Recent Events

The Necessary Fiction: Life With James Joyce's Ulysses, my memoir about spending an adult lifetime with Joyce's novel, has been accepted for publication by Edward Everett Root (Brighton, UK). It will appear in Fall 2019.

The alumni association of the high school in suburban Buffalo that I attended - Kenmore East High School - has selected me for inclusion in the Kenmore East Hall of Distinction. The induction ceremony will take place in the school auditorium on May 12, 2018.

"Reading James Joyce's Ulysses." In February and March 2018, as in 2017, I taught this four-session class at the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center. The 2018 class schedule is available here.

On August 2, 2017 I gave a talk called "Joyce's Expanding Epistolary Novel" in Zurich, Switzerland at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation's "Postscrapt" Workshop.

I was involved in five different ways at "Diasporic Joyce: The 2017 North American James Joyce Conference," which was held in Toronto from June 21 to 24, 2017. I gave a talk at a panel that I shared with William Brockman called "Joyce's Unpublished Letters: A Progress Report." I co-led two "Ulysses Reading Group" sessions with Austin Briggs. I was the respondent to the papers presented on a panel called "Jimtimacies: At Home with Joyce," and I chaired a session called "The Transnational Genetics of Ulysses."

On March 6 and again on May 11, 2017 I was interviewed on WNYC radio's Leonard Lopate Show about Ulysses as part of the Leonard Lopate Book Club. The March 6 interview can be streamed or downloaded here and the May 11 interview, which also featured novelist Colum McCann, here. To stream either one, use the "Listen" button. To download an MP3 file, click the three dots to the right of "+Queue" and follow the instructions.

Ulysses in Toronto: Over five mornings in July 2016 (July 18-22) I led a seminar called "'Who's he when he's at home?': James Joyce's Ulysses" for Classical Pursuits and its Toronto Pursuits program. In July 2015 (July 20-24) I led a similar seminar called "'You Can Do It!': James Joyce's Ulysses." I wrote a blog piece called "Feeling at Home with Ulysses" in conjunction with the 2016 seminar and one called "Ulysses Can Change Your Life" in conjunction with the 2015 seminar. A video from the 2015 Toronto Pursuits events is available on YouTube.

"The Joyce of Music." In February 2016, I taught a three-session class called "The Joyce of Music" at the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center. We read and discussed Joyce's poetry and selections from his prose works that feature songs and other types of music. The class schedule is available here.

"Reading Finnegans Wake": In February and March 2015, I taught a four-session class called "Reading Finnegans Wake" at the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. We read and discussed about 100 pages from Joyce's forbidding but fascinating last book. The class schedule is available here.

My first book, "Ulysses" in Progress (Princeton University Press, 1977), was returned to print in paperback in 2014 in the Princeton Legacy Library series.

I retired from teaching in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University on July 1, 2014 and am now Distinguished University Professor Emeritus there.

On May 22, 2014 at a retirement party in Toronto sponsored by Western Alumni, I gave a short talk called "The Necessary Fiction: A Life with Ulysses – or Why Ulysses Matters to Me"

On April 10, 2014 at a retirement colloquium at Western University, I gave a talk called "Drafts of a Novel, Drafts of a Life: Looking Back."

On May 6, 2013, I gave a talk called "'Me. And me now': Writing About a Life with Ulysses" at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin. 

On April 19, 2013, I delivered a public lecture, "Ulysses: The Necessary Fiction," as part of the Modernist Versions Project's "Year of Ulysses." The talk was presented by the Modernist Versions Project and the University of Toronto's Modernist Reading and Research Group. It was videorecorded, and you can watch it here (click on the link to my talk at right) or here.

I contributed a short piece about Ulysses to "Into the Future: Western News Celebrates 40 Years," a special issue of the University of Western Ontario's weekly newspaper (November 15, 2012). The article is available online.

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. (2005) has been translated into Chinese by Feng-Zhen Wang, published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in Beijing in 2011.

I was interviewed about Ulysses by Daniel D'Angelo for The Writer's Chronicle, a publication of AWP (the Association of Writers and Writing Programs). The interview appears in the October/November 2012 issue of The Writer's Chronicle (volume 45, number 2), pp. 84-85, and also online.

At the 23rd International James Joyce Symposium in Dublin in June 2012, I participated in a roundtable discussion of Bruce Arnold's 1990 film, "The Scandal of Ulysses," and, with Austin Briggs, led a two-session "Ulysses Reading Group."

I was interviewed for "In Bed With Ulysses," a documentary film about Ulysses that was produced and directed by Alan Adelson and Kate Taverna. The film was released in June 2012. Read the New York Times review here.

On February 3, 2012, I gave an invited talk called "James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Public-Domain Man" at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The talk was part of the Gallery's and Riverrun's 9th Annual James Joyce Celebration, "Joyce Unbound: James Joyce Enters the Public Domain."

On October 6, 2011, I gave a short talk, "The Necessary Fiction," as part of panel on "What Does My Ph.D. Have to Do With Me?" in the Department of English Colloquium Series at the University of Western Ontario.

I wrote a short piece, "Bloomsday: A Very Brief History," for Radio Bloomsday, which was broadcast on WBAI-FM (New York) and wbai.org on June 16, 2011. Producer Larry Josephson read the piece during the broadcast. The text is available online.

In 2011 I was awarded the Hellmuth Prize for Achievement in Research, the University of Western Ontario's most prestigious award for research. The award was presented at a ceremony on May 20, 2011, where I gave a short talk. A video of my talk is on YouTube, as is a video of the introduction to the ceremony and the talk by my co-recipient, Dr. Ann Chambers, Dept. of Oncology.

At the May 11, 2011 meeting of the James Joyce Society of New York - a meeting that celebrated my new book "Ulysses" in Focus: Genetic, Textual, and Personal Views - I gave a talk, "Ulysses - and Us?"

On April 3, 2011 I presented a short talk, "Raging Bully," as part of a Roundtable on Copyright Practices and Problems at a conference called "The Quote's the Thing: Negotiating Copyright in Scholarly Criticism," held at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo Law School.

On February 18, 2011 I presented a public lecture - "Ulysses - and Us?" - sponsored by the Fund for Irish Studies at Princeton University.

On October 7, 2010 I delivered a public lecture, "Why Study Manuscripts? Living and Working with Ulysses and With Joyce's Manuscripts for His Novel," at Vanderbilt University.

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