CFP: The Annual Victoria Bloomsday Symposium and Celebration (15/3/2023; 16/6/2023)

We seek proposals for brief (~18 minutes) critical and/or creative presentations on any aspect of Joyce studies, from any perspective. We especially encourage work that approaches Joyce and his works from non-traditional (or traditionally marginalized) angles. Topics may include, but are not limited to considerations of Joyce and

• sex, gender, and sexuality
• race
• class
• Indigeneity
• the law
• translation
• cryptids
• the paranormal

• the environment
• religion
• archives
• digital approaches
• the arts (dance, music, painting, sculpture, film, voice…)
• ufology
• Shakespeare

We especially encourage papers that delve into the following sorts of questions:

• How is Joyce received, remade, re-orient-ed, remediated, appropriated, adapted, understood, and circulated around the world?
  • What does studying or reading Joyce now in Taiwan look like? How about South Africa, Azerbaijan, Fiji, Iran, Afghanistan, Morocco, or Peru?
  • How do Joyce studies overlap with, interfere with, or complicate Indigenous studies, literatures, oratures, cultural practices, and politics?
  • How do Indigenous approaches to the study of literature, culture, and politics force us to reconsider Joyce and our ongoing commitment to his work?
  • Is there such a thing as an environmental Joyce? What does it look like? How does contemporary eco-theory inform new approaches to Joyce’s work, and how does Joyce perhaps call for some rethinking of contemporary environmentalism?
  • Is there anything new in the archive of Joyce and Joyce studies? What has so far escaped due attention?
  • We know there’s a queer Joyce – is there a trans* Joyce as well? UVic has the world’s biggest trans* archive: does it give any new understanding of Joyce and his works? 

Last year we had new research into Joyce and graphic narratives, a DJ/spoken verse set, and (appropriately) connections between Joyce and Butts. Go ahead and wow us.

250-word abstracts/proposals and 50-word bios are due to the organizers at saross@uvic.ca no later than 15 May 2023.

The symposium takes place on 16 June in UVic’s McPherson Library, with an evening Bloomsday celebration at the James Joyce Bistro in downtown Victoria.