“Joyce Without Borders”: Literature and Cultural Diversity

Fifty-two years after the creation of The International James Joyce Foundation at The University of Tulsa, Mexico City hosted “Joyce Without Borders”: 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium, in Casa Universitaria del Libro (CASUL), from June 12th to 16th. National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) along with Metropolitan Autonomous University – Cuajimalpa (UAM-C) organized this academic endeavour. It was the first time the symposium took place in a Spanish speaking country, as well as the first time that contributions in both English and Spanish were included in the programme. This encounter encouraged academics, students and Joyce enthusiasts to explore a multiplicity of ideas and interpretations alongside the promotion of international criticism and the creative labour related to the figure of the Irish author.

Organizing committee was composed by Prof. Aurora Piñeiro (UNAM), Prof. James Ramey (UAM-C), Prof. Argentina Rodríguez (UNAM), and Prof. Mario Murgia (UNAM). Likewise, members of the Scientific Committee were Prof. Tim Conley (Brock University, Canada), Prof. Onno Kosters (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Prof. Norman Cheadle (Laurentian University, Canada), Prof. Kiron Ward (Sussex University, England), Prof. Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin, Ireland) and Prof. Hedwig Schwall (KU Leuven, Belgium).In addition, students from both the department of Modern Languages and Literature (UNAM) and UAM-C cooperated as members of the backup-and-support committee.

In order to present the distinctive forms in which Joyce embodied the figure of the artist“without borders” and how his oeuvre and life transcended conventional boundaries and restrictions, the symposium registered a participation of more than 130 delegates in 45 different panels. Among the contributors, it was possible to find students, graduates and professors from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (UNAM), UAM-C, COLMEX, and other prestigious national universities, as well as academic representatives from institutions in America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Themes such as the resonance of Joyce’s writings in Latin America and other countries were explored along with the different readings and appropriations of his work in varied languages and traditions. Transmediality played an important role in diverse artistic expressions like music, painting and cinema, which were foregrounded in this gathering.

​​The four keynote addresses were delivered by Prof. Michael Wood, Prof. Terence Killeen, Prof. Cesar Salgado, and Prof. Luz Aurora Pimentel. Wood, Emeritus Professor at Princeton University, who has published numerous articles and editorials in The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books, examined the musicality in Joyce’s work and its importance throughout his oeuvre. Prof. Wood also made plenty of references to Latin-American authors, which pointed out the existence of an ongoing dialogue between Irish and Ibero-American literary traditions. Killeen, journalist and well-known researcher from the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, as well as author of Ulysses Unbound: A Reader’s Companion to Ulysses, performed a detailed analysis of Finnegans Wake by revising the word “boarder” in a section of the novel. Salgado, Associate Professor of The University of Texas at Austin, who is editor of TransLatin Joyce: Global Transmissions in Ibero-American Literature (2014), delved in the author’s influence in Latin-America, specially in the work by Lezama Lima. Finally, Luz Aurora Pimentel, Emeritus Professor from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (UNAM) and author of El relato en perspectiva and Constelaciones, penned a remarkable presentation about the “Sirens” episode in Ulysses.

​In an academic encounter distinguished by the plurality of views and ideas, it was imperative for contemporary art to be present. Rita Duffy and Penelope Wade, plastic artists whose works maintain a strong relationship with Joyce’s thoughts about the world and conceptions of national identity, coloured the symposium with a selection of their pieces. Similarly, the attendance of composer Neal Kosaly-Meyer—who recited a part of Finnegans Wake by heart, and who was accompanied by the physical and sonorous presence of a piano—together with the participation of filmmaker Gavan Kennedy, exemplified the importance of personal appropriations of Joyce’s work. Currently, Kennedy is filming the documental Finnegan Wakes, a project in which academics from around the world—several attendees of “Joyce Without Borders” included—read fragments of the novel while listening to a musical piece of their choice. As a way of representing other less orthodox approximations to the writings by James Joyce, numerous participants joined “Finnegan Wakes Yoga”, a session of this discipline where they performed postures based on fragments from the novel. Finally, as closure and as a way to commemorate Bloomsday, Mexican actress Emoé de la Parra staged a reading of Molly Bloom’s monologue.


Alejandro de las Fuentes

Grantee of the project PAPIME 400219
“Anglo-Irish Literature of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries”.