James Joyce Conference

The James Joyce Quarterly at The University of Tulsa celebrates 40 years of publication in conjunction with the 2003 North American James Joyce Festival at TU June 16-20. The conference will gather together more than 200 scholars from around the world -- including Italy, The United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland, many of whom will be presenting new and original research on Joyce. This year's conference theme is "Post Industrial Joyce." The term "the Joyce industry" was first coined in response to American critics' intense fascination with the Irish author. The James Joyce Quarterly has been at the center of this industry, disseminating scholarly work to a large and diverse audience of international readers. This year's conference will look back on how this industry has taken shape, and look forward to the future.Conference events at TU that are free and open to the public include:A keynote roundtable titled, "The Past, Present, and Future of the Joyce Industry: Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the James Joyce Quarterly," will be held Monday, June 16. Participants will include Thomas F. Staley, founding editor (1963-1989), Robert Spoo, editor of the JJQ (1989-2001) and Sean Latham, current editor.The conference will include three keynote addresses, the first by Robert Scholes, who will give a lecture titled "Sentimental Jimmy," on June 17 at TU. Scholes, professor at Brown University, is the incoming president of the Modern Language Association. A talk introducing a special exhibit of TU's world-renowned Joyce materials titled "In Good Company: An Exhibition from the Special Collections of McFarlin Library," will be held at on June 17. The exhibit is curated by Lori N. Curtis, head of Special Collections at TU, and Luca Crispi and Stacey Herbert of SUNY Buffalo.Carol Shloss, author of a new book on Lucia Joyce, will give a lecture on June 20.The James Joyce Quarterly was founded in 1963 at The University of Tulsa by Thomas F. Staley, who was the journal's editor for its first twenty-five years. Beginning as a modest publication of forty pages, JJQ grew in size and quality under Staley's guidance and was soon unchallenged as the journal of record on the life and writings of James Joyce. From 1989 to 2001 Robert Spoo edited the journal, overseeing its continuing expansion by encouraging a wide variety of theoretical, critical and historical work on Joyce. In 2001, Sean Latham succeeded Spoo as editor and has served in that capacity since. The first issue of JJQ, appearing in the fall of 1963, carried only eight advisory editors on its masthead, but, as the community of Joyce scholars expanded and specializations proliferated, that number grew, and JJQ currently boasts more than forty advisors from North America and Europe. The journal has a strong base of academic library subscriptions, and its total subscriptions number approximately 1,500, with readers in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. One of JJQ's traditional strengths has been its special issues, which allow for both intense focus and creative expansion of topics, and the journal's special issues have made signal contributions to criticism and theory within and beyond Joyce studies.The conference is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The University of Tulsa and the James Joyce Quarterly. For more information or to register for the conference, go to http://www.utulsa.edu/JJoyceQtrly/JJ2003/registration.htm or call Sean Latham at (918) 631-2857. For information on the JJQ, visit www.utulsa.edu/JJoyceQtrly/default.htm.