Mid-Semester News, Events & Updates

Earrach 2023

Happy St. Patrick's month!

We begin this spring season with gratitude, as our lead up to Spring Break included many exciting opportunities. We welcomed Ambassador of Ireland Geraldine Byrne Nason to campus, hosted a full house for our 2023 Heimbold Chair Mary O'Donoghue's outstanding Literary Festival reading, and co-hosted with the Irish American Business Chamber & Network and St. Joseph's University Irish Studies the Philadelphia premiere and discussion with director Colm Bairéad of the first ever Irish language film to be Oscar-nominated, The Quiet Girl, based on the short story "Foster" by former Villanova Heimbold Chair Claire Keegan. Congratulations to all of the Irish films this year at the Oscars, especially winner An Irish Goodbye! Over spring break, we also participated in the Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day parade, and we attended the Friendly Sons & Daughters of St. Patrick Gala where we had the pleasure of meeting Minister for Education Norma Foley and celebrating the special recognition of our friend, past FSSP president and board member, Joe Heenan.

We have a full spectrum of wonderful programming in the second half of this semester, including our second Heimbold Chair event, a conversation with Mary O'Donoghue and Irish writer Lisa McInerney in April. April also marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which will be honored in a collaborative event with the McNulty Institute for Women's Leadership and the Irish American Business Chamber & Network at the Villanova Inn.

Our St. Patrick's offerings in March include an Ireland Study Abroad Reunion for our students, a pop-up Gaeltacht in Havertown open to all, a lecture on the funding of the Irish revolution by economic historian at Queens Belfast, Robin Adams, Ph.D., the continuation of our Tea and Talk Irish language series, and a screening of Irish Language film, Wrecking the Rising (Éiri Amach Amú).

Check out our full calendar below. We look forward to seeing you as we welcome in the spring!

Jennifer Joyce, PhD, Acting Director

Updates & News

Fall 2023 Irish Studies Course Offerings

Course registration for Fall 2023 will begin soon! Take a look at our Irish Studies course descriptions here. Students, please reach out to Dr. Jennifer Joyce with any questions.

Spring 2023 Events

Wednesday, March 15: Tea and Talk/Tae agus Plé

Join our Fulbright Irish language instructor, Alswyn Hennessy Doyle, for an informal Irish language conversation circle. No previous Irish required! All Villanova students, faculty, and staff are welcome. All drop-in sessions take place on a Wednesday, from 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

March 15, SAC 103

March 29, SAC 400

April 12, SAC 400

April 26, SAC 400

Thursday, March 16: St. Patrick's Week Irish Study Abroad Reunion

Come catch up with your Irish connections! If you are a current Villanova student who has studied abroad in Ireland, you are a current Villanova student registered to study abroad in Ireland this summer, or you've ever served as a Faculty Program Coordinator for an Irish study abroad program, you're invited St. Patrick's Week to our Irish Study Abroad Reunion!

There will be food, drink, music, memories, and good craic! Stop by!

Co-sponsored by the Office of Education Abroad.

No RSVP required. Drop-ins welcome!

4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m., Garey Hall, top floor

Sunday, March 19: Pop Up Gaeltacht

Drop in and join our Fulbright Irish Language Instructor, Sorcha Gallagher, at The Crossbar in Havertown on Sunday, the 19th of March for craic & comhrá as Gaeilge. Open to anyone with an interest in the Irish language. This is the perfect opportunity for people of all levels to speak, learn the cúpla focal or listen to the Irish language with family & friends.

Tá fáilte roimh chách/All welcome

Bígí linn / Be with us

Co-sponsored with the Irish American Business Chamber & Network and the Irish Diaspora Center

2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m., The Crossbar in Havertown

(2225 Darby Road)

Questions? Contact Sorcha Gallagher

Monday, March 20: Robin Adams, Ph.D., Queens University Belfast:

"Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution (1919-21)?"

Dr. Robin Adams is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast. His doctoral research, completed at the University of Oxford in 2019, gained international recognition by winning the Thirsk-Feinstein prize and Alexander Gerschenkron prize. His first monograph, Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution?, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.

Falvey Library, Speaker's Corner at 4:00 p.m.

Monday, March 27: Irish Language Film Screening & Talkback:

Wrecking the Rising (Éiri Amach Amú)

Join the Center for Irish Studies for an Irish language film screening of Éiri Amach Amú (Wrecking the Rising) (2016) and discussion with FuIbright Language Instructor, Sorcha Gallagher. The film follows three Dublin men who travel back to 1916, just before the Easter Rising, in an attempt to alter history. We hope to see you there!

Driscoll Hall 132 at 6:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 1: Irish Dance Team Showcase

The talented Villanova Irish Dance Team will perform their genre-busting Annual Showcase. We hope you will come out to support these incredible students!

Mullen Center, Court Theater at 6:30pm

Thursday, April 13: Nothing Compares: A Film Screening about Singer-Songwriter Sinead O’Connor

Irish Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies will host a screening of the award-winning 2022 documentary film Nothing Compares, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, which explores the career of Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor and her cultural legacy. The film addresses important themes relevant to both Irish Studies and Gender Studies, including gender norms, rights, religion, and social change in Ireland and beyond. The screening will be followed by an open discussion facilitated by Dr. Cera Murtagh, Assistant Professor of Irish and Comparative Politics.

Connelly Cinema at 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, April 19: Writers and Editors, Ethics and Craft: A Conversation with the 2023 Irish Studies Heimbold Chair Mary O’Donoghue and Irish writer Lisa McInerney

Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Join us for a lively conversation with the 2023 Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies, award-winning writer, translator, and editor, Mary O'Donoghue, and award-winning Irish writer and editor, Lisa McInerney, about the craft of writing, translation, editing, and process and where the arts of each intersect and work together, police one another, or pull apart.

Mary O'Donoghue is the author of the novel Before the House Burns (The Lilliput Press, 2010) and the poetry collections Among These Winters (Dedalus Press, 2007) and Tulle (Salmon Poetry, 2001).O’Donoghue’s forthcoming short story collection will be published by Stinging Fly Press in 2023. O'Donoghue's writing awards include two artist's fellowships from Massachusetts Cultural Council (2006 and 2012), Irish Times’ “Legends of the Fall” prize for short fiction in response to Ireland's economic crisis (2013), and residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her fiction has appeared in many notable US and European publications including Subtropics, The Common, Granta, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Irish Times, Sunday Times UK, Stinging Fly, Dublin Review, and elsewhere. Mary has also been published for her translations in Leabhar na hAthghabhala / Poems of Repossession (Bloodaxe Books/ Clo Iar-Chonnachta, 2016) and Sean O Riordain Selected Poems (Yale University Press, 2014).

Lisa McInerney is the author of three novels: The Glorious Heresies, The Blood Miracles, and The Rules of Revelation. She has won the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Desmond Elliot Prize, the RSL Encore Award and the Premio Edoardo Kihlgren for European literature, and has been nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Premio Strega Europeo, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, and twice for the Dylan Thomas Award. Her work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta, The Guardian, Le Monde, Vogue CS, The Irish Times, BBC Radio 4, and numerous anthologies. She is published in 11 languages. In 2022, she was appointed editor of The Stinging Fly literary magazine. She will be visiting us from Ireland. We hope you can make this special event!

Co-sponsored by the Villanova Writing and Rhetoric Program.

Falvey Library, Speaker's Corner at 4:00 p.m.

Monday, April 24: James McNaughton, Ph.D., University of Alabama Lecture: "Rubber Genocide in Joyce and Beckett: from Roger Casement's Congo to Vél d'Hiv and Auschwitz"

Both James Joyce and Samuel Beckett were familiar with Roger Casement’s official reporting on the catastrophic atrocities that accompanied rubber extraction in the Belgian Congo (1904) and Putumayo Amazon (1910). Joyce recognized the massacres in the Congo as of a structural pattern with Ireland’s long history under British imperialism. But in Dubliners, Joyce clothes characters in consumer rubber to indicate not only an ethical economic crisis, that the modern mobility revolution depends upon genocidal slave labor, but that by ignoring this fact and by eschewing solidarity with other colonies, Irish nationalism effectively becomes “white.” Beckett extends the ethics of Joyce’s racial critique in Le dépeupleur (The Lost Ones) where Beckett houses a “little people” in a giant cylinder made out of, again, rubber. Beckett reworks Joyce’s caution to confront the French with their complicity in Nazi genocide, an evasion of responsibility he finds prepared in economic logics and colonial racism. In this lecture, Dr. McNaughton will examine this Irish modernist tradition that considers comparative genocide and will ask whether Irish racial motility provides an ethics for confronting the boundaries of complicity.

Co-Sponsored by the Villanova English Department

Connelly Center, Devon Room at 6:00 p.m.

Thursday, April 27: Women Making Peace: The Good Friday Agreement, 25 Years On

In collaboration with the Irish American Business Chamber & Network and the Villanova McNulty Institute for Women's Leadership, we will be hosting a special luncheon program to highlight the role of women as peacemakers (including some special guests!) in commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Save the date!

The Villanova Inn, 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Please contact Alanna Barry at the Chamber for Registration.

Tuesday, May 2: Majors & Minors Graduation Celebration & Heimbold Chair and Fulbright Instructors' Sendoff Party

Villanova Irish Studies students and faculty! Be sure to save the date for our end of the semester celebration acknowledging our Class of 2023 graduating majors and minors, as well as our 2023 Heimbold Chair, Mary O'Donoghue, and Fulbright Irish Language instructors, Alswyn Hennessy Doyle and Sorcha Gallagher.

FLTA House from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

*Please note that Tues., May 2 is a Friday class schedule day