Seminars

Irish Studies

  • Founded
    1973
  • Seminar Number
    535

This seminar serves as an interdisciplinary forum on all aspects and periods of Irish culture. Seminar participants come from a wide variety of fields: history, literature, art history, film studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, music, and folklore. These scholars bring to any topic under discussion a diversity of background which is stimulating and informative for all present. The concern for Irish studies as a field of scholarly inquiry is reflected in the collegial sharing of information about resources and repositories for research in the field.

Co-Chairs
Professor Mary McGlynn
mary.mcglynn@baruch.cuny.edu

Professor Seamus O’Malley
seamusomalley@gmail.com

Rapporteur
Kate Reeve
kr3016@columbia.edu

Meeting Schedule

09/30/2022 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
TBA
,




11/04/2022 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
New Methodologies in Irish Studies: Mary McGlynn and Seamus O'Malley in Conversation
Mary McGlynn,
Abstract

Abstract

This talk will focus on the speakers' recent books: Mary's Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Fiction, and Seamus's Irish Culture and 'The People': Populism and its Discontents.


Seamus O'Malley,



12/02/2022 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
The Irish Proust: In Search of Connections
Elisabeth Ladenson, Columbia University

Patricia Laurence, Professor Emerita, City College, CUNY



02/03/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
White Wedding: Grace Kelly, Spectacle, and Irish-American Assimilation
Mary Burke,
Abstract

Abstract

Our presentation this month, “White Wedding: Grace Kelly, Spectacle, and Irish-American Assimilation” will be given by Mary Burke. She will discuss how the persona movie studios created for Grace Kelly (later Princess Grace of Monaco) was meant to diminish the usual associations of her background. These Famine-Catholic roots are explored through the drama of her Pulitzer Prize-winning uncle, George Kelly. The symbiosis between “whiteness” and images deployed to sell beauty and film industry products is documented but are overlooked in accounts of Irish America’s “whitening.” Arguably, Kelly’s globally broadcast ascent to royalty in 1956 paved the way for “America’s royals,” the Kennedy dynasty, as well as broader Irish America’s full assimilation. Mary Burke is Professor of English at UConn, the author of Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History (2023) as well as a cultural history of Irish Travellers (both OUP). She collaborated with Tramp Press on the 2022 Juanita Casey Horse of Selene reissue.
03/10/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
discussion of the speaker's book: The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1776-1848
James Stafford, Columbia University




04/07/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
TBA
,




05/05/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:45 PM
TBA
,