The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) will celebrate the graduation of the Odyssey Project’s class of 2005. The Odyssey Project is a free, eight-month program of college-level humanities courses for people living in poverty. Students in the class of 2005 took courses from September through May at the Ariel School on the South Side and at the Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park on the North Side.

Stanley F. Lombardo, award-winning author, translator, and Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas will speak at this year’s graduation . Lombardo’s publications include Homer’s Illiad ( recipient of the 1997 Byron Caldwell Book Award ); Homer’s Odyssey ( 2000 New York Times Book of the Year ); and translations of Plato , Hesiod , Callimachus , Aratus , and Horace . He has given dramatic readings of his translations at the Smithsonian Institution , the Chicago Poetry Center and on C-SPAN and National Public Radio. In addition to Lombardo, Odyssey Project graduates will select a student speaker from each location to address the graduation audience.

For more information, contact the Council at 312.422.5580.