The word “epic” originates from the Ancient Greek epos, which meant word, narrative, or poetry itself. One of the oldest documented genres in written history, epics often share stylistic and narrative features; they are long, narrative poems recited by a bard; feature repeated stylized phrases, such as epithet or epic simile; look back to and memorialize an imagined past; and often center around a central hero, heroic figure, or bloodline of heroes. While the strictest definitions of epic have focused almost exclusively on the Greek epics, sometimes grudgingly including Virgil’s Latin Aeneid, the genre spans global cultures and times from ancient Mesopotamia (The Epic of Gilgamesh) and India (Ramayana; Mahabharata) to medieval West Africa (The Epic of Sundiata), Persia (Shahnameh), and Germany (Nibelungenlied), arguably extending as far as the early modern period to Milton’s Paradise Lost or even Nguyen Du’s Truyện Kiều. 

Importantly, epics also serve a national function, driving the development of a collective national identity around an imagined hero or homeland. As David Quint observes, epics can fulfill this function both when they imagine an “epic of winners” (for example, Virgil’s Aeneid), but also when they imagine an “epic of losers” (for example, Homer’s Iliad). This panel invites papers that examine the national and collective project of epics, both in their original ancient/medieval forms and their contemporary adaptation or reception. What kinds of national, communal, or tribal identities are being constructed in these epics, and who is considered within or without these identities? What originary fantasies are being established in such epics (considered broadly)? How are these epics still being leveraged and incorporated into modern nationalist projects or more contemporary forms of identity-building (for example, the Franco era veneration of the Spanish epic hero, Rodrigo Diaz)? In what way are older heroes, tropes, or symbols from these epics adapted, congruously or otherwise, into contemporary systems of meaning and identification?

We invite papers that engage with any of the following topics:

• Foreignness, belonging, and being in global epics
• Indigenous/regional perspectives on epic versus national/state perspectives
• Tensions between nation-building, the rise of the nation-state, and tribalism
• Epics as origin stories
• Redefining or expanding the definition of the epic/the canon
• Reading epics comparatively across national, temporal, or generic borders
• Intersections of epics with other literary genres: travel poetry, bildungsroman, etc. 
• Gendered dimensions of the epic 
• Nationalism and the resurgence of epic tropes
• Epic adaptations in contemporary film and media
• The shift/slide in the use of the term “epic” and historical anachronism 
• Teaching ancient/early modern epics in contemporary classrooms

We are open to other proposals on related questions.