Library Lecture Series

Upcoming Lectures

Past Lectures

Thomas Kinsella; Poet and Modern Irish Literary Innovator​

Lecture with Adrienne Leavy and Thomas Dillon Redshaw

Friday, April 11 at 6pm in the Great Hall

Lecture description: Professor Thomas Dillon Redshaw and Dr. Adrienne Leavy will present a talk on the poet Thomas Kinsella (1928-2021), one of the major poets in modern Irish and international poetry. This talk will also introduce a new study of Kinsella’s work, Where Love and Imagination Colour the Dark: Essays on Thomas Kinsella, which will be published by Wake Forest University Press in May. Kinsella’s remarkable poetic corpus spanned over six decades and he is also renowned for his groundbreaking translation of the Irish vernacular epic Táin Bó Cúailnge and for his achievements as a translator and anthologist of Gaelic poetry.

Download and Subscribe to Reading Ireland at www.readingireland.net/subscribe

Adrienne Leavy, Ph.D. is the publisher and editor of the literary magazine, Reading Ireland: The Little Magazine which is published twice a year. She is the editor of Where Love and Imagination Colour the Dark: Essays on Thomas Kinsella (Wake Forest University Press: 2025), and is currently working on a biography of Thomas Kinsella.

Thomas Dillon Redshaw, Ph.D. is the founding editor of New Hibernia Review and the former editor of Éire-Ireland. He has published extensively on the poetry of John Montague and on Liam Miller’s Dolmen Press, as well as on the poetry of John F. Deane, Thomas McCarthy, Brian Coffey, and George Reavey.

The Green Man

Lunch Lecture with Lynn Mascarelli

Saturday, March 22 at 12pm in the Library Castle Keep

The Green Man, a leafy, foliate head appearing on the walls of churches and buildings all over Ireland, England, and neighboring isles, is a herald of the Celtic season of Imbolc/Spring. Lynn Herdman Mascarelli, artisan, author, lecturer, offers history and lore surrounding his image through colorful visuals and her table of art.

 Discussion on contemporary Irish author, Jennifer Johnston

By Adrienne Leavy

Saturday September 21st at 12pm in the Library Keep

Lecture description: “Widely regarded as one of Ireland’s most skillful contemporary writers, Jennifer Johnston’s novels constitute a distinctive and sophisticated body of work which explores family relationships and human frailty against a backdrop of the turbulent history of twentieth-century Ireland. Adrienne Leavy will discuss the major themes and plots of a wide-ranging selection of Johnston’s novels including The Captain and the Kings, Fool’s Sanctuary, How Many Miles to Babylon, Shadows on our Skin (which was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize), and her most recent novel Naming the Stars.

Leavy’s interview with Jennifer Johnston is available to download at no cost in issue 1 of Reading Ireland at www.readingireland.net/subscribe“

Adrienne Leavy was born in Ireland and lived in Dundalk, County Louth, for the first twenty-five years of her life. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied law, and at the Honourable Society of Kings Inns. After receiving the degree of Barrister-at-Law and being called to the Irish Bar, she immigrated to the United States, where she obtained permission from the Arizona State Supreme Court to take the Arizona Bar Examination. She practiced law in Arizona for ten years before returning to post-graduate education to pursue her interest in Irish literature.

Adrienne holds a Masters Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (with a focus on Irish Studies) from Arizona State University West, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Arizona State University. The subject of her doctoral dissertation was the representation of women in the poetry of the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. In addition to her work as curator of Reading Ireland and editor of Reading Ireland: The Little Magazine, Adrienne frequently lectures on various aspects of Irish literature. Her poetry has been published in many Irish literary journals including A Modest Review, Boyne Berries, Crannóg, Revival and The Stony Thursday Book.

“How to Dance Sitting Down: Aging, Innovation and the Graying of Disability”

By Michael Davidson, in partnership with ASU Humanities Institute

September 13th, doors at 5pm lecture begins at 5:30pm in the Great Hall

Lecture description: Have you ever heard the saying, “Everyone is disabled if they live long enough”?  

Hearing this may give the impression that aging and disability are one and the same.  It is perhaps due to this sensibility that aging as a topic in disability studies has been somewhat overlooked.  This lecture will look at the notion of disability in aging, not as a mark of precarity but of capability.  Prof. Michael Davidson’s particular focus will be on Samuel Beckett, whose characters are often aging disabled, characters for whom bodily and sensory decay are central to their ability to “go on.”  Prof. Davidson will also use the work of writers and artists such as Beethoven, Henry James, and Merce Cunningham, who continued to create and experiment formally while becoming increasingly disabled in later years.

Illuminated!  A Closer Look at the Book of Kells and illuminated manuscripts

May 4th 2024 at 12pm in the Castle Keep, presented by Mallory Melton

Registration is FREE with limited space in the Castle Keep. 
As it is on Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you!), folks are welcome to come in costume.

“Why Genealogy? | Reframing the Roots Quest” 

Presented by Jim Rogers, March 14th from 6-8PM in the Great Hall

It seems every Irish-American has someone in their family researching their genealogy. Despite generational distance and physical separation from Ireland, the draw to connect with one’s Irish roots is strong. Join Jim Rogers, poet and scholar/historian of Irish America, for a thought-provoking program on the whys of Irish genealogy. Jim’s presentation and roundtable discussion will be an exploration of ways to conceive of genealogical research and the motivations for its undertaking.

Free Admission but donations are greatly appreciated

Two Days – Lecture and Dramatic Reading

January 19 and 20, 2024

**Free Lecture – January 19, 2024 from 5:30pm – 7pm

Dr. Charlotte Headrick: A Career Anchored by Love and Celebration of Irish Theatre

Starting with her undergraduate years at the University of Tennessee and continuing until the present, Dr. Headrick has worked on, directed, and acted in Irish plays. As a scholar, she has published widely including Irish Women Dramatists 1908-2001 (Syracuse University Press, co-editor Eileen Kearney) Her career has been anchored by her love and celebration of Irish Theatre.

**This event is free, however donations are greatly appreciated.
Registration is required for this event, please do so HERE

Dramatic Reading – January 20, 2024 at 5:30pm

Dr. Charlotte Headrick and Dr. Michael Hood read “Chapatti”

“Lonely Dan is a dog lover who bumps into Betty, the proverbial cat lady at the Vet’s office. Their lives are changed forever. This is a touching Irish two-hander filled with many moments of laughter. It is never too late for love.” 

Oscar Wilde and Ireland

May 17th, 2023 5:30PM – 7PM

Oscar Wilde was a very political writer, yet many biographers and literary critics continue to overlook his commitment to Irish nationalism, which deeply influenced his literary writings.  Wilde’s plays, fiction, and poems often turn to this subject, either directly or indirectly, and there is also much evidence throughout his journalism of his sympathy and support for the Land League and Irish republicanism.  In this talk, Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile will explore Wilde’s support for the cause of Irish independence, which he told a US audience had been ‘so unjustly robbed from us’.  Drawing on research conducted at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, which houses the world’s largest collection of Wilde-related materials, Deaglán will contextualise Oscar Wilde’s literary writings by highlighting the ways in which these works reflected his views on Ireland.

   *Doors will open in the Great Hall at 4:30PM on the evening of May 17th.

   *There is no cost for admission.

   *The Lecture will begin at 5:30PM

   *Donations are greatly appreciated

Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile holds a PhD in English Literature from Trinity College, Dublin. He is Reader in Late Victorian Literature and Culture at Liverpool John Moores University in England, where he is also a member of the Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History.  He has held visiting fellowships at the UCLA Clark Library and the Huntington Library, where he has conducted research on their important Wilde-related collections.  From 2020-21 he was a British Academy Research Fellow and has previously been an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow.   He is currently writing a political biography of Oscar Wilde entitled Revolutionary Wilde.  His study of Wilde’s literary writings, Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020.

Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile’s book Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle is available: HERE

Anarchy in Medieval Ireland?

March 2nd, 2023 7PM – 8:30PM

Several scholars and writers have suggested that Ireland in the medieval period (roughly, 400-1600 A.D.) was an anarchy – a community in which no government exercised a successful claim to have a monopoly on authorizing the legitimate use of violence.  For example, in For a New Liberty (pp. 286-290), the libertarian anarchist Murray Rothbard, citing Joseph R. Peden, wrote: “For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has written: ‘There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice…  There was no trace of State-administered justice’.”

The event will take place in the third-floor Castle Keep at the McClelland Library.  Doors will open at 6:30 pm.  The Library will provide coffee and Irish tea.  The Irish Cultural Center will sell more interesting beverages.  Parking is available in the lot directly west of the campus.  

At our March 2nd discussion, McClelland Library executive director Tom Jenney will discuss the nature of the medieval Irish legal system(s) with Jim Boyle, a trustee of the Irish Cultural Center who has a PhD in medieval Irish archaeology from New York University.  Before opening the discussion to audience questions, Tom and Jim will explore several issues: 

• What is the definition of “anarchy”?
• Is it useful to draw a bright line between public and private law, or did Irish law fall into a polycentric middle ground of the kind described by Elinor Ostrom?
• Does the term “anarchy” really apply to Ireland in the (“the”) medieval period?  
• What did it mean to be a “king” in medieval Ireland?  
• How were tuatha formed and administered?  
• How did brehon law function?  
• If a private system of law enforcement actually operated the way Rothbard described, did it work in a way that most people today would find desirable, compared to other alternatives in the medieval period (or, compared to modern alternatives)?  
• Given the eventual conquest of Ireland by the British, was the stateless system of Irish “national” defense effective against foreign invasion and conquest? 

Background Reading/Sources

Short articles/chapters/podcasts:

Flanagan, Kevin, “When Ireland was Stateless,” Podcast, Portraits of Liberty, May 21, 2021.

Friedman, David D., “Early Irish Law,” in Legal Systems Very Different from Ours. 

Peden, Joseph R., “Property Rights in Early Irish Law,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 81-95, Pergamon Press (1977). 

Rothbard, Murray N., For a New Liberty (pp. 286-290)

For serious law and history enthusiasts, Dr. Boyle recommends a textbook: Kelly, Fergus, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (1988).  The McClelland Library will acquire a copy of the Kelly book in 2023, but you may need to find one online.