Postponed

A new date for this seminar will be available shortly.

Abstract

How can studying literary fiction help us to understand non-normative vision?  

My research addresses this question via a focus on the life and literature of James Joyce (1882-1941), a modern Irish writer, famous for his difficult, apparently obscene books. Joyce experienced a whole range of vision issues, including cataracts, iritis, and glaucoma. He endured a variety of treatments, from leeches and cocaine to multiple eye operations. His books are full of intriguing explorations of seeing, sight, and sight loss.

This talk will provide a few insights (pun intended!) into my current monograph project – James Joyce and Non-normative Vision (under contract with Edinburgh University Press) – via some examples of my mixed, literature-focused approach. I will offer some close readings of relevant vision-related passages from Joyce’s epic tome, Ulysses (1922); examine some fin de siècle French blindness memoirs (by Maurice de la Sizeranne and Louis Émile Javal) that may have influenced Joyce’s writing; then end by considering the various ways in which people with non-normative vision read Joyce's texts today (including a brief book history of Braille Ulysses).