Eire on the Erie
North American James Joyce Conference
Buffalo, NY, June 12-16, 2009.
"Bring about it to be brought about and it will be, loke, our lake lemanted, that greyt lack, the citye of Is is issuant (atlanst !), urban and orbal, through seep froms umber under wasseres of Erie." Finnegans Wake 601
Every odd numbered year, the International James Joyce Society sponsors an American conference on and around Bloomsday, June 16, known as the North American James Joyce Conference. Usually it takes place in a city, and at a university, that has special reasons for hosting James Joyce scholars. In 1999 it was in Charleston, S.C.; in 2001 it was at the University of California, Berkeley; in 2003 it was at the University of Tulsa, home of the James Joyce Quarterly; in 2005 it was at Cornell University, whose library contains one of the significant James Joyce manuscript collections; in 2007 the host university will be the University of Texas at Austin, where The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center also possesses significant Joyce holdings. In 2009 it will be hosted by the University at Buffalo, whose holdings of manuscripts and papers are the largest in the world.
Eire on the Erie will combine scholarly presentations and civic events centered in the City of Buffalo. Gown and town will intersect at crucial moments, including Bloomsday itself, Wednesday, June 16. By and large, the conference venue will be downtown Buffalo, with its abundant civic space and urban hospitality – restaurants, bars, cafes theaters. However, since a portion of the conference will be given over to a display and discussion of the Joyce holdings at the Special Collections Library, some portion of the conference will be held at the University's Anderson Gallery.
On Friday, June 12th, we will have, free and open to the public and the community, an evening with Colum McCann, novelist and film maker: "Everything in this Country Must." It will feature readings and at least one film. The venue will be Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
A special feature of the conference will be an opening reception and exhibition by the UB Special Collections Library at the Anderson Gallery on Saturday evening, June 13. It will feature some of Joyce’s personal possessions as well as the rich array of manuscripts and letters from the Joyce archive. After the conference the UB Library will send the exhibition on a national tour, to develop awareness of the University at Buffalo as a research destination for all persons engaged in the study of James Joyce.
In 2009, Bloomsday, June 16, will be on a Tuesday, and Bloomsday festivities will take place that evening. On Bloomsday, the conference will move to two venues uptown: the Burchfield-Penny artspace which is just completing construction, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery directly across the street.
Sign in and registration would take place Friday and Saturday, June 12th and 13th, at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Buffalo, where most of the conference will be housed. The conference proper will take place on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, the 14-16th, culminating in one or more Bloomsday events, to be held at the Burchfield-Penny, the Albright-Knox, and Delaware Park. The Buffalo conference will be a 3-day conference and should attract about several hundred attendees from the scholarly community. Public activities outside the conference organized around the traditional Bloomsday, should attract another 400-500 members of the Buffalo community.
Please join us in June 2009 for the North American James Joyce Conference in Buffalo, New York, where the Niagara River’s commodius vicus of recirculation joins the "wasseres of Erie."
For further information, contact conference director Mark Shechner at shechner@buffalo.edu. To submit panel and paper proposals, watch for the Call for Papers panel on which the CFP will be issued in August.