In this hallucinatory episode, in which everything that has happened up to this point in Ulysses is reimagined, Bloom and Stephen wander in “Nighttown,” Joyce’s version of the red-light district of Dublin. We talk about confusion, hilarity, gender roles, obscenity, and redemption. Joining us are Kelly Bryan from the Blooms & Barnacles podcast, John McCourt, professor at University of Macerata, Italy, and Ronan Crowley, postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Set in a maternity hospital, “Oxen” parodies the development of English prose. A celebration of maternity or a rival creative feat? Joyce called it the most difficult episode “to interpret and to execute”; we talk about the shortcuts he took in composing it and its unexpected humor. Joining us are Greg Harradine, composer in the Scottish Borders, Emmet O’Cuana, Dublin writer living in Australia, and Chrissy Van Mierlo, Museum director at Loughborough Bellfoundry, UK, and recovering Joycean.  

A woman, a man, a beach at twilight, and at least one orgasm: but what exactly happens? Is Gerty MacDowell brainwashed or liberated by the women’s magazines she reads? Is the episode misogynist or empathetic? We complicate these binaries with Anne Fogarty, professor at University College, Dublin, Cathal Mac Thréinfhir, retired teacher in Limerick, Nuala O’Connor, Irish novelist, James Turner, professor at UC Berkeley, and Vicki Mahaffey, professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In Barney Kiernan’s pub, what does belonging look like? What do language and cliché have to do with self-determination, nationalism, and inclusion? Our wide-ranging interlocutors are Jim Ward, tour guide of Nora Barnacle’s Galway home, Valérie Bénéjam, maître de conférences at the University of Nantes, France, Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to the United States, András Kappanyos, professor at Miskolc University, Hungary, and Vincent Cheng, born in Taiwan and professor at the University of...

Surrounded by singing men in the Ormond, Bloom experiences the consolations and dangers of music as he watches Blazes Boylan knock back a drink before his tryst with Molly. We talk about how Joyce transforms words into a seductive soundscape with Katherine O’Callaghan, lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Peter Kennedy, professor at the University of Hong Kong, as well as Dakota Brown and Emma Farry from the Berkeley Ulysses seminar. And we listen to some songs…

This episode presents readers with nineteen seemingly random vignettes around Dublin featuring a mass of characters connected only slightly by a promenading Jesuit priest and a Viceroy on parade. We talk about urban atomization, truth and the imagination, and sadistic humor with Matthew O’Leary, a philosophy graduate from Cork, Ireland, Scarlett Baron, associate professor in the English Department at University College, London, and Sergio Salvia Coelho, a theater critic from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Why does Joyce associate Stephen’s conversation in the National Library of Ireland with such a dangerous Homeric episode? Scylla and Charybdis are monsters, one ready to create a lethal whirlpool, the other to snatch men out of the ship. Thinking through this surprisingly dramatic episode with us are Alex Benoit, English teacher at the Greenfield school in North Carolina, and Matthew Creasy, professor of literature at the University of Glasgow, as well as former Berkeley student, Mallory Gong.

As we track Bloom's wanderings in this lunchtime episode, we consider the relationship between food and power. We talk about food imagery, colonialism, animals, and class, and how the violent binary of “Eat or be eaten” breaks down in Bloom’s memory of his picnic with Molly on Howth Head. In conversation with us are Matthew Hayward, professor at the University of South Pacific, Fiji, Sebastián Maldonado-Cano, literature major from Texcoco, Mexico, and Mark Bloomberg, film maker from Brooklyn.

This episode centers on the Evening Telegraph offices where men gather to talk about journalism, tell jokes, mock political speeches, and celebrate great oratory. We talk about rhetoric and windbaggery with Liam Heneghan, writer and professor of environmental science and studies at DePaul, Terence Killeen, former Irish Times editor and scholar at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, and Lucas Petersen, journalist and professor at Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In Glasnevin cemetery for the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom thinks “in the midst of death, we are in life.” We think about different kinds of death and life in “Hades” with a variety of guests: doctors Kim Kwang Taik from Seoul, South Korea, and Alejandro Dagnino Veras from Lima, Peru, Barry Devine, professor at Heidelberg University, Amanda Greenwood, literary scholar and archivist, and from the 2020 UC Berkeley seminar, Dakota Brown, Dylan Duong, Jolene Gazman, and our own Max Ambrose.

Modelled on Odysseus’s encounter with the eaters of the narcotic lotus flower, this episode explores how people lose themselves. With Maud Ellmann, professor at the University of Chicago, Ato Quayson, professor at Stanford University, and Michael Cooney, public relations officer at a plaintiff and labor law firm, we talk about whether Bloom finds himself again. We think about Ulysses as a map of the world as we range from the streets of Dublin to Accra, Ghana, and to Melbourne, Australia.

Enter Leopold Bloom. We talk about his odd ways and his responses to a range of concealed things in “Calypso,” from Blazes Boylan’s letter to Molly to other people’s experience. Sharing their thoughts are Margot Norris, professor emerita at UC Irvine, James Ramey, professor at UAM-Cuajimalpa, Mexico City, and Elizabeth Salerno, senior librarian at the New York Public Library. We also feature two songs on the program for Molly’s tour with Blazes, “Love’s Old Sweet Song” and “Là ci darem la

“Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses, is notoriously difficult. We explore different responses to that difficulty as we talk with Ilaria Susmel, a bank clerk from Trieste, Italy, Sam Slote, a professor of English at Trinity College Dublin, and Piotr Prachnio, a literary critic from Poland. We talk about the protean obscurity as a point of identification, an occasion for exploration, and a series of beautiful and evocative sounds.

Exploring “Nestor,” we think about teaching as farce and learning as historical trauma and collaboration. We listen to a conversation between students at Caffè Strada, Berkeley, and we talk with three guests: Garvan Corkery, a lawyer from Cork, Ireland; Robert Spoo, Chapman Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa; and Jeffrey Nishimura, Chair of English at Los Angeles City College. Along the way, we talk about Jewish migration to Cork and Joycean reading groups in Los Angeles.

In our first episode, we talk about how Ulysses begins. We’re joined by Karen Lawrence, President of the Huntington Library, John Higgins of the University of Cape Town, and Jamie Salomon, leader of the Bloomsday Ulysses Reading Group for the Montreal Literary Festival. We hear their thoughts on everything from style to playing amateur archeologists.