My Trip to Nijmegen
This July, I had the opportunity to present my work at IASIL 2018, the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature. This year’s conference took place in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Here’s the story of my trip.
I hopped off the train from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to Nijmegen (pronounced NY-may-guhn) into the wet, sweltering heat of a Sunday afternoon. Jet-lagged, WiFi-less, and surrounded by signs in Dutch, the situation was a bit unnerving at first. However, all feelings of disorder quickly relieved as I soaked in the city, its charming brick buildings and cyclists by the hundreds. Lugging rolling-luggage over cobblestone, navigating side streets, I found the bed and breakfast on Wilhelminasingel, its namesake street.
The Wilhelmina is located neatly between Downtown Nijmegen and Radboud University, the campus where the conference took place. My quarters were on the third floor, a spacious room with a private bathroom and large windows. Once bags were stowed, Paul, the Wilhelmina’s hospitable proprietor, offered fresh bread and hazelnut spread, and as I inhaled that, he talked about the sights of Nijmegen, its parks and oddities. A lifelong resident, Paul’s genuine love for his city was apparent. He encouraged me to borrow one of his bikes and explore downtown right away.
I was discombobulated and fatigued, but — at last — visiting Europe, how could I refuse?
That first ride downtown fueled a second wind of energy, and I ended up sight-seeing and people-watching for a couple of hours. Dutch folks of all ages and walks of life wandered around on foot and by bicycle. To my delight, vehicular traffic was minimal downtown, and since it was a Sunday, most of the shops were closed early. Still, the cafes were open and packed with jovial patrons. I stopped in a shop near the waterfront for some coffee and internet. I shared some impressions of Europe with friends back home. It felt weird to connect with them online from across the ocean, as if this breached or altered our digital connection. I told them this, and some said they felt the same. It’s interesting how even digital communication conveys varied levels of distance.
Drs. Fielding and Hecht arrived in Nijmegen that evening, and we met downtown for a bite. We visited Café de Plak, a chic vegetarian cafe. The salad and egg rolls were delicious, but even this light fare seemed filling on that muggy evening. After dinner, I said goodbye to the professors, parked Paul’s bike at the B and B, and took a long walk by the beach. My body was tired, but my brain was very much awake. The sounds of waves, laughter, and unknown speech were soothing, and I stayed out until the sky went completely dark.
The next morning, the conference kicked off in the early afternoon. I took the opportunity to sleep in, go for another beach-side walk, and get some more espresso. Charged for the day, I took Paul’s bike to the university campus where I met Dr. Fielding. Once we signed in and had a cup of tea, we attended the opening lecture, featuring a charismatic speaker with a keen sense of humor. He told the history Betsy Gray, a legendary folk hero of the 1798 Irish Rebellion. As the story goes, she followed her father and fiancé to battle, courageously dying alongside them both. While there isn’t definitive proof of her existence, there is a long and complicated history of her story. The speaker believed in the authenticity of Betsy Gray’s narrative, making a compelling argument for this assertion. Real or fictional, there’s no question Gray’s legacy has made an enduring impact on the patriotism of the people from Ireland.
After the lecture, participants met in the library to drink Guinness and view a collection of works by George Bernard Shaw. The books were all brittle, old volumes encased in glass, so the viewing was mostly an opportunity to meet the other panelists and exchange pleasantries. I got to talk with a student of Irish lit. about Joyce. Hopefully my very selective knowledge wasn’t hugely apparent to him. If it was, he was kind anyway. In fact, he even complimented my beer pouring abilities.
Tuesday, the first full day of the conference, was filled with panels, presentations, and discussions. The theme “Reimagining Traditions” inspired research on literature both classic and contemporary. Accordingly, the two most popular works of discussion that day were James Joyce’s classic Ulysses and Eimear McBride’s contemporary piece, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. Regarding Ulysses, one scholar coded the literary techniques of every chapter, keeping track of how often each technique was used and in what context. A few others presented more traditional analyses of Joyce’s work in general. McBride was praised as a modern Joyce, her disturbing stream of consciousness narrative compelling various scholarly interpretations. Much like Joyce’s famous collection, Dubliners, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing endured a decade of rejection before it was published. As many IASIL scholars mused, booksellers may have overlooked both novels’ brilliance because of the brutal nature of their contents; while Joyce is overtly critical of the church, McBride illustrates a woman’s battle with both her brother’s terminal illness and her own sexual abuse by her uncle.
After a short break, IASIL reconvened that evening at a nearby theatre. We gathered in the dark for a reading by renowned Irish novelist, Anne Enright, from her novel, The Green Road. Even better than her reading was her unapologetic personality. If Anne thought a question was stupid, she expressed it. I loved her unassuming audacity! It is so important for an author to speak her mind despite the naysayers, and Enright proved empowered.
When the reading was over, I said goodbye to Dr. Fielding and went to retrieve Paul’s bike. However, it wasn’t where I’d left it. The bike was gone. While I hadn’t been using a chain, that was only because Paul had told me not to.
He had said, “It’s unnecessary; the Dutch are honest people.”
While I’m sure that’s mostly true, it seems that the allure of an unchained bicycle was too great for one passerby. My heart beating in my throat, I made the walk of shame back to the B and B, bike-less. By that time, it was late and Paul was asleep, so I trailed to my room with a guilty conscience.
Each night before that, I had read a chapter or two of The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu before drifting to sleep. But that night, I was distraught and desirous of some ‘comfort food’ in the form of beloved shows (and, if you know me, you know that usually means cartoons). I logged onto Netflix and was amused to see the logo slightly altered, reading “Netflix.nl” for the Netherlands. There were other alterations too. The catalog offered in the Netherlands is different than that in the States. To my delight, season 9 of Archer (which I’d been wanting to watch for a year) is available on Netflix.nl. Binge-watching Archer for a couple of hours eased my anxiety. And for fun, I watched it with Dutch subtitles.
Wednesday morning, I woke up early to the smell of fresh-baked bread and immediately went downstairs to tell Paul the bad news. He did not seem angry, but rather, confused. He was convinced that I had parked the bike in a no parking zone, because no Nijmegener would have stolen it.
“Since everything is in Dutch, you did not understand the sign,” he assured.
I tried to give him 40 euros, but he wouldn’t accept it. His attitude was very much ‘these things happen,’ and for that, I was grateful. He gave me a fresh croissant, and I headed to campus for the second full day. My panel was first.
My Abstract:
In Dubliners, James Joyce describes an Irish society trapped in an endless cycle of subjugation, a social paralysis spanning generations. Facilitating the Dubliners’ tradition are a multitude of social expectations, most notably, those of religion and gender. Irish Christians celebrate the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, compelling pride in their own imperialized suffering. Yuet May Ching and Gerald Doherty both study this admiration of sacrifice, declaring it deeply ingrained in Catholic rituals of communion and confession. Dubliners are further marginalized by patriarchal powers: Earl G. Ingersoll and Zennure Köseman survey the patriarchal social constraint of Joyce’s female characters. As Gabriel Conroy assumes that his aunts’ maid, Lucy, seeks a husband’s support, he disregards her ability to support herself independently, among other liberties. This essay considers how Christian martyrdom is compounded by female martyrdom in Joycean Ireland. These two threads — Christian martyrdom and female martyrdom — have been unpacked by other scholars, but together they produce a particular kind of tradition: female suffering that propagates itself across generations. In “The Boarding House,” Mrs. Mooney is ritualistically conditioned to marry Mr. Mooney, and socially conditioned to put up with his abuse. She fights to get her children out of an abusive home. Yet, conditioned to celebrate martyrdom, she sets up her daughter, Polly, to experience similar trials. As Polly Mooney demonstrates, the Irish woman is burdened by norms of religion and gender, held in place by even more cumbersome restraints than her male counterparts, prescribed a potential: Her paralysis.
The good aspect of having an early panel is getting it over with, instead of dwelling and worrying. The bad one is, the turn out can be capricious. Only about 10 people attended my panel; nevertheless, their comments were insightful. People seemed to enjoy my interpretation of “The Boarding House,” but my thoughts about “Eveline” lead to an divided discussion.
Dr. Hedwig Schwall, a literature professor from KU Leuven in Belgium, offered an interesting perspective, and sent me her published piece on “Eveline.” Her article proved compelling, forever altering my perspective on the story. Instead of a story of a young woman’s oppression, as I first thought it to exclusively be, “Eveline” might otherwise be viewed as a story of a woman averting the blame for her own cowardice in the face of change.
After my panel, I decided to attend one on research about W.B. Yeats. A selective topic, there were only two presenters, a student and an independent scholar. The student read first. Her paper was a creative analysis of Yeats’ use of rhythm to convey nuances of meaning. It might have been the most well-written paper about poetry I’ve ever seen, but the author was quite nervous and unsure of herself, and this hindered her presentation. In contrast, the independent scholar read with all of the confidence in the world, but none of the quality. What a bizarre situation! She stood in front of the class and began rambling about the murder of a prostitute in the early 1900’s. Eventually she accused W.B. Yeats himself of having had the prostitute murdered because she mothered his illegitimate child. Then, she made an even more outrageous claim: She said that her father was that illegitimate child, and that Yeats was her paternal grandfather. Her only ‘evidence’ (if you can even call it that) came from an obscure line of a Yeats poem and a blurry photograph of her father.
The room was filled with students of Yeats, and they were livid. The panel concluded when a Radboud professor broke up the argument between the author and a student who had just finished his thesis on Yeats. It was about as close to an episode of Maury Povich as a literature conference can get. There were more panels that day, but I was too distracted about the Yeats fiasco to remember them.
After another afternoon break, the conference was to recommence that evening at the same theatre as the night before. With time to kill, Dr. Fielding and I met for frites (hand-cut fries, typically served with mayonnaise).
We discussed our observations as Americans abroad. At the theatre that evening, a vocalist performing Irish folk music. Most of the songs expressed deep melancholy, with both their words and melodies. He described the history of each piece, as well as his personal experiences. He was supposed to sing one of the songs mentioned in Dubliners, but he forgot the words.
On Thursday morning, I walked to Radboud for the final time. The morning temperature was a relief, the coolest since I’d landed in Amsterdam, roughly 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dr. Fielding’s panel was first. She presented her research on Daniel Zuchowski’s The New Dubliners, a book of stories about people who immigrated to Dublin. Zuchowski details the immigrants’ struggle to find a place to belong in a new country, how a person must reconcile their culture with that of their new surroundings.
Dr. Fielding explained how many plot points mirror or play clever homage to Joyce’s original work. Her research was
well-received and prompted many panelists to add The New Dubliners to their
to-read list. While it’s safe to say that she was the first IASIL scholar to study this lesser-known book, she probably will not be the last.
After that, IASIL provided a luncheon for participants. They served huge portions of beef, green beans, baked potato balls, and strawberry mousse. The food seemed decadent, especially because it was so hot outside (by then, the morning lull was long gone). I had the chance to meet graduate students from Brazil, Thailand, China, and Australia. All of them teach and attend university full-time and intend to become literature professors when they graduate. They were bemused to hear that I am only a part time graduate student who teaches high school for a living. I told them the same thing I tell the people back home: Literature is something I love, and I hope to continue studying it in some capacity as long as I live, even if it never becomes more than a hobby. They thought that was amusing, but they were mostly kind about it.
We discussed public transportation and museums in Nijmegen. A big group was planning to visit the art museum near campus later. They invited me, but I politely declined. I had plans. Once I digested the huge lunch, I entered the damp heat and followed the street signs to Kronenburgerpark.
The park, found in the center of Nijmegen, is built along the side of a medieval wall and powder tower, estimated to have been constructed around 1425. I walked around the perimeter of the park and snapped some photos before settling on the soft but dry grass near the pond. The picturesque shade of old willow trees provided refuge from the mid-summer heat. I spent a few hours there, reading and people-watching. At one point I became thirsty, so I picked up some beer from a bodega and brought it back to the park. I sat by the water, reading Genji and drinking a bottle of Jupiler
(YOU-pih-ler, a Belgian beer, quite popular and cheap in Nijmegen) for some time. After a peaceful evening, I walked back to the Wilhelmina.
There’s more to this story, but I’m gonna pause here for today.
Stay tuned for part two of my adventure, which includes two visits to Germany, delicious curry wurst, a cool Dutch record store, and the horrors of London’s Heathrow airport.
