Bloomsday Festival 2025
Saturday, 14 June 2025 at 12.30pm
The James Joyce Centre is proud to present “James Joyce’s Ulysses and the Assassination of JFK,” a lecture by Prof. Barry Keane on Saturday, June 14th at 12.30pm for The Bloomsday Festival.
Prof. Keane will present the shared frames of Bloomsday (June 16th 1904) and the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy (November 22th 1963), as viceregal cavalcade and presidential motorcade wind their ways through Dublin and Dallas respectively, both routes having been announced in the newspapers and taking place against tense historical backdrops, with enigmatic onlookers offering riddles, mysteries and ambiguities.
Considered will be the figure of Lee “Leopold” Oswald, who, like a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, is out of sorts socially and professionally, nurses personal historical hurt and strong political views and is ill at ease in his domestic circumstances. What is more, Oswald boasts a strange clutch of associates and is given to flâneurial wanderings, turning up in the most unexpected of places.
JFK Day in Dallas looks to commemorate and reclaim the city’s “nightmare of history” in ways that we readily associate with Bloomsday, showcasing as it does cultural events, walks, and reenactments — many of which take place at locations which are cultural heritage landmarks associated with the events of that infamous day.
In this talk, Prof. Keane will weave facts and narratives across time, nations and literature in a demonstration that the truth can be stranger than fiction.
A native of Dublin, Barry Keane is a Professor of Comparative Studies in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw. He has written widely in the fields of Classical Tradition, Irish and Scottish literature, and Polish literature, and his book publications include critical editions of the Baroque poetess Anna Stanisławska’s matrimonial saga titled Orphan Girl (New York, Toronto: Iter Press 2016, 2021, and due 2025). He has also written: Irish Drama in Poland. Staging and Reception (Bristol: Intellect 2016). These books are available to view here.
The event is free but booking is essential.
The Bloomsday Festival is organised by The James Joyce Centre in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, Olhausen’s Sausages, and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.