Reading Groups

James Joyce’s Ulysses with William Mottolese

16 sessions Thursdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT October 9, 2025 to August 27, 2026

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Books’ option includes a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses (The Gabler Edition) at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
10/9, 10/23, 11/13, 12/4, 1/8, 1/29, 2/19, 3/12, 4/2, 4/23, 5/14, 6/4, 6/25, 7/16, 8/6, 8/27
Online via Zoom

Although James Joyce produced fewer than two thousand pages of fiction and published only four major fictional works, a body of poetry, and one extant play, he is regarded as one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. His most famous work, Ulysses, published in 1922, continues to confound readers today. Scrupulously depicting one day in the life of Leopold Bloom and the city of Dublin, Ulysses remains a hard-to-define masterpiece: at once microscopically realistic, linguistically experimental, stylistically diverse, and dizzyingly surrealistic. Close attention to this dense and difficult novel is crucial to the study of literary modernism. In this eleven-month course on Ulysses, we will engage in a careful reading of the novel, episode by episode, focusing on the distinct quality of each episode as well as the novel as a whole. This course will meet sixteen times, every third week between October and August.

Students should use the Gabler “corrected” edition of Ulysses (1986), though any version of the Random House 1961 edition will also do. An optional text, Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford with Richard J Seidman, is recommended, and I also recommend Sam Slote’s Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is useful but expensive.

Upcoming Event: On November 13th, join us for You’ll See, a captivating one-person performance of Ulysses from Galway-based theater company Branar, starring Helen Gregg.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: For the first meeting in early October, please read the first episode/chapter of the novel, known as “Telemachus.”

What to expect from this reading group: The course will revolve around discussion and close reading of the text, with framing and guidance from the instructor.

Reading List:

Required: Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition)
Optional: Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford with Richard J Seidman; annotations by Sam Slote

Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

William Mottolese

William Mottolese

William Mottolese has taught at Fordham University and Saint Joseph’s College in Indiana and is presently in the English Department at Sacred Heart Greenwich. He has published on such subjects as Olaudah Equiano, Laurence Sterne, and James Joyce. He has taught for a decade and a half at The Center for Fiction, where he has led classes on James Joyce, David Foster Wallace, Salman Rushdie, Irish literature, and postcolonial literature. William is an award-winning teacher, published poet, and proud father of three children.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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