Upcoming Events

Please join us tomorrow, April 27 for a discussion of the work of Deirdre Ní Chonghaile at 3:00 PM in 323 Flanner. (Please note this is one floor below the usual room.)

In addition to a presentation by Dr. Ní Chonghaile, distinguished scholars Gage Averill (University of British Columbia) and John F. Santino (Bowling Green State University) will be responding to her project on collectors of Irish traditional music including George Petrie, Eugene O'Curry, Séamus Ennis, Sidney Robertson Cowell and Bairbre Quinn.

The Apotheosis of Clay: Beyond Irish Naturalism

O'Donnell Distinguished Irish Studies Professor Clair Wills will be speaking on "The Apotheosis of Clay: Beyond Irish Naturalism" at 3:00 PM today, Friday, April 20 in 424 Flanner Hall.

The talk will be immediately followed by the launch of Professor Sara Maurer's book "The Dispossessed State: Narratives of Ownership in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland" in the Institute.

Professor Wills's research focuses on twentieth-century Irish literature and culture, and contemporary English, Irish and American poetry. She is currently Leverhulme Major Research Fellow for a project on the Irish in Britain 1945-1965, and her most recent book Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO was published by Profile in 2009. Her book, That Neutral Island, is a social and cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War, published by Faber and Harvard University Press in 2007. She edited the Contemporary Writing section of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes IV and V (Cork University Press, 2002). In addition to her books on Irish poetry (Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry (1993), and Reading Paul Muldoon (1998)) she has published articles on poets such as Roy Fisher, Denise Riley, and Fanny Howe. She regularly reviews contemporary poetry for the Times Literary Supplement. Her current research, for which she has been awarded a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship, looks at cultural relations between Britain and Ireland in the 1950s. In collaboration with Dr. Ian McBride of Kings College London Clair Wills runs the interdisciplinary London Irish Studies Seminar at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House.

Irish Sport versus American Sport

Kevin Whelan in Conversation with Brian Mullins
5-6pm Thursday 19 April. De Bartolo 140

Whet your appetite for the ND/Navy game in Dublin A discussion between Kevin Whelan, Director of ND Dublin's programme, and Brian Mullins, Director of Sport, UCD- and iconic Dublin footballer of the 1970s. Find out about Hurling - the most ancient, fastest most skilful and most boastful field sport in the world. And Gaelic Football- a mix of rugby, soccer, basketball and American football. Discover games which are rooted in and owned by the community, and played only for the love of the sport and the pride of the parish.

Jane Ohlmeyer Talk

Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin. She is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published widely on a number of themes in early modern Irish and British history. Her books include Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms (Cambridge, 1993); Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641-1660 (editor, Cambridge, 1995); and Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (editor, Cambridge, 2000). Her new book is titled Making Ireland English: How the Aristocracy Shaped Seventeenth-Century Ireland,as is her talk, this Tuesday, April 17 at 4:00PM in 424 Flanner Hall. All are wrlcome.

Irish Film Series

Please join us tomorrow for the next two features in our Irish Film Series at the Browning Cinema of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. At 6:30PM see a selection of of nine shorts in which talented filmmakers look beyond Ireland to paint big ideas on small canvasses. At 9:30PM join us for From the Sky Down, a documentary looking back twenty years to U2's recording of an album that nearly destroyed but ultimately saved Ireland's greatest rock band. For tickets and info, visit performingarts.nd.edu.

Nicholas Canny Lecture

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at a two part lecture from the inaugural Herbert Allen and Donald R. Keough Distinguished Visiting Professor, Nicholas Canny. The lectures will address the question "A Protestant or Catholic Atlantic World? Confessional Divisions, Evangelization and the Writing of Natural History." Part one "The Theory" will take place this Wednesday, March 21 at 4:00PM and part two "The Practice" will be held next Tuesday, March 27 at 4:00 PM. Both lectures will be in 119 O'Shaughnessy Hall.

Professor Canny is a Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council and Professor Emeritus of History at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he served as Founding Director of the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities, 2000-11, and as Vice President for Research, 2005-8. He was President of the Royal Academy 2008-11. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. An expert on early modern history broadly defined, Professor Canny edited the first volume of The Oxford History of the British Empire (1998) and, with Philip D. Morgan, edited The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, c1450-c1850 (2011). His major book is Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford, 2001), for which he was awarded the Irish Historical Research Prize 2003; an award he had previously won in 1976 for his first book The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a Pattern Established, 1565-76.

All are welcome.

Denise Ayo Lecture

Please join the Institute for a lecture by Denise Ayo entitled Mary Colum: "The Best Woman Critic in America this Friday, February 23 at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner Hall. Denise A. Ayo is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. She specializes in British and Irish modernism with an emphasis on print culture and gender issues.

Inscribing the Waterscape in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies Friday, February 10 at 3:00 p.m. in 424 Flanner Hall for a lecture by Brian Ó Conchubhair entitled "Inscribing the Waterscape in Eighteenth-Century Ireland." Professor Ó Conchubhair is Associate Professor in the Department of Irish Language and Literature.

Nicholas Canny Lecture

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies in welcoming the inaugural Herbert Allen and Donald R. Keough Distinguished Visiting Professor, Nicholas Canny this Friday, February 3 at 3:00PM in 424 Flanner Hall.

Professor Canny is a Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council and Professor Emeritus of History at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

He will deliver a talk entitled" Ireland, Europe and the Wider World, 1550-1750." All are welcome.

Upcoming Events

On Friday, January 27 the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the Keough-Naughton Institute present The Guard at 6:30 PM and 9:30 PM in the Browning Cinema. The series will continue on February 24 with a Double Feature of musical films The Swell Season and Once.

Also, please mark your calendars for Friday, February 3 when visiting Fellow and Distinguished International Scholar Nicholas Canny will deliver the inaugural Irish Studies Seminar lecture entitled "Ireland, Europe, and the Wider World, 1550-1750" at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner.

Lecture by Tomás Ó Carragáin

Please join us tomorrow at 4:00PM in 129 DeBartolo Hall for "Recalling Rome, Recalling Jerusalem: The Sacred Topographies of Major Ecclesiastical Sites in Early Medieval Ireland", a lecture by Tomás Ó Carragáin, Lecturer in Archaeology at University College Cork.

Tomás Ó Carragáin is a graduate of University College Cork and the University of York and became a lecturer in the Archaeology Department, UCC, in 2002. His publications include Inishmurray: Monks and Pilgrims in an Atlantic Landscape (Collins Press 2008) and Churches in Early Medieval Ireland. Architecture, Ritual and Memory (Yale University Press 2010), the first in-depth study of Irish architecture from the arrival of Christianity to the early stages of the Romanesque. He is currently working on the Making Christian Landscapes project which is funded by the Heritage Council and considers the impact of Christianity on early medieval landscapes in Ireland and neighbouring countries. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA), he won the 2009 Society for Medieval Archaeology Martyn Jope Award, the 2011 Michael Adams Prize in Irish Medieval Studies and the 2011 UCC College of Arts Research Achievement Award.

Talk Abstract:

Major Irish ecclesiastical sites are characterised by ten or more small single-altar churches, along with other sacred foci such as high crosses and round towers and are delimited by curvilinear earthen banks. Though they are popularly referred to as monasteries, they do not conform to modern expectations of ‘monastic’ architecture. This is because they were not modelled primarily on contemporary Continental monasteries but on the great cities of Christendom. Some sites, including Iona and Clonmacnoise, seem to have laid particular emphasis on Jerusalem, while others, most notably Armagh, looked primarily to Rome. These sites did not, it seems, become major urban centres. Instead they represent experiments in symbolic urbanism in response to Judaeo-Christian and Roman ideas. Geographical remoteness from their models resulted in a relatively uncomplicated and clear distillation of a few crucial ideas about what constitutes a sacred city. Though simple and seemingly ‘vernacular’ in form, these complexes were sophisticated and ambitious in conception.

The Reason for the Song

You are invited to an Irish Studies lecture tomorrow. Cathal Goan will deliver a lecture entitled "The Reason for the Song" at 3:00 PM on Tuesday, November 8th in 424 Flanner Hall.

Cathal Goan was born in Belfast and received his University education in University College Dublin where he qualified in Celtic Studies in 1975. He spent two years post graduate in the Department of Irish Folklore UCD before beginning work as a research officer with The Placenames’ Commission of the Irish Ordnance Survey. He subsequently joined RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, as an archivist before becoming first a radio and then a television producer in Current Affairs. In 1990 he became Editor of all RTÉ’s television output in the Irish language and in 1994 he was chosen as the first Chief Executive of the new Irish language television service which was about to be established in Galway. Teilifís na Gaeilge – TG4 – began broadcasting in October 1996 and has gained widespread recognition for the inventiveness and variety of its commissioned programming. In 2000 he returned to Dublin as Director of Television Programming at RTÉ. In 2003 he was appointed Director General (CEO) of RTÉ, a position that he held until January 2011. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Ulster in 2006 in recognition of his services to the Irish language and to broadcasting in Ireland. He was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Irish Language, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics in UCD in 2011. He has a life long interest in Irish music with particular reference to the Irish language song tradition.

The Worlding of Irish Literature

Please join us this Friday for the "The Worlding of Irish Literature," the inaugural lecture by Donald and Marilyn Keough Chair of Irish Literature, Declan Kiberd at 3:00PM in Hesburgh Library Auditorium.

Books Kiberd has written include Synge and the Irish Language, Men and Feminism in Irish Literature, Irish Classics, The Irish Writer and the World, and Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living.

The Reason for the Song

You are invited to an Irish Studies lecture tomorrow. Cathal Goan will deliver a lecture entitled "The Reason for the Song" at 3:00 PM on Tuesday, November 8th in 424 Flanner Hall.

Cathal Goan was born in Belfast and received his University education in University College Dublin where he qualified in Celtic Studies in 1975. He spent two years post graduate in the Department of Irish Folklore UCD before beginning work as a research officer with The Placenames’ Commission of the Irish Ordnance Survey. He subsequently joined RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, as an archivist before becoming first a radio and then a television producer in Current Affairs. In 1990 he became Editor of all RTÉ’s television output in the Irish language and in 1994 he was chosen as the first Chief Executive of the new Irish language television service which was about to be established in Galway. Teilifís na Gaeilge – TG4 – began broadcasting in October 1996 and has gained widespread recognition for the inventiveness and variety of its commissioned programming. In 2000 he returned to Dublin as Director of Television Programming at RTÉ. In 2003 he was appointed Director General (CEO) of RTÉ, a position that he held until January 2011. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Ulster in 2006 in recognition of his services to the Irish language and to broadcasting in Ireland. He was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Irish Language, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics in UCD in 2011. He has a life long interest in Irish music with particular reference to the Irish language song tradition.

Irish Studies This Week

Thomas Bartlett, Chair in Irish History at the University of Aberdeen will deliver the lecture How to Write a History of Ireland, AD 431 to 2010, in 45 minutes at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner Hall on Monday, October 31st.

On Thursday at 3:00PM in 424 Flanner Hall, noted Irish poet Peter Fallon will give a poetry reading.

Hibernian Lecture

Please join us from 4:30 – 5:30 pm this Friday, October 28 at the Hesburgh Center auditorium for the Hibernian Lecture:“All Changed, Changed Utterly”: Easter 1916 and America
by Robert Schmuhl, The Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Chair in American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at three Irish Studies events this week. On Wednesday, October 12th at 4:00 PM John Gormley will deliver his final lecture as a Keough-Naughton Visiting Fellow "Will Climate Change Lead to Regional or Global Conflict" in 424 Flanner Hall.

On Thursday, join us for an Institute Symposium on the Medieval Text Acallam Na Senórach featuring Peter McQuillan (University of Notre Dame), Joseph Nagy (University of California, Los Angeles), and Mícháel Ó Suillebháin (University of Limerick) at 4:00 PM in the Browning Cinema at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

Later that night, the The National Chamber Choir of Ireland will present a program featuring the North American premiere of Tarik O’Regan’s “Acallam na Senórach” commissioned by the University of Notre Dame. The NCCI is confidently forward looking while respecting tradition and known for memorable performances of exceptional musicality spanning the great baroque to contemporary composers.

On Wednesday, October 5th, former Leader of the Green Party, Lord Mayor of Dublin and Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley will discuss the question Can the European Union Survive the Economic Crisis at 4:00PM in 424 Flanner Hall.

On Thursday, October 6th renown soprano Judith Mok will perform Molly Says NO! a musical reclamation/complication of the character of Molly Bloom with piano accompaniment, as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland's Year of Irish Arts in America. The performance will be at Washington Hall at 3:00PM

On Social Movements and Imprisonment: Some Comparisons of Ireland and Turkey

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies in welcoming visiting Fellow and University of Binghamton Sociology Professor Denis O'Hearn as he delivers a lecture On Social Movements and Imprisonment: Some Comparisons of Ireland and Turkey; tomorrow, September 30th at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner Hall.

Irish Politics After the Celtic Tiger

You are invited to join the Keough-Naughton Institute in welcoming John Gormley, former Leader of the Irish Green Party, Lord Mayor of Dublin, and Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government, as he delivers his first lecture to the Notre Dame community, entitled Irish Politics After the Celtic Tiger at 4:00 PM today in 424 Flanner Hall.

Lecture:Language and Exile in Joyce and Proust

Please join us today, Monday, September 19th at 5:00PM in Geddes Hall Auditorium for a lecture entitledLanguage and Exile in Joyce and Proust by Barry McCrea, Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale University.

Swift and the Passions of Posterity

Please join the Keough-Naughton Institute for a lecture by Institute Director and Professor of English Christopher Fox, entitled Swift and the Passions of Posterity on Friday, September 16th at 3:00 PM in 424 Flanner Hall.

Fall Lecture Series

Welcome back! This will be an exceptional semester of Irish studies events at the University of Notre Dame. For a tentative schedule, please visit our events page.