This paper describes the social and cultural climate of teaching the works of James Joyce — including his journalism and major works of fiction from “Dubliners” through “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” — over the years 1993 to 2016 when the author was the Chair of English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. The author draws upon his extensive range of published work on Joyce as well as the rationale and mechanics of setting up a popular, extracurricular reading group for “Finnegans Wake” during the years 2000 to 2015, specifically.