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Berenice Abbott, Joyce and the Creative Women

Written by Conor on . Posted in News.

Bloomsday Festival 2024

14 June 2024 at 6:30pm

Images: Berenice Abbot, Portraits of Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Lucia Joyce, and Nora Joyce, 1926-27, courtesy Clark Art Institute. Centre photgraph by Charles Norton, courtesy of A.G. Norton.

On June 14th at 6:30pm The James Joyce Centre was please to present Berenice Abbot, Joyce and the Creative Women, a personal Bloomsday Festival presentation on Berenice Abbott, a pioneering 20th-century photographer who took some of the most iconic portraits of Joyce and his family, and the community of creative, queer women who supported his career.

A chance discovery of a box of family photos in a basement in New Jersey led one woman to uncover Abbott’s seldom told artistic legacy. Follow storyteller, archivist, and social activist A.G. Norton on her personal journey through Abbott’s private archive revealing: letters written by Lucia Joyce to Berenice, personal commentary made by Berenice about her multiple photography sessions with the beloved author, and the intersections between the publication of Ulysses and the community of queer women who supported it.

Throughout the 1920s, Berenice Abbott’s life crisscrossed between Greenwich Village and Paris where, in addition to the Joyce family, she photographed and befriended fellow queer women including Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Djuna Barnes, Jannett Flanner, and Sylvia Beach. Hear of how their friendships and artistic endeavors all entwined with one another and the lessons and blessings their legacies leave behind.

Delighted to be joining the Bloomsday Festival from Connecticut, Norton will share her research into Abbott’s fascinating life which all started with the discovery of photos taken by her late grandfather and went onto interviews with both of Abbott’s biographers and personal friends, Julia Van Hafften and Hank O’Neal.

A.G. Norton has over 15 years experience in London as a social worker and children’s rights activist where she used her voice to publicly advocate for underserved, marginalized communities.

Returning to New York in 2018 she discovered her family’s personal connection and photographs of photographer Berenice Abbott and has spent the last three years gathering research into her remarkable life. Norton has written several performance pieces based on the photographic legacies she inherited and has toured them at the Brighton, Camden, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. Norton was the 2023 recipient of the Brighton Pride Award to support queer storytelling.

For more information on her work and international performances can be found at www.vivelapin.com or @notyouraverageslideshow on Instagram.

The Bloomsday Festival is organised by the James Joyce Centre in partnership with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Fáilte Ireland, and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.

Rosa Chacel and James Joyce: A Portrait of a Joycean Artist

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Bloomsday Festival 2024

6 June 2024 at 6:30pm at the Instituto Cervantes Dublín

The James Joyce Centre and Instituto Cervantes Dublín was proud to present Rosa Chacel and James Joyce: A Portrait of a Joycean Artist with Mónica Galindo González on 6 June 2024 at 6:30pm. The event was held at Instituto Cervantes Dublín on Lincoln House, 6-16 Lincoln Place, Dublin 2.

This year is the centenary of Spain’s first publication regarding the work of James Joyce, which was a review by Antonio Marichalar about the upcoming Spanish translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Even though the translation was officially published in 1926, some writers were fortunate to get an early copy of the novel and explore its contents. One of these writers was Rosa Chacel, who immediately fell in love with Joyce’s novel and started to experiment with his techniques.

Rosa Chacel (1898 – 1994) is a writer part of the “Generation of ’27” and the Sinsombrero thanks to her participation in the intellectual and cultural milieu of the 20th-century Spain. Due to the close relationship between her life and her writings, her literary innovations made her a nonconformist and subversive writer, always concerned about her style and trajectory. One of her main influences was the writings of James Joyce, which made her recognise that her work is part of “el mundo Joyce” (Joyce’s world).

Joycean scholar Mónica Galindo González guided the audience through Rosa Chacel’s work and its Joycean connections. After a reading of texts by both writers, the event was followed by a Q&A section.

Mónica Galindo González is one of the assistants at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin and a language tutor at University College Dublin. During her Erasmus in Birmingham, she decided to explore Dublin. Her first visit to the James Joyce Centre in 2019 was so inspiring that it gave her the idea to research Joycean traits in the work of Spanish writers for her bachelor’s dissertation. Her passion for James Joyce and the work of Rosa Chacel allowed her to continue this project and bring it to University College Dublin, where she recently submitted a research masters dissertation on the same topic. Mónica has also presented papers in three international conferences in Joyce Studies. In June of this year, she will be presenting a paper at the International Joyce Symposium in Glasglow about the symbol of paralysis in Spain and Ireland.

The Bloomsday Festival is organised by the James Joyce Centre in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Finnegans Wake, Ulster and Partition

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Lecture

23 April 2024 at 6:30pm

‘Lambeg Drums and Pipes on the Way to the Field on the Glorious 12th of July, Ballymena 1910’ by Robert D. Beattie

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to host a presentation about James Joyce’s interrogation of Ulster and partition in Finnegans Wake by Dr. Donal Manning on Tuesday, 23 April 2024 at 6:30pm.

Although Joyce is mostly associated with Dublin, there is a wealth of references to Ulster in his work, particularly in Finnegans Wake: its topography, its myth and legend, and its history. Joyce’s portrayal of Ulster is a characteristically complex amalgam of difference and inclusion. Joyce began to write the Wake, provisionally called Work in Progress, in 1923 and he published the novel in 1939. He was, therefore, ideally placed to interrogate partition and the growing pains of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. His portrait is tinged with disappointment and regret. A century after partition, and in the aftermath of Brexit, borders are again physical and symbolic markers of difference and exclusion. Joyce’s critique of intolerance and separatism is as pertinent today as when he embarked on Finnegans Wake a hundred years ago.

Dr. Donal Manning completed his PhD at Liverpool University. His thesis was on Ulster and unionism in Finnegans Wake. He has presented peer-reviewed papers on Finnegans Wake at conferences of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures at University of Cork (2018), University of Nijmegen, Netherlands (2018), and Trinity College Dublin (2019) and delivered three courses on Joyce’s fiction (two of which covered Finnegans Wake) at the Continuing Education Department, Liverpool University. His book Finnegans Wake, Ulster and Partition: The Sanguine Boundary Limit was published last year by Cork University Press. It can be purchased via this link: https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/9781782055877/finnegans-wake-ulster-and-partition/

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

When I Think About the Prankquean

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Lecture

19 April 2024 at 7:30pm

The James Joyce Centre hosted a special lecture and reading by famed Joycean Dr. James Keeley on Friday, 19 April 2024 at 7:30pm.

James presented his experiences of reading and studying Finnegans Wake over the years. In particular, he paid close attention to the enigmatic character of the “Prankquean.” He is a pioneer in reading the works of James Joyce on Skype and a long-standing contributor to the Sweny Pharmacy’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Reading Groups. For five years, he was the moderator of the Transatlantic James Joyce Reading Group, including the Finnegans Wake Sunday School, involving readers from New York to Dublin. He is a co-founder of the Joyceborough Finnegans Wake Reading Group.

Jim was conferred with a PhD in English and Comparative Literature by Columbia University in 2002. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Community in a World of Limited Good

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Lecture

11 March 2024 at 7pm

Tá an áthas orainn cuireadh a thabhart duit chuig léacht leis tOllamh Ray Cashman, ar an Luan, 11 Márta, ag 7.00 PM, sa James Joyce Centre ar Sraid Sheoirse Thua.

An Cumann Le Béaloideas éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society and the James Joyce Centre were delighted to host a presentation by the distinguished folklore scholar, Professor Ray Cashman (University of Indiana, Bloomington), at the James Joyce Centre on Monday, 11 March 2024 at 7pm. This was a rare opportunity to hear the internationally renowned folklore scholar give a presentation in Dublin about Irish folklore and an Gorta Mór.

“Luck’s Pennies, Butter Witches, and the Hungry Grass: Community in a World of Limited Good”

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instill enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, a project in need of continual maintenance. Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community than the mid-nineteenth-century Famine. If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning this social contract for mutual support.

Professor Ray Cashman is director of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. He is currently Visiting Professor at NUI Galway.

Professor Cashman has carried out extensive folklore and ethnological research in Ireland. His books include Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border (2017) and Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community (2011), and many articles. The numerous awards he has received for his work include the Michael J Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture and the Donald Murphy Award for Distinguished First Book, both of which were awarded by the American Association for Irish Studies, and the Chicago Folklore Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.