February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“The title of the talk, ‘Joyce and Judaism,’ is not exactly on point,” clarified Professor Neil Davison, one of the country’s leading experts on Jewish themes in Joyce’s works. “Judaism is a religion, a set of philosophical and ethical principles. The talk is really about Joyce’s interest in Jewishness and the different ways that you can think of someone as Jewish.”
The American Friends of James Joyce and the Fordham University Institute of Irish Studies will sponsor the seminar, which takes place 4 p.m. at the university’s Lincoln Center campus. Davison will begin the event by with his contribution.
“The paper asks the question, ‘How should we read the controversies of Jewish identity in “Ulysses”?’ It also presents antecedents for the novel’s interest in this question that issue from Joyce’s own life,” he said.
After the speech, Davison will take part in a panel with Moshe Gold and Philip Sicker, both Fordham professors of English literature. Dublin-born John McCourt, the author of “The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904-1920,” will join them.
“Joyce’s lesson has to do with the need to be open towards others, towards those who perhaps have a different culture to our own,” McCourt, who teaches at the University of Trieste, in Italy. “He went against the tide in choosing to paint such a positive image of the modern Jewish figure in Leopold Bloom. Bloom’s great humanity and generosity draw all readers to him and make the narrow-minded Irish characters such as the Citizen seem all the more negative and prejudiced.”
Speaking of Joyce’s time living in Trieste, Davison said, “When he moved to the continent and befriended Jews, he saw some parallels and expanded it to a universal concept of a nationalist culture and race.”
Cassie Farrelly, Fordham’s administrative director of Irish studies and a coordinator of the event, sees Joyce’s openness to other cultures foreshadows his homeland’s current diversity.
“The actual modern demographic of Ireland has changed significantly,” she said. “Looking at how one of the premier literary figures was looking at Ireland as not being homogeneous at the turn of the century gives us historical perspective.”
By the seminar’s end, the contributors hope to display the importance of issues of Jewish identity in Joyce’s works.
“I assume many of these people have read Joyce,” Davison said. “My hope is that an audience like that will have a new appreciation of how important these issues are to understanding what Ulysses is about.”
The seminar, sponsored by the American Friends of James Joyce and the Fordham Institute of Irish Studies, will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. in the 12th floor lounge of Fordham’s Lowenstein building, located at Columbus Avenue and 60th St. in Manhattan. For more information, contact the Fordham Institute of Irish Studies at (718) 817-3330.