“James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’: Text and Contexts” is a five-week seminar in Ireland for sixteen college and university faculty on the development, contexts, and reception of James Joyce's masterwork, Ulysses. Project directors Kevin Dettmar (English, Pomona College) and Paul Saint-Amour (English, University of Pennsylvania) lead a seminar to pursue a rich understanding of James Joyce’s Ulysses through a systematic exploration of 1) the different modes of critical interpretation that have been developed to confront the novel’s challenges, and 2) the various uses that have been made of Ulysses within the cultural institutions of literary modernism, secondary and higher education, and various forms of high and popular culture. By focusing intensively on Ulysses, its critical history, and current critical and textual theory, the seminar gives college and university teachers of modern literature resources to take back to their students and, at the same time, an opportunity to invest in their own scholarly research. There are excursions to Dublin sites that house important scholarly resources for Joyce scholars and one optional trip to Galway. Seminar readings include three books by Joyce: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses; as well as Joyce’s Critics: Transitions in Reading and Culture by Joseph Brooker, Ulysses by Hugh Kenner, and The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses by Karen Lawrence. The seminar takes place at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, and participants enjoy visiting scholar privileges at the Trinity College Library, where they have access to the comprehensive holdings of Joyce scholarship, as well as the National Library, which houses the largest collection of primary Joyce materials in the world. Participants are also able to conduct research at the James Joyce Center and the Dublin Irish Writers’ Museum.
