James Joyce's Ulysses has given way to various ways of reading the text. Some prefer to read it privately on their own, most enjoy reading it collaboratively in reading groups. Both private and public ways of reading Ulysses employ various modes of reading among which close reading and genetic reading have emerged to be particularly suitable for grappling with the compendious text. Is close reading, despite its shortcomings (suppression of historical context, singular attention to form over content), still relevant for reading Ulysses? Does genetic reading help with reading Ulysses in its expansive socio-historical context? Is there any merit to combining close and genetic readings of Ulysses? In my talk I will argue that in Ulysses close and genetic readings complement one another and can create a decolonial mode of reading.

Shinjini Chattopadhyay (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Global Anglophone Literatures at Berry College, Mount Berry, GA. She completed her PhD at the Department of English, University of Notre Dame, IN, and earned her MPhil and MA in English Literature from Jadavpur University, India. She works on British and Irish modernisms and global Anglophone literatures. Her monograph-in-progress, “Plurabilities of the City,” investigates the construction of metropolitan cosmopolitanism in modernist and contemporary novels. She is the author of several book chapters and journal articles which have been published in James Joyce Quarterly, European Joyce Studies, Joyce Studies in Italy, and Modernism/Modernity Print+. She is an elected member of the board of trustees of the International James Joyce Foundation and she co-hosts a podcast titled TipsyTurvy Ulysses.