David Spurr was awarded his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, and taught at the universities of Illinois (Chicago) and Neuchâtel before coming to Geneva. His teaching interests are in modern English literature from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, literary theory, and comparative literature. His books and essays are devoted primarily to modern English and French literature, with emphasis on the understanding of these literatures within the cultural and philosophical contexts of modernity. His current research studies the relations between literature and architecture.
Editor, with Cornelia Tschichold, The Space of English. Series SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005.
Joyce and the Scene of Modernity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida James Joyce Series, 2002. Named "Oustanding Academic Title" by Choice, a publication of the American Library Association.
The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Series: Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. Third printing, 1996.
Conflicts in Consciousness: T.S. Eliot's Poetry and Criticism. Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Go back: James Joyce Literary Society Belgrade
ABSTRACT
"Ulysses Underground: Joyce and Contemporary Art."
As for me, I propose to give a talk entitled “Ulysses Underground.” In keeping with the topic of “marginal Joyce,” I would like to discuss the ways in which Joyce’s work has provided inspiration for contemporary art. The primary example will be a work by the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, who has created a mixed-media homage to Joyce and Lewis Carroll entitled “Ulysses’ Adventures Underground” in the underground parking garage of the railway station in Lyon, France. For me, however, the larger issue at stake is that of the relation between art and its socio-cultural context. If Joyce’s work somehow reflects the conditions of the modern world circa 1922, and if contemporary art somehow reflects the postmodern world of 2008, then what is it about Joyce’s work that makes it so evidently relevant to how art is made now? Joyce is indeed an “underground” influence on an entire range of contemporary artists, from Joseph Beuys to Marina Abramovic.
Go back: James Joyce Literary Society Belgrade
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