Julia Perroni, a graduate student in the Department of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has received the CAC Women’s Network’s Pre-PhD Paper Presentation Prize for outstanding research presented at an international conference in classical studies.
The award was given at the 2026 annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada / Société Canadienne des Études Classiques in Kingston, Ontario. The prize, which includes $250 CAD, recognizes excellence in scholarly work presented by pre-PhD researchers. Perroni presented her paper on May 5th.
Her award-winning presentation, “Longing That He Be Her Husband”: Calypso and Heteronormative Desire in the Odyssey, examines how the Odyssey constructs desire, isolation, and relational norms through the figure of Calypso.
Perroni argues that Calypso’s portrayal in relation to Odysseus reveals how physical isolation in the poem can function as a kind of queer-legible state, set against the epic’s consistent emphasis on heteronormative relationality, particularly marriage. While Calypso does not explicitly voice her desire in direct terms, she is repeatedly characterized as “longing that [Odysseus] be her husband,” and is shown protesting the gods’ decision that she must release him. In this reading, Odysseus becomes not only a captive figure but also a symbol of relational possibility within an otherwise profoundly isolated existence.
Drawing on theoretical frameworks including Ellen Oliensis’s notion of the “seepage” of a textual unconscious and John Peradotto’s concept of centripetal desire, Perroni reads Calypso’s longing as a structured, interpretable desire for companionship and relational stability, even when it is mediated through narrative constraint and divine intervention. Hermes’s description of Calypso’s remote island further emphasizes the extremity of her separation from both human and divine society, reinforcing the stakes of her isolation.
The paper ultimately places this tension between normative desire and enforced solitude into conversation with broader interpretive questions about how the Odyssey constructs belonging, kinship, and return. Within the broader academic community at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Perroni’s recognition highlights innovative, theoretically engaged approaches to ancient literature and its modern critical interpretations.