James Joyce grew up in the shadow of a massive diaspora brought about by the devastating potato famine of the 1840s, when Ireland lost one third of its population to death and forced migration. By the end of the nineteenth century, forty percent of Irish-born people were living elsewhere.
Toronto is marked by that same history: it was a relatively small city at the time, with a population of only 30,000; but at the height of the famine it became a destination for nearly twice that number of Irish men, women, and children. Ireland Park, located quayside at the foot of Bathurst Street, was created in 2007 as a famine memorial. Irish artist Rowan Gillespie created four sculptures for Ireland Park that complement his famine figures in Dublin, and they provide an artistic link between Dublin and Toronto, as if sister cities.
Now in the twenty-first century Toronto has become uniquely multicultural: slightly more than half its citizens were born in another country, drawn from every part of the world. Joyce, who lived and wrote in Dublin, Trieste, Zurich, Paris, and London, knew of Diaspora personally, and as a witness. His fiction is imbued with yearnings to return home, or trepidation at leaving it, as well as a keen interest in how borders or the lack of them create violent confrontation, whether it be an altercation in a local pub, an estrangement in a marriage, or the launching of a World War.
Joyce shows us that barriers are everywhere: in ourselves, in our relations to others, between our hope and our reality, driving our desire and threatening our peace of mind. For Joyce, the political is not just the personal, it is a part of the unconscious.
Registration begins at noon on June 21
In addition to the usual concurrent paper sessions, there will be two plenary sessions featuring Ato Quayson and Valérie Bénéjam. Entertainment during the conference includes a piano recital by Jarred Dunn featuring selections from the Sirens episode of Ulysses, a partial viewing of Adam Harvey’s film, Shem Song, an Open Mic night (Finnegans Wake meets Karaoke), a performance by Donna Greenberg of Joyce’s Chamber Music, artwork by Joycean cartoonologist D.J. Dan Schiff, and a festive closing banquet.