Global Ulysses

The “global” in our title contains multiple meanings. While Ulysses so perfectly memorializes the Irish capital of Dublin, the book was conceived and written primarily in Italy and first published in France. More importantly, this great work has had a truly global impact, as has, in our 21st century, Irish Studies.

Two of our Institute faculty fellows, Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, Professor of English and Irish Language and Literature Emeritus, and Barry McCrea, the Donald R. Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies and Concurrent Professor of English, Irish Language and Literature, and Romance Languages and Literatures, are world-renowned Joyce scholars.

Joining with them in the Global Ulysses endeavour are Enrico Terrinoni, Full Professor Chair of English Literature at Università Per Stranieri di Perugia and President of the James Joyce Italian Foundation, who visited Notre Dame in Fall 2019, and Clíona Ní Ríordáin, Professor of English at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, and a visitor to the Institute in Fall 2018.

At times individually and other times together, these scholars have taught the book in undergraduate and graduate seminars at Notre Dame's campus, at O'Connell House in Dublin, and to student and community reading groups in Rome, Perugia, and Paris. The Institute also regularly invites speakers and performers to campus to further develop Ulysses themes and plans to do so throughout 2022.

Central to the Institute's Global Ulysses endeavour in 2022 will be celebrations and symposia in three cities in which Joyce lived and worked — Rome, Paris, and Dublin — as well as on Notre Dame's campus in South Bend.