6-7 Feb. The sixth annual James Joyce Italian Foundation Conference will be held at Università degli Studi Roma 3 on 6-7 February.

Conference organiser Prof. John McCourt told Wanted in Rome: "The undoubted highlight is the inaugural address by Ireland's President Michael D. Higgins on the importance of Joyce and the humanities within our universities and our culture. Other highlights will include the lecture by Fritz Senn, doyen of Joyceans in the world who will speak on "Avoiding the Obvious" when reading Joyce."

Among the event's intriguingly-titled lectures are: "Molly's Ethics of Truth and Lying in Ulysses"; "Ulysses's Monologues: How Joyce invented Twitter"; "The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies: Getting riddle of the riddles"; and "Differences in Writings: Roddy Doyle vs James Joyce".

All the lectures are in English, all are open to the public and it is possible to attend the full programme of events or join either the morning or afternoon sessions.

In addition to lectures there are round-table discussions on newly-published books, while on the evening of 6 Feb scholars and musicians will convene to the Fiddler's Elbow, Rome's oldest Irish pub, where a commemorative plaque will be presented to professors Carlo Bigazzi and Enrico Terrinoni for their Italian translation of Ulysses. 

For more info contact joyce.foundation@uniroma3.it, or tel. 0657338999.