James Joyce in “Shakespeare and Co.” bookshop, Gisèle Freund, by permission of the
Estate of Gisèle Freund /IMEC Images L’Institut Memoires de l’edition contemporaine,
Paris. Special Collections, University of Victoria

May 21 – August 12, 2013

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Dr. Stephen Ross and Dr. Jentery Sayers

This exhibition uses James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses to introduce visitors to the broad contexts of modernism such as the rise in celebrity culture, decolonization, and an expanding global awareness, even as it brings to light both the everyday content and the avant-garde stylistic dimensions of the novel.

This project is a collaboration between English graduate students, the Modernist Versions Project, the Maker Lab in the Humanities, and the University of Victoria Libraries and Art Collections. It draws on material from university and private collections to place Ulysses in a cultural context that extends across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, demonstrating the novel’s – and modernism’s – ongoing relevance. Students were challenged to conceptualize text and ideas in visual media, and to think about the long and varied afterlives of key cultural artifacts – especially where they are unintended and unanticipated by the artifact’s creator.