SPRING 2008 Office Hours
Term held: March 3, 200-May 15, 2008
Hours: M 1-2, W 4:45-5:45, TTh 1:30-2:30
Office:         Atwood I, #212
Email:  lmarkos@hbu.edu

Phone: (281) 649-3000 X2279 (office)
Phone: (713) 779-8131 (home)
Fax:    (281) 649-3012
Mail:   Department of Languages
        Houston Baptist University
        7502 Fondren Road
        Houston, TX 77074

May 23-June 5, 2008: I will be the speaker for a trip to Greece. I will give a series of lectures that will cover the full history of Greece from Homer's Bronze age and the Golden Age of Athens, to Alexander the Great and the Byzantine Empire, to Greece's War for Independence against the Ottoman Turks and her role in WWII and the Cold War. Please CLICK HERE. for fuller information on the tour and on how you can join us!!

It is with great excitement that I announce the publication of two new books:
From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (InterVarsity Press)
In this book, I explore how the faith and discernment of both secular and Christian readers can be strengthened and enhanced by a vigorous interaction with the central literary masterpieces of the ancient world: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Greek Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and Virgil's great Roman epic, the Aeneid. These timeless classics will be brought alive both as literary works possessing their own separate integrity within the context of the cultures and the poets that produced them and as "proto-Christian" works of almost prophetic power that point the way toward Christ and that glimmer with a faint but True Light.
Pressing Forward: Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Victorian Age (Sapientia Press)
In this book, I offer a close reading of all the major poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, together with the work of six Victorian "sages": Matthew Arnold, T. H. Huxley, Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and John Ruskin. My central thesis is that the Victorians were the first people to face directly the challenges, confusions, and upheavals of the modern world. It is their struggles--especially their struggles with faith, science, consumerism, and progress--that are most like our own, and it is therefore their solutions that most demand our attention.
For more information on From Achilles to Christ and to order online, please click this link:
http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=2593

(or go to amazon.com and type "Louis Markos" into the search engine)
The first book on the list should be From Achilles to Christ; the third book on the list should be Pressing Forward. My book, Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World (Broadman & Holman, 2003) should appear second on the list.

Sundays, Jan 6, 13, and 20 from 5-7pm: I will give my fourth annual Colloquium on C. S. Lewis for Cypress Creek Christian Church (not far from the huge Champion Forest Baptist Church, near the intersection of FM 1960 and Veteran's Memorial). My focus this year will be Rehabilitating Beauty in CSL. These are free.

Wed, Jan 16 at 7pm: I will give a speech on Ancient Rome on Film for the Italian Cultural and Community Center of Houston. There should be a small fee for this one. The Center is located on 1101 Milford juts a few blocks away from the MFA. For more info, please email Michelle Belco at mbelco@earthlink.net

Wed, Jan 23 at 8pm: I will give a speech at the Jewish Community Center in Houston on the heroic measures taken by Greeks to protect Jewish-Greek citizens from the Holocaust. My speech will be part of a week long series of speeches on this important, and little known topic. The week is being organized by the Hellenic Cultural Center of Houston; for full information, click this link:
"ttp://www.hcc-sw.org/14.html