Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies opens its 2024-2025 series with “James Joyce’s Ulysses in New York: A Counterfactual View from Fifth Avenue,” a lecture by Robert Spoo, the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters at Princeton University, on September 27 at 4:30 p.m. at the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. The theater is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.

James Joyce’s Ulysses was famously first published as a book in 1922 in Paris, France, by the American bookseller Sylvia Beach, who, as a young woman, had lived in Princeton and is buried there. The centenary of this momentous literary event has recently been celebrated throughout the world. But what if Ulysses the book had first been published, not in Paris, but in New York, New York? In his lecture, Spoo proposes that the novel’s publication came close to happening just that way. He explores how the history of Ulysses—and of New York’s role in modernist literature—would have been vastly different had Joyce’s masterpiece debuted from Fifth Avenue or West 40th Street rather than the rue de l’Odéon in Paris. As Spoo performs the thought experiment of substituting New York City for Paris as the birthplace of the unexpurgated Ulysses, a lively cast of characters takes the stage: lavish patrons, overworked lawyers, timid and courageous publishers, a shameless literary pirate, censors and smuthounds, and the famous Irish author himself.

Robert Spoo, Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters at Princeton. Photo credit: Sarah Malone

Spoo’s research and teaching merge interdisciplinary interests in literature, law, and theories of intellectual property and the public domain. His writing focuses on modern Irish figures, notably James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, and he is actively involved in the law-and-literature movement within modernist studies. Pairing his academic career with work as a practicing lawyer, Spoo has assisted scholars, writers, and creative artists with the challenges of copyright and fair use and served as co-counsel in a groundbreaking lawsuit to free scholars from unwarranted copyright threats by the Estate of James Joyce. His books include James Joyce and the Language of History: Dedalus’s Nightmare (Oxford University Press, 1994); Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (Oxford University Press, 2013); Modernism and the Law (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); and, with Omar Pound, Ezra Pound and Margaret Cravens: A Tragic Friendship, 1910-1912 (Duke University Press, 1988) and Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946 (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Spoo is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2016-2017; a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellowship at Princeton for 2020-2021; and an Oklahoma Center for the Humanities Fellowship for 2022-2023. Previously, he held an endowed chair in Law at the University of Tulsa, where he was also Professor of English and edited the James Joyce Quarterly. Spoo earned his Ph.D. in English at Princeton and his J.D. from Yale Law School.

Spoo co-chairs the 2024-25 Fund for Irish Studies Series with Jane Cox, Professor of the Practice in Theater and Director of the Program in Theater & Music Theater at the Lewis Center. Spoo and Cox take the helm from past series co-chairs Fintan O’Toole and Paul Muldoon.

The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The lecture series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.

The Fund for Irish Studies website lists more information about the lecture series. Additional events scheduled for the year include:

• November 15 — Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton on “A History of Ireland in 10 Poems”
• December 6 — Conversations with the Abbey Theatre: Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin and Head of Producing Jen Coppinger
• February 7 — Conversations with Abbey Theatre: Literary and New Work Director Ruth McGowan with Associate Artist and actor Derbhle Crotty
• February 21 — Irish novelist Colm Tóibín reads from his work
• March 20 — Author Niall Williams reads from his work
• March 21 — Author, critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole delivers the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture

The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies.

Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the more than 120 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.