- This program is a free virtual event.
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Description
In Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties, a character asks a fictional James Joyce “What did you do in the Great War, Mr. Joyce?” to which he responds “I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?” Stoppard’s line points to the strong connection to be found between Joyce’s masterpiece and the war that was waging all around him while he was writing it. As readers of Ulysses, we tend to immerse ourselves in the details of 1904 Dublin to understand the world of Stephen, Molly, and Bloom. When we look at the novel in the context of World War I – and the attempted Irish uprising that took place around the same time — a new set of interpretations emerge that strengthen our understanding of the work’s place in literary history as well as strengthening its relevance today. Michael Barsanti will take you through a different way of understanding Ulysses by showing the ways it can be understood as a wartime novel that lifts our shared humanity over divisive national, religious, and social identities.
About the Speaker
Dr. Michael Barsanti has been reading, thinking, and talking about James Joyce for a very long time. His obsession began with a high-school class that gave him his first chance to read Ulysses back in 1986, and has carried forward ever since then through undergraduate and graduate degrees, and even a stint at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, where he curated the “Ulysses in Hand” exhibition in 1998. His favorite Joyce projects have been those that have connected non-academic ‘civilians’ to Joyce’s work, especially the *Ulysses Seen* online graphic adaptation created by Robert Berry that he collaborated on in the 2000s. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, a M.A. from the University of Miami, and a B.A. from Williams College. Dr. Barsanti lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with his wife, Erin Mooney, and their three children.