All Program Dates
October 4, 2026 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm March 7, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm
November 1, 2026 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm April 4, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm
December 6, 2026 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm May 2, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm
January 3, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm June 6, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm
February 7, 2027 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Registration
Tuition for this course is $540. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
To promote access to onsite and virtual Rosenbach experiences, we offer scholarships for each Signature Program. To inquire, email Sunstein Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives Edward G. Pettit at epettit@rosenbach.org.
Description
Read Ulysses with one of the leading James Joyce scholars in an intimate in-person setting at the Rosenbach. One of the challenges of reading Ulysses on one’s own is that we tend to see (or object to not seeing!) what we expect to find. Slow reading in a communal setting allows readers to access the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the bizarre complexity of daily life. Furthermore, it teaches us to laugh at our (shared) blindness. With renewed humility comes greater openness to the tarnished and startling real.
Learning to laugh at oneself—with delight, understanding, and sympathy—is a step towards accepting mortality. It is also a prerequisite for establishing reciprocal relationships with others. The book is daring us to “Bloom” and continue blooming; to open both heart and mind to the multitudinous differences and idiosyncrasies of others as they change across time. It aims to replace an unconscious hunger for perfection with a renewed appreciation for the unstable joys and losses of life.
In class, we will read selected passages from the assigned reading aloud and then discuss them closely and honestly.
Sponsors
Reading Ulysses with Vicki Mahaffey course is generously sponsored by Lenni H. Steiner and Perry A. Lerner
About the Instructor
Vicki Mahaffey’s new book is The Joyce of Everyday Life, published by Bucknell University Press. She is also the author of two other books related to James Joyce, as well as two edited collections and fifty articles. She received her PhD from Princeton University and taught at the University of Pennsylvania for almost 30 years. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the International James Joyce Foundation (currently serving her third term). While at Penn, she taught courses at the Rosenbach and was involved in the planning of the annual Bloomsday celebrations. (She is proudest of introducing musical performances, although she was also part of the team that chose the readings). She is currently the Kirkpatrick Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois. Recently, Dr. Mahaffey has led courses on all of Joyce’s published works, as well as Yeats’s Poetry, for the Rosenbach. You can read an interview about The Joyce of Everyday Life here.