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"A Symposium All His Own": The International James Joyce Foundation and Its Symposia
- Joyce Studies Annual
- University of Texas Press
- Volume 12, Summer 2001
- pp. 124-149
- 10.1353/joy.2001.0015
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 12, Summer 2001© 2001 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819 1 Some of the material in the early parts of this essay can be found in much more detail in my “Synjoysium: An Informal History of the International James Joyce Symposia,” JJQ 22, no.2 (Winter 1985). Occasionally, I’ve echoed here what I said there. “A Symposium All His Own”: The International James Joyce Foundation and Its Symposia MORRIS BEJA A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn’t stop him. (U 11.470) In contrast to what many people seem to believe, International James Joyce Symposia are not part of the natural order of things. Nor do they come about through spontaneous generation. Nor, in the beginning, was the Joycean world without form, and void. Still, the beginning of the organized “Joyce community” (or, according to some, the start of the organized “Joyce industry”) can be usefully dated to the gathering together unto one place of Bernard Benstock, Fritz Senn, and Thomas F. Staley.1 Staley, then at the University of Tulsa and editor of the recently established James Joyce Quarterly, visited Senn in Zürich in November, 1966. It occurred to them that people particularly interested in Joyce would profit from meeting one another and hearing each other’s views and ideas. The previous year, Benstock, who was then at Kent State University, had also visited Senn. Preparatory to anything else, Staley and Senn decided to ask Benstock to join them in planning and organizing the First International James Joyce Symposium: not the least aspect of their chutzpah was billing the meeting as the “First.” It met in Dublin the very next year, June 15 and 16. morris beja 125 More about the first Symposium shortly: one result it had, in any case, was the creation of the James Joyce Foundation. The purpose of its founders (as, many years later, the by-laws of the Foundation came to state) was “to encourage scholarship, criticism, and study in regard to the life, work and career of James Joyce, and to facilitate and coordinate ways in which people interested in his works—scholars, critics, teachers, students, and general readers—may meet together, correspond with each other, learn from one another, and help each other in achieving a greater appreciation and understanding of his work.” The first President of the Foundation was Staley, and the “headquarters” was in Tulsa, with Staley and the Quarterly. Giorgio Joyce agreed to be the Honorary Director, and the first Honorary Trustees were Frank Budgen and Umberto Eco. Even by 1969 and 1970, no President (or Vice President, for that matter) was listed in the Foundation’s letterhead. The name of the organization would not be expanded to the International James Joyce Foundation until more than twenty years later, in 1988, but its international character was never in doubt. The first list of a “Board of Trustees” I’ve been able to locate (dated October 1969) included, in addition to the three founders , Jacques Aubert (Lyon), Mogens Boisen (Copenhagen), Clive Hart (then in Kahibah, Australia), Richard M. Kain (Louisville), Gerard O’Flaherty (Dublin), Derick Plant (Trieste), Jean Schoonbroodt (Louvain ), and Francis Warner (Oxford). Selection to the Board was at first an informal affair, owing to participation rather than a formal election . Within a few years, or anyway by 1974, Maria Jolas and Carola Giedion-Welcker had also agreed to be Honorary Trustees. (Subsequent Honorary Trustees have included Richard M. Kain, Hugh Kenner, Frances Steloff, Giorgio Melchiori, Ken Monaghan—and Fritz Senn.) Staley remained President until 1973. For the record, he was followed by Benstock (1973–77), Senn (1977–82), Morris Beja (1982– 90), Karen Lawrence (1990 –96), Zack Bowen (1996 –2000), and Rosa Maria Bosinelli, the current President. Toward the end of my term, the office of the Foundation was transferred to Ohio State University . Staley had left Tulsa for the University of Texas, and it was felt desirable to have the office housed where there was an officer or member of the Board. Ohio State provided office space, computer equipment, and the services of...