Humanities Student Spotlight:

Walking in the Footsteps of Joyce and Yeats

Sebastian Knowles, associate dean for faculty and research and professor of English, led 19 students on a study abroad program to Dublin, Ireland, over spring break. The goal of the Dublin Program was twofold: to revisit all the places in Joyce's Ulysses, or as many as could be seen in a week, and to travel to the West Country to visit the sacred places of Yeats's poetry. This was achieved: the group read from the beginning of Ulysses at the top of the tower where the book opens, walked along Sandymount Strand with eyes closed as Stephen Dedalus does, read from the funeral scene in Glasnevin Cemetery, and performed the parade scene from "Wandering Rocks" with a cast of 20 at the same time as 700,000 people were celebrating an alternative parade for St. Patrick’s Day. The group celebrated the end of the book with memorized performances of the end of "Penelope" in the heather on the Hill of Howth, bringing the book emphatically to life. In Sligo, under the lowering mountain of Ben Bulben, Yeats's "Under Ben Bulben" was read, and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" beside the waters of Lough Gill. By the end of the 10-day trip, after walking between 70 and 100 miles around the city of Dublin, along the cliffs of Howth, through the Wicklow Mountains, and around the West Country, the group had experienced the satisfaction of higher education at its very best.