Go to the Internet Movie Data Base and find a movie about Troy that you can rent and watch. Write a review of the film, explaining how it uses Troy material in a modern (or ancient) context. Be sure to add the URL of the IMDB movie review to your review.  

Read Auden's poem, "The Shield of Achilles" and compare it, using plenty of specific details, to the description of Achilles' shield in the Iliad, Book  18. Explain why you think Auden chose this image from Homer, and what he does to adapt it to the 20th century. How do Homer's and Auden's visions of the world and of war differ? 

Acquire a copy of All Day Permanent Red: An Account of the First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad by Christopher Logue. You can follow this link to Amazon.com's page for it, or find it elsewhere. Then, after reading through this rather amazing re-interpretation of a Homeric battle in very modern terms, write a careful comparison of it to the scenes in the Iliad that it is re-envisioning. Finally, choose which version you prefer, Homer's or Logue's and explain why in some detail. 

Read Orestes, a modern adaptation by Charles Mee Jr., and compare it to the Oresteia of Aeschylus. As above, explain why you think Mee has chosen to retell this ancient Troy story, and what important changes he has made to adapt it to our times.

Read Dan Simmons excellent sci-fi novel, Ilium (Random House, 2003). Pick some element in it that reminds you strongly of Homer and discuss both how Simmons uses Homer and the many intriguing changes he makes in order to take the Homeric themes into the future. You will need a thesis of your own to focus your thinking, because this is much too complex a story to deal with as a whole in a short essay.

Read Dan Simmons sci-fi novel, Olympos (Harper Collins 2005) and examine one or more of his Homeric characters. I suggest Achilles, Odysseus or Helen. Then, discuss in some detail how Simmons has adapted that Homeric character to his 21st century novel, how well you think the adaptation works, and why.

Go to an Atlas of the United States and identify at least twenty cities named after events or characters of the Trojan War. List the cities, explaining where they are and when they were founded. Now, think carefully about how odd it is to have Trojan names in North America. Write a thoughtful, detailed explanation of why you think these various cities were given Trojan names.

Herbert's House Atreides, a recent prequel to Dune, involves both the house of the Atreides (remember the house of Atreus, whose sons were Agamemnon and Menelaus) AND a sequence involving the play of Iphigenia. Read the book, give a quick overview, and then explain how the Troy material has been used for this postmodern sci-fi novel.

Locate and watch a Xena episode that deals with Troy material, such as the one involving Helen of Troy, or the one involving Ulysses. Write a detailed review of the episode, explaining what it is about and then discussing how the ancient Troy material has been updated for television.

Make up an interesting question of your own dealing with contemporary Troy material. You might want to look at one of the major works of Troy literature in the twentieth century, or you might want to look at lighter hearted material. In any case, examine the material and find some interesting things to say about it, using, of course, plenty of specific examples from whatever you selected to support your ideas. If you create a good question, and I decide to use it, you'll get ten extra points. 

Do a Troy search on the www and collect ten interesting web sites about Troy in the modern world. This could include the use of Troy in advertising, in the names of places, in movies, comics, whatever. The point is to collect material that demonstrates the modern relevance of the tradition of Troy stories. Note that not all uses of Greek myth are related to Troy, so restrict your list to material that deals specifically with the characters and issues related to the Trojan War. List your findings, including detailed annotations explaining each one, and the URLs (web addresses), so other people can look at them. Only include sites that I do not have listed already on Troy Stories Today: Literary and Popular Culture. If you find a very good one, I'll add it to my web site and give you five points extra credit.

If you are feeling inspired and ambitious, take the very long view, from the Bronze Age to the end of the Twentieth Century, and think about the tradition of Troy stories. Do you have any ideas about why these stories have endured for more than three thousand years? Can you see any interesting continuities from one period to another? Can you see any signs of progress? Any signs of change? Any signs of anything? If so, explain your ideas and support them, drawing from several of the areas you have studied during the course. (Double credit: worth up to 100 points.)

If you are feeling creative, look at a few YouTube videos of The Trojan War and then make your own and post it to YouTube (I have no idea how to do this--you need to figure it out). Once it is up, post a brief description of your Troy video and the URL in a new message box so that we can go and look at it. (Worth up to double credit depending on substance and quality.)