Hamilton English Department Hosting James Joyce Symposium

Video Interview 50 Years on the Hill

Hamilton's English Department is sponsoring a James Joyce Symposium on Saturday, Sept. 29, in celebration of English Professor Austin Briggs' 50 years of teaching. Briggs is an expert on Irish writer/poet James Joyce, the author of the novel Ulysses. Since retirement from full-time teaching in 2000, he has offered a Joyce seminar at Hamilton each fall and has taught at Joyce summer schools at the University of Trieste, Italy, at the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and twice at Joyce's alma mater, University College, Dublin. The symposium will feature four panel discussions with Joyce experts from all over the U.S., as well as Dublin, London and York, England.  All sessions will take place in the Red Pit in Kirner-Johnson and are open to the community.

The first panel, from 8:30-10:30 a.m. will include Hamilton graduate John Gordon '67, a former student of Briggs, who is a professor of English at Connecticut College. The final panel of the day, from 4-5:30 p.m., will include Derek Attridge, York University, discussing "A Symposium All His Own." He is one of the most celebrated Joyce scholars working today. 

Following is a  schedule of all panels and panelists:
Panel One: 8:30-10:30 a.m.
John Gordon '62, Connecticut College: "Two or Three Things I Know About Him" (Gordon is a former student of Briggs and has published three books on Joyce.)

Morris Beja, Ohio State University: "Joyce in Hollywood" (editor of The James Joyce Newsletter).

Brandon Kershner, University of Florida at Gainesville: "Ulysses and the Newspaper"

Sebastian Knowles, Ohio State University: "Joyce and Philately" (editor for the volumes in the Florida James Joyce Series; 2007 Undergraduate Teacher of the Year at Ohio State.)

Panel Two: 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Roy K. Gottfried, Vanderbilt University: "A slice of fresh ribsteak a la Austin"

Ellen Carol Jones, Columbus Ohio: "Relics of Memory"

John Bishop, University of California at Berkeley: "Joyce's Last Words: Thoughts from the Far Side of a Career" (author of Joyce's Book of the Dark, widely regarded as the best book on Finnegans Wake.)

Panel Three: 2-3:30 p.m.
Michael Groden, University of Western Ontario: "Adventures with Ulysses: 'learn a lot teaching others. The personal note.'" (The foremost authority on Joyce's manuscripts.)

Margot Norris, University of California, Irvine: "Popular Joyce: The People's Choice" (president of the International James Joyce Foundation.)

Carol Shloss, Stanford University: "The Spaces of Dreams: Some Thoughts on How to Visualize Finnegans Wake" (author of the biography of Joyce's daughter Lucia.)

Panel Four: 4-5:30 p.m.
Robert Polhemus, Stanford University: "The Device to Root Out Evil: Art versus Religion"

Paul Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania: "Ulysses Pianola: Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Player Piano in 'Circe' " (Two-time winner of the prize for excellence in teaching at Pomona College; his The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination won the Modern Language Association Prize for a first book.)

Derek Attridge, York University: "A Symposium All His Own" (editor of the Cambridge Companion to James Joyce.)

Open reception, Browsing Room, Burke Library 6- 7 p.m.