Prepare for the street carnival this Bloomsday by embracing your inner Edwardian with help from burlesque star Bella A GoGo and Maite López from At it Again! You’ll discover the significance of style and dress in Ulysses as well as meeting some of the colourful characters that pepper its pages. Be inspired to dress up as the zombie-like Paddy Dignam, the flamboyant Buck Mulligan or flirty Gerty MacDowell. Discover why people dress up as bars of lemon soap or cheese sandwiches.
 

Enjoy a glass of prosecco while you are guided through dress up ideas and tips for hair and make-up that will have you cleaning up at the Bloomsday best-dressed competitions. Your complimentary goodie bag will be bursting with objects to help you celebrate Bloomsday, including a copy of Romping Through Ulysses.

Bella A Go Go is a vintage fashionista well-loved on the cabaret and vintage scene in Dublin, who has danced and performed internationally. Maite López is a vintage make-up artist and one of the founding members of At it Again!, who bring Irish literature to life with their playful pocket guides. Originally from Cologne with a passion for carnival, she loves to bring a splash of colour to Joyce's cheeks on the streets of Dublin!

Join us at The James Joyce Centre for a provocative talk by Professor Neil Davison as he discusses how Joyce’s awareness of Albert Altman, an Irish-Jewish Dubliner and local politician during the era, influenced the Dubliners’ story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’. When Joyce’s piece is framed through Altman’s public profile during the historical moment the story is set, its depiction of the lament and confusion over the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell’s Home Rule leadership can be read on a more localised and nuanced level. Altman’s position as a Councillor on the Dublin Municipal Corporation from 1901-03 was a case study of the precarious position many Jews occupied in colonialised countries during the era when calcified racial divisions transformed the nature of imperialism across the globe.

In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom’s politics also appear to draw on Joyce’s memories of Altman, and ‘Ivy Day’ is the earliest piece in which the politician’s career influenced Joyce’s interest in labour issues as a necessary component of a future Irish independence. Through Altman, and later in full expression through Bloom, Joyce recognised how Jews, so often figured as outsiders to European cultures, also came to represent what has been called a third racial-space between coloniser and colonised during the late-stage of empire before the present postcolonial/post-Holocaust era.

Neil R. Davison is Professor of Modernism, Irish Studies, and Jewish Cultural Studies at Oregon State University. He is the author of James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Jewishness and Masculinity from the Modern to the Postmodern (Routledge Press, 2010), and numerous articles on Joyce and other Irish authors, Holocaust Literature, and, most recently, Anglo and Francophone Caribbean authors. His work focuses on issues of race, gender, religion, and philosophy in twentieth-century literature.

Whiskey flows through Joyce’s works, from the stories of ‘The Sisters’ and ‘Counterparts’ to the life-giving elixir at the heart of Finnegans Wake. In fact, so central was it to his last work that, when proposing the ill-conceived notion of having fellow novelist James Stephens finish Finnegans Wake as his health declined, Joyce quipped that it would be apt to have "J J and S" under the title – a reference to one of Dublin’s most famous whiskey distillers, John Jameson & Sons. Whiskey also had an important historical and biographical significance for Joyce, whose father was secretary of the Dublin and Chapelizod Distillery Co and whose maternal grandfather John Murray once acted as sales representative for Powers.

Join us on this special jaunt around the capital’s bars to celebrate the many allusions to distilleries and whiskey in Joyce’s works whilst discovering Dublin’s rich whiskey culture. This two-hour tour will be led by a local expert and features stops at three Irish pubs where you can sample two unique Irish whiskeys and sample some delicious tasting plates of local food.

Dublin is renowned for its pub culture and, fittingly, Joyce captured a little bit of that culture in the pages of Ulysses. Some of the most important scenes in the novel take place in public houses, whether it’s the famous lunch enjoyed by Bloom in Davy Byrne’s, the musical interlude in the bar of the old Ormond Hotel in the ‘Sirens’ episode or the run-in with the nationalistic Citizen in Barney Kiernan’s of Little Britain Street. So what better way to discuss Joyce than over a few pints of porter?

Join our guide on a tour to some of Dublin's best-loved pubs and learn all about the life and times of the author in the establishments that inspired his work. You'll take in bars like the Gresham Hotel, Mulligan's and of course Davy Byrne's, where Leopold Bloom takes his lunch with a tipple. You’ll have fun, make friends, learn something and most likely forget it again before morning!

The 'Lestrygonians' episode of Ulysses sees Leopold Bloom make his way through the city centre on his way from Middle Abbey Street to the National Library. As he begins to feel the pangs of hunger, his thoughts become centred on the social, political, cultural and religious importance of food. These musings are mixed with a commentary on the architecture of the city, emphasising Dublin’s position as a colonial capital. Join our guide as we follow in Bloom’s footsteps and discuss these thoughts, focusing on Joyce’s own efforts to bring the unsavoury workings of the body into a work of art and use food as the basis of a political and social commentary. This tour ends on Kildare Street.

"Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?"

This extended tour offers Joyceans an opportunity to get outside the city and explore the area around Sandymount that Joyce returns to in three episodes of Ulysses. Travelling by train from the city centre, this tour takes in Newbridge Avenue, the home of Paddy Dignam in the 'Hades' episode; the Star of the Sea Church & Leahy's Terrace, featured in the 'Nausicaa' episode; and Sandymount Strand, the setting for both 'Proteus' and 'Nausicaa'. It also takes in the Shelbourne Road (where Joyce rented rooms in 1904), Dromard Terrace (where Joyce spent the night of 16 June 1904), and the birthplace of WB Yeats.

Please Note: This is an extended tour, lasting approximately three hours. Duration may vary as the tour is dependent on public transport. This tour ends at Connolly Station.