Joyce and the Idea of Europe
Friday, October 7, 2022 – Sunday, October 9, 2022Conference and Public Reading
The Joyce and the Idea of Europe conference, organized by Bard College Berlin (DE) and the Centre for European Modernism Studies (CEMS) at the University of Perugia (IT), will focus on the works of James Joyce and the idea of Europe. We are planning to hold the conference and public reading in Berlin in September 2022, the year which marks the centenary of the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses, the work that more than others challenges the very idea of Europeanness. The conference centers on the exploration of how Joyce’s corpus of works offers a complex notion of Europe as a geopolitical and cultural space of exchange. In Joyce Europe is treated as a kind of Foucaultian heterotopia, a combination of other spaces both disturbing and reassuring, which invite the reader to an ongoing process of reassessment of the very notion of culture and cultural belonging. Indeed, in Joyce’s works we see an idea of Europe that continues to change and transform against the author’s tumultuous cultural-political context.
The event will consist of two different but connected parts: a two-day academic conference, and a public reading with a panel of scholars and authors, open to a more general audience.
This conference is funded by the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and the Embassy of Ireland, Germany.
Email: [email protected]