Classics Colloquium with Marian Makins

Join us for a presentation by Marian Makins, Temple University, on "Pan Is Dead, Long Live Pan: A Mutant Myth in Roger Zelazny’s 'This Immortal'."

Click here to register for the Zoom event.

Tea at 4 p.m. in the Quita Woodward Room, Old Library.

The plot of Roger Zelazny’s 1966 Hugo Award–winning novel …And Call Me Conrad (later re-titled This Immortal) follows a group of travellers through what remains of Greece following a nuclear cataclysm. The characters marvel at myth come to life around them: satyr- and centaur-like creatures roam the hills; monsters threaten communities, setting the stage for heroic action; and group leader Conrad Nomikos appears to have inhabited many identities in his improbably long life, including folk hero Karaghiosis and the goat-footed god Pan. In this talk, Makins examines the figure of Conrad as a reception of Pan for the post-nuclear age, discussing Zelazny’s creation alongside both ancient literary texts and modern works of speculative fiction such as Stephen King’s “The Lawnmower Man” (1975) and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth (2008). She further argues that Conrad – with his succession of identities and tendency to criticize or attempt to control others’ readings and (re)use of myths, including his own – offers a useful framework for thinking about the process of myth reception more generally.

Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies