Summer Study Abroad Trip to Ireland - Apply by Saturday

Saturday, February 15 is the deadline to apply for James Joyce's Dublin: A Multimedia Odyssey, the UMD short term summer study abroad program to Ireland.  There are still spaces available, so please don't hesitate. 

This is an in-depth study of just one text, but oh, what a text.  We focus exclusively on Ulysses by James Joyce, and we design various digital arts interactions around it.  See the attached tentative syllabus for more information.  

We spend most of our time in Dublin tracing the steps of Leopold Bloom (the main character in Ulysses), with a few days in Galway and a few days of independent travel.   

This course is currently pending approval for fulfilling General Education requirements of Scholarship in Practice and the Humanities. It has already passed the College level and should be approved within the next month at the University level.

Email Johnna Schmidt or Zein El-Amine with any questions. E-mail addresses are: schmidt.johnna@gmail.com andzelamine@gmail.com.

Here's a link for more information and the application:

https://myea.umd.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10309

 

 

Syllabus:

 

Title of Course:  James Joyce's Dublin: a multi-media Odyssey

ARHU 351

Education Abroad course, summer, short-term, 3 weeks to Dublin, Ireland

Faculty:  Johnna Schmidt and Zein El-Amine

Course Description:

In this course we will use one of the most influential and ambitious modernist texts, Ulysses, by James Joyce, as a springboard into discussions and experiments regarding the nature of how we experience our own lives as narrative, and how the influence of contemporary digital and social media culture modifies our lived experiences.  

Ulysses, as the title suggests, is a book loosely based upon Homer's Odyssey.  James Joyce "updated" the classic to entertain his early 20th century readers simultaneously elucidating/demonstrating the shifts that were occurring in our collective consciousness because of many colliding world events and movements: the industrial age paving the way for mass reproduction, a rise in city-dwelling, the shock of World War I with its mechanized killing and huge death tolls, the rise of advertising and a nascent understanding of subjectivity, etc. Joyce reformulated the figure of the "hero" as Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged, middle-class Jewish (outsider) ad-seller living in Dublin, one who spent his work day traipsing around Dublin while suspecting his wife was carrying on an extramarital affair, at home. Joyce's stylistic innovations throughout the novel and his detailed recounting of life in Dublin during this time period re-imagined the life of the mind and upset conventional notions of what is literary, whose life is worth recounting, issues surrounding femininity and masculinity, the relative importance of religion and nationalism to the individual, and many more.  His use of stream-of-consciousness and his understanding of the subjective nature of any narratized “reality” set the course for the modernist avant-garde; many of his innovations are still seen as radical today.

Now, in 2013, we find there are many multi-media updates to Joyce's re-formulated Odyssey (in the form of Ulysses).  An app for your ipad gives you access to a concise (shortened) graphic novel version of the 700-1000 page novel, an app for your phone allows you to retrace Leopold Bloom's steps through Dublin with narrative accompaniment, youtube videos summarize the novel chapter by chapter, and a radio show by a former student of this course creates a sound compendium of all the songs referenced by Joyce in the book, available on Facebook!  All of these seductive products surrounding the original enhance our enjoyment of it. Or do they?

Once again we seem to be engaged in a great shift of collective consciousness, brought on by new technologies that once again challenge accepted knowledge about subjectivity,  how we use time, and the very nature of social space (to name a few).  This course seeks to explore basic questions about how the world of digital arts intersects with our everyday experience of our lives, and how our own personal odyssey is impacted by such interventions or interruptions of our real-time, non-mediated reality.

For instance, if you've already seen pictures of Sweny's Pharmacy online (the setting of Chapter 4, still open for us to visit in Dublin) does that impact your experience of the place?  Is it even possible for us to walk alone into the Davy Byrne's pub (also a setting of the book, still open for business) and spend an hour there, as Leopold Bloom did, without checking our cellphones?  How does it feel to walk into the pub, alone, and eat lunch, alone, non-connected?  Does that change the experience of lunch and how you remember it or narratize it?  How is the experience of reading the book substantively different than reading the graphic novel or watching the videos?  Given the sheer difficulty and time commitment that reading the original text demands, why do people still do it?

Students will interact with the text, the various multi-media iterations of the text, and each other's interactions via instagram, vine, twitter, FB, soundcloud, and other multi-media platforms and apps that they discover along the way.  Class discussions about narrative framing, what students choose to digitize and why, how digital speed and screens impact our creative process as readers and makers of art, what subjects are considered image-worthy, etc. will be engaged upon as we re-trace the steps of Leopold Bloom and read Joyce’s Ulysses, in its entirety.

Required Reading :

1.                  Ulysses by James Joyce (Annotated Student Edition with an Introduction and Notes by Declan Kiberd; Penguin Books, 2011.)

2.                  Excerpts from the following articles will be provided for historical context of James Joyce’s Ulysses and how it has been read by scholars: The Painter of Modern Life, by Charles Baudelaire, The Storyteller, by Walter Benjamin; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin.

3.                  Articles on technology will also be read to provide present day context of our changing state of mind such as The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens, by Ferris Jabr (Scientific American, April 11, 2013), Simulations, by Jean Baudrillard,

Strongly Recommended Reading: 

4.                  Lecture notes on Ulysses by Vladimir Nabokov.

5.                  The New Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires

6.                  Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece by Declan Kiberd.

7.                  The Dubliners by James Joyce (especially Araby, Grace, and The Dead).

Suggested Reading: 

1.      The Ulysses Guide. Tours through Joyce’s Dublin by Robert Nicholson.

2.      James Joyce’s Ulysses, A Casebook by Derek Attridge.

3.      A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man by James Joyce

4.      James Joyce’s Ulysses, A Study by Stuart Gilbert, Faber & Faber Ltd.

5.      Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman.

Suggested Materials:

1.                  The Lonely Planet Guide to Dublin (This is only a guide and does not have to be read in full, but should be purchased so that you can roam freely through the city).

2.                  Materials for costumes for Bloomsday (June 16^th). Bloomsday is the annual celebration of Ulysses in Dublin and some residents dress as their favorite character.

Suggested Viewing:

1.                  “The Dead”, 1987. Dir. John Huston.

2.                  “James Joyce's Dublin: The Ulysses Tour”.  A great video tour led by a guide who works at the James Joyce Museum and Tower in Dublin.

Evaluation:

Students’ grades will be calculated in the following way (explanation following):

            Attendance and participation:                                                            20%

            Episode/Chapter Presentation – group Tumblr project incl Tweet:  20%

            Group project of digital advertisement for Bloomsday:                    10%

            Reflection Session incl written reflection:                                          10%

            Two reading accountability quizzes:                                                   20%

            Final Project incl 5 pages of text- Individual Tumblr:                                    20%

Attendance and participation (20%): Includes the student’s ability to engage in group discussions, to follow the Group Ground Rules (see addendum), to arrive on time, and to treat others and the environment with respect. 

Episode/Chapter Presentation Presentations (20% of your final grade):  Group project on Tumblr including one Tweet. Each student will be assigned one episode of Ulysses to present to the group and will act as a guide when the episode in question is discussed. The student will also contribute content on their chapter to the group tumblr (“Leopold Bloom’s Tumblr”). The first three episodes, episode 15 (Circe), episode 17 (Ithaca) and the final episode (Penelope) may be introduced  by the instructors.

The grading rubric for this assignment will be as follows:

·         Content: 10 points.  Should be evident in your verbal presentation and/or your tumblr: the primary text (Ulysses), plus at least 2 additional sources.  There is a wealth of sources; you may consider the recommended or suggested reading for your additional sources. Web sources are acceptable – please cite them thoroughly.

§  You should be able to verbally summarize the action in the chapter you are handling.  The tumblr should reflect major themes and symbols present in the chapter you are handling. You may also discuss echoes or resonances with other parts of the text or historical references, as you see fit.

§  Demonstrate your familiarity and facility with the fundamental terminology and concepts you’ve been introduced to in this course. 

§  Relate how Joyce uses language to how contemporary thinkers use newer forms of technology.

§  Include at least two good discussion questions.  They may be provocative – what are you really interested in about the chapter?  What do you think will get a good discussion going with your peers (see below).

§  Consider getting your peers involved/engaged in the presentation in some way.  Ask them questions or plan an activity that relates to your chapter.  Feel free to break us into groups.

§  Hand in your notes at the end of your presentation. Notes should include at the very least an outline of your presentation, your sources and your discussion questions. 

·         Verbal Presentation : 3.3 points  (volume, engagement, organization)

·         Ability to engender a discussion on the content: 3.3 points

·         The Tweet:  3.3 points.  Write a 140 or fewer character summary of one of the chapters, and tweet it at: :  #UMDJamesJoyceUlysses 

Group Project (10%) Collaborate on a digital “advertisement” for Bloomsday (June 16, when the city of Dublin erupts into a celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses) using digital media you have collected on the day itself, releasing the “ad” publicly on the platform of your choice by noon the following day.

Reflection Session incl Written Reflection (10%):  A reflection session one day before departure will lead students to discuss and write about their process in coming to understand the course contents, that is, how they narratize their own lives and how both lived experience in Dublin and digital technology impact their absorption of James Joyce’s Ulysses, especially in how they create meaning around that text.  Prompts may include:  How has your experience of your own life been impacted by this course? If the purpose of literature is to instruct and/or to amuse, how has your experience reading Ulysses been most instructive/amusing?

Two reading accountability quizzes (10% each, for a total of 20%). To be given in Ireland, on      the contents of Ulysses, by James Joyce. 

Final Project (20%): Student's final project will be a tumblr including at least five pages of written text and all other medias as desired (at least two other media also included), with substantive interactions between the original text, the media we've consumed, and the real life travel experience in Ireland.  This project must reflect a body of knowledge relevant to the course and effectively communicate the application of scholarship.  The tumblr will be the students’ creation of a synthesized and provocative representation of their own individual “Odyssey” in going to Ireland and taking this course.  Students will have created their own storybook "Ulysses" through digital media while coming to a deeper understanding of how technology affects our everyday lives, and how we tell the stories of our lives.  

Logistics/Itinerary:

There will be 2 pre-departure class meetings at UMCP.

In country, students will be housed primarily in a hostel in Dublin, Ireland.  Field trips include: The National Library, the James Joyce Center, the James Joyce Museum and Martello Tower in Sandycove, as well as several walking tours to the many sites in Dublin described in Ulysses.  Also included is a 2 day sight-seeing trip to Galway.