Marking Bloomsday 2021 with beard power
Although my primary research interest is in the area of astrophysics and cosmology I think it is important to get involved whenever possible in interdisciplinary scholarship. My latest such contribution was to use the “find” facility on the online version of Ulysses by James Joyce to establish that the word “beard” appears 59 times in that work. A thorough analysis of the role of beards in Ulysses would make an interesting PhD topic, in my opinion.
As former Beard of Ireland Peter Coles noted on twitter there are 59 references to beards in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
On Bloomsday 2021 the Beard Liberation Front salutes the hirsute canon of Joyce.
A typical Ulysses reference is below:
Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom
(page 438)
In the Dark 
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