This is the tenth installment in our COVID Check-Ins series, in which we feature videos by various Joyceans from around the world to update us on how they are handling the COVID pandemic, how their community is responding, and how it has affected their teaching/research.
This entry features John McCourt, a professor at Università di Macerata, who provides us with an update from Rome, Italy. McCourt’s video comes right as Italy is beginning to re-open. McCourt provides us with a couple short readings from Joyce and Patrick Kavanagh. Finally, McCourt discusses how this pandemic has people craving the ordinary, and reminds us that no author reveled in the ordinary more than Joyce. McCourt uses haircuts as an example of an ordinary occurrence which now seems awkward and unnerving, before detailing his own family’s endeavors with in-home haircuts.