame, he taught at Georgetown and Princeton Universities and served as a Speechwriter and Special Advisor to the Director of the United States Information Agency.