JJQ

Maxime D. McKenna’s article “Copyrights Wake: SOPA, James Joyce, and the Future of Intellectual Property” analyzes the almost simultaneous lapsing of European copyright on Joyce’s work with the introduction (and subsequent retraction) of SOPA legislation.  McKenna places this debate in the context of Samuel Roth’s piracy of Ulysses, Stephen James Joyce’s more contemporary opposition to the use of Joyce materials, and Joyce’s own use of other texts in his work.  Here is a link to the article.

RTÉ has fished out its archive a wonderful interview (more of a rollicking monologue actually) with Sylvia Beach originally recorded in 1962.  It runs just over twenty minutes and focuses largely on Joyce, although with several wonderful memories of other writers as well.  Beach recounts how she first met Joyce, the story of Ulysses‘ publication, the author’s surprising interest in Whitman, and even recalls the first book he borrowed from Shakespeare and Company: Synge’s Riders to the Sea.  Her story of facing down a Nazi officer over a copy of Finnegans Wake and her eventual arrest is particularly striking.  The recording will be freely available for a year and is definitely worth a look.

In a decision handed down on 18 January entitled Golan v. Holder, the United States Supreme Court again turned away a case that might have brought more of Joyce’s major works into the public domain in the U.S.  Originally filed by music professor from the University of Denver in 2001, the suit alleged that Congress exceeded its authority when it returned to copyright works (like Joyce’s Ulysses) that had briefly entered the public domain.  The focus of this case was primarily on the 1989 Berne Convention rather than the Copyright Term Extension Act.

The 9-2 decision upheld the circuit court ruling and the court as a whole was not convinced by Justice Breyer’s argument that the treaty violated the ostensible purpose of copyright: to encourage innovation and the creation of new work.  ”By definition,” he writes,” the law “bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works – works that have already been created and already are in the American public domain. At the same time, the stat­ute inhibits the dissemination of those works, foreign works published abroad after 1923, of which there are many millions.”

The James Joyce Center has announced its Winter/Spring Lecture Series dates.

• The James Joyce Birthday Lecture, entitled “Joyce, Exiles, Suffragism and the Summer of 1912,” will be given by Professor Andrew Gibson on Thursday, February 2^nd and followed by a wine reception and recital by Paul O’Hanrahan.
• Monday, March 5^th Professor Luke Gibbons will deliver his lecture, “Remembering Sion: Reflections on Joyce and the Easter Rising.”
• Monday, April 2^nd, Professor Kenny Barry will give his lecture, “Some kind of Eastern Western: Tracking The Dead from Los Angeles to the Bay of Naples.”
• Monday, April 30^th Professor Nicholas Allen will deliver his lecture, “Joyce, Dubliners and the Melancholy of Empire.”

All lectures begin promptly at 6:30 pm.

Admission is free, but there is limited seating.

For more information on the series and location follow this link.

The end of copyright protection on Joyce’s work in the EU has has been the subject of some commentary in the press as journalists wonder what this might mean for the future of Joyce studies.  Three articles of note include:

• the cleverly titled “An End to Bad Heir Days” by Gordon Bowker in the Irish Independent;
• a somewhat shorter piece, “The Blagger’s Guide To…James Joyce,” also from the Independent, about new performances and adaptations taking shape around Joyce’s work, including a song by Kate Bush, a staging of the play Gibraltar, a new production of Exiles, and RTE readings of Ulysses;
• a lengthy post on The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog, “Has James Joyce Been Set Free,”  that includes my own comments on the change;
• and a review of Gibraltar at Dublin’s New Theatre that has appeared in the Irish Times.

JJQ is attempting to compile a list of new works being made possible by the expiration of copyright protection, so please feel free to email us with news or simply respond in the comments section of the blog.

As I say in the New Yorker piece, the expiration of copyright is unquestionably a good thing for scholars and artists alike.  The continuing differences between US and EU law, however, put us all in a very strange situation.  In many ways, Joyce has always been an international, even global writer  and his works, like his readers, shuttle between as well as beyond national boundaries.  Now, however, books like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake will be read, cited, edited, and transformed in ways largely defined by somewhat narrower national contexts.

Yes, the copyrights on the major published texts have expired in the EU, but the unpublished works are still protected and other things–such as the materials in the James Joyce Archive, Stephen Hero, and Giacomo Joyce–are either still protected or in an uncertain space.  Conversely, in the United States the unpublished works are now in the public domain, making it at last possible to publish letters and some maunscripts, but Ulysses, the Wake, Stephen Hero, and Giacomo Joyce are all still copyright.  This means, for example, that although the unpublished letters can now appear, they cannot be easily integrated with the existing volumes and they cannot be legally sold or distributed outside the US.  Similarly, the newly edited and annotated editions of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake being prepared in Dublin and elsewhere can’t make it (legally) to scholars and students here.

More significant than these scholarly concerns, I think, are the consequences for artists and performers who might want to adapt Joyce’s texts or use them for other purposes.  Such innovative work will be done primarily in the EU but not in the United States.  In an age of global information networks and digital editions these differences might be less imposing than they once were.  Nonetheless, Joyce scholars and journals alike will have to work particularly hard to overcome these gaps so Joyce studies more generally can retain their distinctly international character.

With the turn to the new year, I want to remind you of James Joyce’s Ulysses: Texts and Contexts, this summer’s NEH Seminar for College and University Teachers.  Directed by Kevin J. H. Dettmar and Paul Saint-Amour, it will take place in Dublin from 18 June to 20 July.  Having visited and led seminars like these in the past, I can say with some confidence that they present an extraordinary opportunity to develop your research, refresh your teaching, and create new connections with others scholars.  I strongly urge all who are eligible and interested to apply.  The application deadline is 1 March 2012.