In Walks a Woman

Sonja and Vanessa pop some popcorn and dive into Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 film, THE RETURN. Who gets the spotlight more, Odysseus or Penelope? In terms of power, would we rather be poem Penelope or film Penelope?  Is Telemachus even a little less whiny? Does Argos the dog get his moment? And although all the gods are cut from the script, how did they convince Athena, the goddess-of-glow-ups, to be 6...

What do we know about what real life would’ve been like for Penelope in THE ODYSSEY—and for that matter what do we know about the lives of women in the Bronze age or classical era of ancient Greece? Join us as Vanessa’s non historical-brain tries to keep up with Sonja’s fine-tuned sense of history, along with IWAW’s first-ever guest, classics scholar, Dr. Heather Harwood.

This is the first in a five-episode series on women, goddesses, and monsters in THE ODYSSEY and its retellings.

Welcome to “In Walks a Woman,” the podcast where we look at history and literature from a female perspective. Join Sonja Czarnecki, history teacher, and Dr. Vanessa Eicher, life-long lit nerd, both moms and seasoned educators, as we go down well-worn historical and literary pathways with new questions about the female experience and how the stories of our past and in our fiction frame women's live...