The works of Greek poet Homer have been a staple of classic literature classes for centuries, but — like The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, and the Olde English story of the man who slays Grendel — the languages in which these long-ago cultural treasures were written present a major stumbling block for some students.

Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton have all been adapted for modern audiences. These adaptations have made the works of classic authors more accessible to today’s younger readers. University of Southern California Professor Brandon Bourgeois is trying to smooth out that rocky road with some modern beats.

In her book Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in the Iliad and The Odyssey, Eva Brann calls reading Homer “one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures of life.” And yet, for all the praise heaped on Homeric epics, Brann laments that the joy of reading Homer is nonetheless “a secret too well kept in our time.”

Bourgeois is doing his part to spread the word about Homer through a medium seldom thought of in the same breath as the Ionian bard Homer: rap music.

Founder of the Hype4Homer Project, Bourgeois, who earned his PhD in Classics from Ohio State University, is seeking to bridge the gulf between popular culture and classical literature and bring The Iliad and Odyssey to a whole new generation of students; not by compromising the essence of Homer for the sake of accessibility, but by taking him back to his roots as oral poetry. As ancient rhapsodes once earned fame reciting Homer, Bourgeois has made a name doing likewise before students and audiences, albeit within the trappings and rhythms of rap.

This wouldn’t be the first time popular music attempted to bring Homer to a greater audience. In the world of heavy metal, Manowar devoted nearly a half an hour of an album to the song “Achilles: Agony and Ecstasy in 8 Parts” and 1960s power trip Cream enjoyed early success with their “Tales of Brave Ulysses.”

However, Bourgeois’ campaign is properly characterized not as a series of musical performances but an ongoing project to change the way Homer is viewed by students; “Homer was popular culture back then,” Bourgeois stated in an interview with The Lantern, “Now it’s the stuff you academically pursue, but it shouldn’t be that way.”