Faculty

IRISH SEMINAR 2012

Executive Director: Brian Ó Conchubhair
Directors: Seamus Deane, Christopher Fox, Patrick Griffin, Declan Kiberd, Bríona Nic Dhiarmada

Keelin Burke is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Ireland, particularly the histories of gender and sexuality, women’s history, and questions of citizenship and national identity. Her dissertation project, The Free State’s Lady Troubles: Gender and the Politics of the Irish State, 1922-1937 explores the influence of gender on the politics of the new Irish State. The project looks at the construction of a gendered politics under both Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil, and the relationships between these politics and a cross-section of women’s organizations and individuals, including Rosamond Jacob. Keelin is the 2012 IRISH SEMINAR Emerging Scholar.

Marina Carr was born in 1964 and grew up in County Offaly. She graduated from UCD in 1987. Her early plays include Low in the Dark (1989), The Deer’s Surrender (1990), This Love Thing (1991) and Ullaloo (1991) The Mai, Portia Coughlan (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, 1997), By The Bog of Cats (1998), On Raftery’s Hill (2000), Ariel (2002) Woman and Scarecrow, The Cordelia Dream and 16 Possible Glimpses (2011). Her awards include The Irish Times Best New Play Award, the Dublin Theatre Festival Best New Play Award 1994, a Macauley Fellowship, a Hennessey Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and an E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a member of Aos Dána and lives in Kerry.

Jim Culleton is the Artistic Director of Fishamble: The New Play Company for which he most recently directed Silent by Pat Kinevane (Irish tour, and Edinburgh where it won Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards, Sofia, Cambridge and Paris), Turning Point (in association with ADI, in Dublin and Washington DC), Forgotten by Pat Kinevane (on tour to almost 60 Irish venues, 8 European countries and recently to New York, Boston and Washington DC), the multi award-winning The Pride of Parnell Street by Sebastian Barry (Irish tours, London, New Haven, Paris, Wiesbaden, New York), The Music of Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (at the Abbey Theatre for Dublin: One City, One Book), and the multi award-winning Noah and the Tower Flower by Sean McLoughlin (Dublin, Bulgaria, Romania, New York). He has also directed for the Abbey & Peacock, 7:84 (Scotland), Project Arts Centre, Amharclann de hÍde, Amnesty International, Pigsback, Tinderbox, The Passion Machine, The Ark, Second Age, RTÉ Radio 1, The Belgrade, Semper Fi, TNL Canada, Scotland’s Ensemble @ Dundee Rep, Draíocht, Barnstorm, Roundabout, TCD School of Drama, the Irish Council for Bioethics, Origin (New York) and RTÉ lyric fm. He recently directed Boss Grady’s Boys by Sebastian Barry at the Gaiety, and Bookworms by Bernard Farrell for the Abbey. Current projects include a range of training, mentoring and development projects, all for Fishamble.

Seamus Deane is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a founding director of the Field Day Theatre Company, the general editor of the Penguin Joyce, and the author of several books, including A Short History of Irish Literature; Celtic Revivals; Essays in Modern Irish Literature; The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, and Strange Country: Modernity and the Nation. Deane also edited the monumental Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 3 volumes, and has written four books of poetry and a novel, Reading in the Dark, which has been translated into more than 20 languages. Currently he is general editor of a series, ‘Critical Conditions,’ published by Field Day, Cork University Press and the University of Notre Dame Press. He has co-edited, with Krzysztof Ziarek, a collection of essays, Future Crossings: Literature Between Philosophy and Cultural Studies (2001). His book, Foreign Affections: Essays on Edmund Burke (2004), is volume 15 in the Critical Conditions series; he is editor of the annual Irish Studies journal, Field Day Review.

Celia de Fréine was born in Newtownards, County Down and moved to Dublin as a child. She now divides her time between Dublin and Connemara. Four of her plays have been awarded Duais an Oireachtais for best full-length play: Anraith Neantóige; Cóirín na dTonn; Tearmann; and Meanmarc. Three of these plays appeared as Mná Dána (Arlen House, 2009). Also in 2009 the Abbey Theatre commissioned her short play Casadh. In 2004 Anraith Neantóige was produced by Aisling Ghéar. Amharclann de hÍde produced Nára Turas é in Aistear in 2000. In 2007 the Dublin Shakespeare Society produced a revised version of her 1982 translation and dramatisation of Brian Merriman’s The Midnight Court. She was a scriptwriter for the TG4 series Ros na Rún between 1997-9. The first script which she wrote was shortlisted for the Celtic Film and Television Festival in 1998. Her screenplay for the film Marathon was given the award for best screenplay at the New York International Film Festival in 2009. The short film Rian: Trace which she conceived and wrote was given the award for best international narrative short at the same festival in 2010. She is also an award-winning poet who has published five collections of poetry. Further information: www.celiadefreine.com

Diarmaid Ferriter was born in Dublin in 1972 and is one of Ireland’s leading historians. In 2008, he was appointed Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. He was Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College for the academic year 2008-2009. He has published extensively on nineteenth and twentieth century Irish history. His books include A Nation of Extremes: The Pioneers in twentieth century Ireland (1999); Lovers of Liberty? Local Government in twentieth century Ireland (2001); The Irish Famine (with Colm Tóibín) (2002); the Profile Books bestseller The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (2004); What if? Alternative views of twentieth century Ireland (2006) and the bestseller Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Éamon de Valera (2007), which won three Irish book awards in 2008. His most recent book is Occasions of Sin: sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009) also published by Profile Books. He is a regular broadcaster with RTÉ, Ireland’s premier radio and television network and authored and presented the series Lovers of Liberty? a landmark history of 20th century Ireland on RTE, broadcast in 2010. He is currently writing a history of Ireland in the 1970s for Profile Books.

John Gibney is the author of Ireland and the Popish Plot (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and The Shadow of a Year: the 1641 rebellion in Irish history and memory (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming 2012). He is a regular contributor to History Ireland magazine, and was a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2009). A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he has been an NEH fellow at the University of Notre Dame and a Government of Ireland fellow at NUI Galway. Originally from Kilbarrack in north Dublin, he has worked in heritage tourism in Dublin since 2001.

Róise Goan is the director of ABSOLUT Fringe. A graduate of Trinity Drama and Theatre Studies, she has worked as a director, actor, producer and screenwriter. She is on the Board of the Abbey Theatre.

Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of The Speckled People (4th Estate), a German-Irish memoir of growing up in Dublin during the 50s/60s with a fervent Irish nationalist father and German mother who came to Ireland in the aftermath of World War II. Hailed as an ‘instant classic’ by Roy Foster, his account of German-Irish childhood addresses all the ‘great issues of the 20th century’ (Nuala O’Faolain). Joseph O’Connor described it as a ‘book for our times and perhaps for all time’. It won the prestigious PRIX FEMINA etranger in France, as well as the BERTO PRIZE in Italy, and appeared on the New York Times notable books list. His equally ‘rich and compelling’ second memoir The Sailor in the Wardrobe which continues this complex dual upbringing in a ‘language war` where he was prohibited from speaking English, has also been praised an ‘enchanting piece of work’ (Terry Eagleton). He is the acclaimed author of two memoirs, seven novels and one collection of short stories, all of which reflect on the increasingly compelling issues of cultural divisions, belonging and identity. His latest novel Hand in the Fire (4th Estate) appeared in 2010. The Gate Theatre performed a stage adaptation of Speckled People in 2011.

Susan Harris graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1991. In 1993 she earned her master’s degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. She is now an Associate Professor of English and Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to Irish drama, her teaching interests include contemporary Irish literature, modern British fiction, gender studies, queer studies, African literature in English, and crime fiction. Her first book, Gender and Modern Irish Drama (Indiana University Press 2002) was awarded the Donald Murphy Prize for a Distinguished First Book in Irish Studies as well as the Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature by the American Conference for Irish Studies. She has also published articles in Genders, the James Joyce Quarterly, Éire-Ireland, Modern Drama, Twentieth-Century Literature, and The Emily Dickinson Journal. She has also published on eighteenth-century theater and culture in Ireland in PMLA and Theatre Journal. She is currently at work on a book about twentieth-century Irish drama and the cultural and political left.

Aideen Howard is the Literary Director of the Abbey Theatre with responsibility for commissioning new plays and developing new writers for both stages of the Abbey Theatre. She is leading The Yeats Project, a theatre research initiative on the plays of William Butler Yeats. She holds an MA in Drama from UCD and a BA in English and German from Trinity College. She was the first Artistic Director of Mermaid Arts Centre where she programmed and ran a multi-disciplinary arts venue. She has previously worked as literary consultant to Arts Council projects.

Declan Kiberd is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. A leading international authority on the literature of Ireland, both in English and Irish, Kiberd has authored scores of articles and many books, including Synge and the Irish Language, Men and Feminism in Irish Literature, Irish Classics, The Irish Writer and the World, Inventing Ireland, and, most recently, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece.

Thomas Kilroy was born in 1934 in County Kilkenny and now lives in County Mayo. His novel, The Big Chapel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Heinemann Award. His plays include: The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, Double Cross, Ghosts (after Ibsen), My Scandalous Life, The O’Neill, The Seagull (after Chekhov), The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, The Shape of Metal, Talbot’s Box, Tea and Sex and Shakespeare, Pirandellos (Two Plays) and Christ Deliver Us! Winner of the 2008 Irish PEN/AT Cross Award for Literature, Thomas Kilroy received The Irish Times/ESB ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award in 2004.

José Lanters is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also co-directs the Center for Celtic Studies. She has published widely on Irish fiction and drama, including recent articles on Thomas Kilroy, Martin McDonagh, Thomas Murphy, and Colum McCann. Her latest book is The Tinkers in Irish Literature (Irish Academic Press, 2008). In spring 2012 she will spend a month as a Visiting Fellow at the Moore Institute, NUI-Galway, to conduct archival research for her current project on the theatrical oeuvre of Thomas Kilroy. Professor Lanters is a past president of the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), and currently serves as Vice Chair for North America on the executive committee of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL).

Joseph Lennon is the Director of Irish Studies and associate professor of English at Villanova University. He taught for a decade at Manhattan College and received his PhD from the University of Connecticut. His book, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse UP 2004), won the Donald J. Murphy Prize awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS). He has published essays on Irish, Indian, and British literature and culture in academic books and poetry in literary journals such as the Times Literary Supplement and The Denver Quarterly, and Poetry Ireland. His volume of poetry, Fell Hunger was published by Salmon Poetry/Dufour Editions in 2011.

Helen Lojek is Professor Emeritus and Associate Dean (Retired) of the College of Arts and Sciences at Boise State University (Idaho). Her studies of contemporary Irish drama (including articles about Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Anne Devlin, and Frank McGuinness) have appeared in Irish University Review, Modern Drama, Contemporary Literature, Études Irlandaises, Éire-Ireland, The Canadian Journal of Irish Literature, and numerous anthologies. She served as president of the American Conference of Irish Studies/West and on the board of the Western Institute of Irish Studies. The author of Contexts for Frank McGuinness’s Drama (2004) and The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays (2011), she worked with Charabanc Theatre Company during the year she lived in Belfast.

Patrick Lonergan is a graduate of University College Dublin and National University of Ireland, Galway. He writes about theatre for many publications including The Irish Times and Irish Theatre Magazine, and is academic director of the Synge Summer School. He is a board member of Irish Theatre Magazine, and a theatre evaluator for the Irish Arts Council. He is active in many scholarly organisations, acting as Vice-President of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL), and an executive member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research and the Irish Theatrical Diaspora Project. His first book Theatre and Globalization won the Theatre Book Prize in 2009, and one of the ESSE Book Awards in 2010. He has also published The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays, Interactions – the Dublin Theatre Festival 1957-2007 (with Nicholas Grene). He is currently writing a book about Martin McDonagh, which will be published by Methuen in 2012.

Patrick Lonergan teaches English and Drama at National University of Ireland, Galway. His first book, Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era, won the 2009 Theatre Book Prize. More recently he has published The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh (2012) and the edited collection Synge and His Influences (2011). He is Academic Director of the JM Synge Summer School for Irish Drama, a Vice-President of IASIL (the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures) and the director of the Irish Theatrical Diaspora project. With Erin Hurley he is editor of Methuen’s Critical Companions to Drama and Theatre series. He is currently working on a book called Performance, Nation and Globalization: Modern Irish Drama and Its International Contexts.

Nollaig Mac Congáil. Born in Derry, educated at St. Columb’s College and the Queen’s University, Belfast, is professor of Irish, Registrar and Deputy-President of the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has written and edited twenty books and numerous articles on Irish grammar, dialects and Donegal Literature, including An Fear Deireannach den tSloinneadh, the Irish language version of The Last of the Name.

Seán Mac Mathúna was born in 1936 and attended St. Brendan’s, Killarney and later University College Cork. He spent many years as a post-primary teacher. Short stories of Mac Mathúna’s were published regularly in English in The Irish Times, The Irish Press, and in Irish in Comhar. His collection of short stories Ding agus Scéalta Eile (An Comhlacht Oideachais, 1983) established Mac Mathúna as a leading writer. The Abbey Theatre produced Gadaí Géar na Geamhoíche/The Winter Thief in 1992, four nights in English and two nights in Irish per week with the same cast, an innovative undertaking. The Arts Council nominated The Atheist & Other Stories (Wolfhound, 1987) a translation of his first book Ding agus Scéalta Eile for the European Literary Prize. 1999 saw the publication of his second collection of short stories in Irish, Banana, which won Gradam Uí Shúilleabháin / Irish Book of the Year 1999. An Taibhdhearc Theatre in Galway produced Hulla Hul in 1999.

P.J. Mathews completed his doctoral research at Trinity College Dublin and joined the UCD in 2004. Prior to that he lectured at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University (2001-2004) and Trinity College Dublin (1999-2001). He was Director of the Parnell Summer School from 2002-05 and was appointed Naughton Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame for 2007-08. Dr Mathews is the founder and Director of UCDscholarcast (www.ucd.ie/scholarcast) and a member of the Humanities Institute of Ireland.

Eamon Morrissey was born in Dublin and chosen for the part of Ned, the emigrant, in the 1964 world première of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! Morrissey played the leading role of Joe in Lovers, another Friel play when it opened at the Gate Thetare in 1967. In 1974 Morrissey adapted the satirical writings of Brian O’Nolan into a successful one-man show entitled The Brother which continues to be an enduring hit with audiences throughout the world. Morrissey went on to create two more one-man shows, Patrick Gulliver, drawn from the works of Jonathan Swift, and Joycemen, which features various characters from James Joyce’s Ulysses. In 1977, Morrissey won a Jacob’s Award for his performances in Frank Hall’s long-running satirical TV series, Hall’s Pictorial Weekly. Two decades later, he appeared as Father Derek Beeching in Father Ted. In 2009, Morrissey returned to prime-time Irish television as Cass Cassidy in the RTÉ soap opera, Fair City. Morrissey’s most significant movie appearance to date came in 1986 when he took the central role of Arthur in Peter Ormrod’s Eat the Peach.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was educated in Dublin, at UCD and at the University of Copenhagen. She has a BA, an M. Phil in Middle English, Old and Middle Irish and a PhD in Irish Folklore. Her fiction includes: Blood and Water (1988); The Bray House (1990); Eating Women is Not Recommended (1991); Singles (1992); The Inland Ice (1999); The Dancers Dancing (1999); The Pale Gold of Alaska (2000); Dúnmharú sa Daingean (2000); and plays: Milseog an tSamhraidh (1997) and Dún na mBan trí Thine (Peacock Theatre 1994). Among her awards are the Stewart Parker Playwright’s Award and The Butler Award for Prose.

Brian Ó Conchubhair is Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame. His monograph on the intellectual history of the Irish revival entitled Fin de Siècle na Gaeilge: Darwin, An Athbheochan agus Smaointeoireacht na hEorpa (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2009) received the Oireachas non-fiction award and Duais Leabhar Taighde na Bliana Fhoras na Gaeilge/ACIS Prize for Books in the Irish Language. Other publications include Gearrscéalta Ár Linne (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2006), WHY IRISH? Irish Language and Literature in Academia (Arlen House, 2008), Twisted Truths (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2011) and Dorchadas le Liam Ó Flaithearta (Arlen House, 2011). He was Series Editor for Kerry’s Fighting Story (Mercier, 2009), Limerick’s Fighting Story (Mercier, 2009), Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story (Mercier, 2009) and Dublin’s Fighting Story (Mercier, 2009). He directed the annual Fulbright/Institute for International Education Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Orientations on campus from 2006 to 2011 and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Irish Seminar.

Micheál Ó Conghaile was born on the island of Inis Treabhair, Connemara in 1962. Among his published works are Mac an tSagairt (short stories), Comhrá Caillí (poetry) and Conamara agus Árainn 1880-1980 (cultural history). His second collection of short stories, An Fear a Phléasc was nominated for the Irish Times award in 1997 and his novel Sna Fir won the Bord na Gaeilge award at Listowel Writers’ Week Festival in 1997. Awarded the Butler Literary Award also in 1997, his short story ‘Father’ was short listed for the 1997 Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Literary Awards for New Irish Writing. Recent publications are An Fear Nach nDéanann Gáirí, a collection of short stories (2001), and Cúigear Chonamara (2003), a play. He has translated several of Martin McDonagh’s play to Irish. An Taibhdhearc (Galway) have produced several of his plays.

Riana O’Dwyer is one of the section editors of the Field Day Anthology, Vol. 5, and author of many articles on 19th century Irish fiction by women including “Colonial Contradictions: Emily Lawless’s With Essex in Ireland” (2008); “Travels of a Lady of Fashion: The Literary Career of Lady Blessington” (2008); “’Female agency’ in Lady Morgan’s The Princess, or, The Béguine” (2010). Another strand of research interest is concerned with Irish theatre, including Echoes Down the Corridor: Irish Theatre — Past, Present and Future (2007) edited with Patrick Lonergan. Recent articles on drama include “Murphy and Synge: Insiders and Outsiders” (2010) and ‘How some people live’: a study of Tom Murphy’s later plays’ (2011). Her MA course on “Irish Playwrights since the Sixties” has proved popular with students of NUI Galway’s MA in Drama & Theatre Studies.

Lionel Pilkington is a graduate of University College Cork and the University of Toronto. He is the author of Theatre and the State in 20th Century Ireland: Cultivating the People (Routledge, 2001), Theatre & Ireland (Palgrave, 2010) and various articles on Irish theatre and theatre history. He teaches drama and theatre studies, Irish theatre history, and colonialism and cultural theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests include twentieth-century Irish theatre, the playwright J. M. Synge, and Irish cultural history. He is currently researching a book on non-institutional theatre and performance practices in 20th century Ireland.

Stephen Rea born in Belfast in 1946 and studied English at Queen’s University Belfast. He has stared in V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance in The Crying Game (1992) Rea helped establish the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with Tom Paulin, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane. Rea starred in Sam Shepard’s directorial debut “Geography of a Horse Dreamer” at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974. In 2007, Rea began an acclaimed relationship with both the Abbey Theatre and Sam Shepard, appearing in Kicking a Dead Horse (2007) and Ages of the Moon (2009), both penned by Shepard and also both transferred to New York. Rea returned to the Abbey to appear in the world premiere of Sebastian Barry’s Tales of Ballycumber (2009).

Paige Reynolds is an associate professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the author of Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle (Cambridge UP, 2007), as well as articles examining theatre and performance, modernism in Ireland and England, and film. She has edited a special issue of the journal Éire-Ireland entitled “Irish Things” (Spring/Summer 2011) and is an editor of the Pearson Custom Introduction to Literature. Currently, she is writing a study of Irish women writers and modernist practice.

Anthony Roche was raised and educated in Dublin, receiving his BA (Mod) from Trinity College in 1973. He was awarded his MA and PhD at the University of California at Santa Barbara and during the 1980s was Assistant Professor of Modern Drama at Auburn University, Alabama. He joined the English Department at UCD in 1990 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1999. His Contemporary Irish Drama was published in 1994; and he was editor of the Irish University Review from 1997-2002. He published The UCD Aesthetic: Celebrating 150 Years of UCD Writers (2005) and The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel (2006). He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006.

Shaun Richards is Professor of Irish Studies at Staffordshire University, UK. His publications, from Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture (MUP, 1988), which he co-authored with David Cairns, to the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century Irish Drama (CUP. 2004), have focused on Irish Drama, particularly with regard to its cultural politics. In addition to publishing on Irish Literature in major journals and edited collections (including Cambridge Companion to J.M. Synge) he has been actively involved in the development and dissemination of Irish Studies within the UK and internationally: he is currently Chair of the British Association for Irish Studies; he is one of three elected representatives for Europe on the executive of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures; and a member of the editorial board of Irish Studies Review.

Alan Titley was the head of the Irish Department at St. Patrick’s College in Drumconda, Dublin from 1981 until appointed Professor of Modern Irish at University College Cork in 2006. Among his several novels and collections are the short story collection, Focrici agus Scéalta Eile, and the essay collection, Beyond the Knacker’s Yard. His work has been translated into several languages. His young people’s novel, Amach, won the 2004 Bisto Prize. Titley has also written many stage plays that have been produced in Ireland and abroad, including Tagann Godot/Godot Turns Up (1990, Abbey/ Peacock), as well as radio plays which have been broadcast on RTÉ and the BBC. His resume includes Oireachtas prizes for works in the Irish language, the Butler Prize of the Irish-American Cultural Institute, the Pater Prize for International Radio Drama, the Stewart Parker award for drama, and the Eilís Dillon Award for Children’s Literature. Additionally, he has won prizes at Listowel Writers’ Week and Francis McManus literary competitions.