Next Seminar: 23rd April 2008

We are delighted to announce the speakers for the last School of English Staff-Postgraduate Research Seminar in this year's seminar series:

Nerys Williams (UCD): 'Pedagogical Poetics: Collaboration Between Theory and Practice'

Stephen Matterson (TCD): 'From Pieces to Weight: 50 Cent and African American Autobiography'

The seminar will be followed by a special end-of-year wine reception.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for attending what was a wonderful year's seminar series and we look forward to seeing you all at this final event.

Seminar and Wine Reception: 27th February

We are delighted to announce that the last seminar of term will feature the poet and critic Gerald Dawe in conversation with Maria Johnston. Gerald will read from his forthcoming poetry collection and work in progress Points West. This will be followed by the end-of-term wine reception.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and educated at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and University College Galway (now National University of Ireland, Galway) where he taught from 1977 to 1987. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he lectures in English and directs the graduate writing programme. He was Burns Visiting Professor at Boston College in 2005. His first collection of poems, Sheltering Places (Blackstaff) was published in 1978. His second collection, The Lundys Letter (1985) published by The Gallery Press, was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. Other awards include Arts Council Bursaries for Poetry, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship and the Ledig-Rowholt International Writers' Award. His subsequent poetry collections, Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Geneva (2003) have also been published by The Gallery Press. His collected essays, The Proper Word was published in 2007. My Mother-City, a memoir, also appeared in 2007 along with a special issue of An Sionnach. He is the new presenter of the RTE Poetry Programme.

All are Welcome!

Guest Speaker: 20th February 2008

We are delighted to announce that our guest speaker for this week's seminar is Prof. Clair Wills (Queen Mary, University of London). Prof. Wills will be speaking about 1950s Ireland and the Emigration Commission.

Clair Wills’s research focuses on twentieth-century Irish literature and culture, and contemporary English, Irish and American poetry. Her most recent 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.

All are welcome!

Guest Speaker: 30 January 2008

Our distinguished guest speaker for the seminar on 30 January is Prof. Michael Parker (University of Central Lancashire). Prof. Parker will be speaking on ‘“Fallout from the thunder”: Northern Irish Poetry since 9/11’, discussing poems by Sinead Morrissey, Nick Laird and Seamus Heaney.

Michael Parker has been a member of the English Literature team at the University of Central Lancashire since 1999, where he is Research Manager for English Language and Literature. He is a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a peer reviewer for the Research Council of Norway. He recently published Northern Irish Literature, 1956-2006: The Imprint of History, a work in two volumes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and in 2008, Irish Literature Since 1990: Diverse Voices, a collection of essays which he has co-edited with Scott Brewster, will be appearing from Manchester University Press. In 2006 he became an Advisory Editor for Irish Studies Review and for the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. He is a member of the English Association, IASIL, the British Association for Irish Studies and the Thomas Hardy Association. He has reviewed books and plays for, among others, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The Irish Times. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, and in 2005 was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Ulster’s Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages.

All are welcome!

Hilary Term Line-Up

School of English Staff and Postgraduate Research Seminar Series

Seminars are held in Áras an Phiarsaigh, Room 0.09 at 5.15pm

Hilary Term 2008

16 January

Caroline Elbay:

‘Beckett: MUCH ADO ABOUT … NOTHING ? Voicing
Dissent Through Silence and Non-Action’
&
Ann Hoag:
‘Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa: Authority and Imperialism
in Women’s Travel Writing’

23 January

Jane Carroll:
‘Two Misconstrued Attic Spaces in Susan Cooper’s The
Dark Is Rising Sequence’
&
Margaret Matthews:
‘Jane Austen and the Borders of English National Identity’

30 January

Guest Speaker
Prof. Michael Parker, University of Central Lancashire:

‘“Fallout from the Thunder”: Northern Irish Poetry Since 9/11’

6 February: Reading Week – No Seminar

13 February

Deirdre McFeely:
‘Dion Boucicault’s Robert Emmet: Myth and Reality’
&
Erin Gallagher:
‘Representing the People: Perception and Community in the
Harlem and Dublin Renaissances’

20 February

Guest Speaker
Prof Clair Wills, Queen Mary University of London

27 February

Gerald Dawe:
'"Points West": New Poems'

Gerald Dawe, in conversation with Maria Johnston, talks about

and reads from a work in progress

This will be followed by the end of term wine reception.

All are Welcome!

Guest Speaker: 21st November 2007

Our distinguished guest speaker for Michaelmas Term is Justin Quinn (Charles University, Prague). Justin will be speaking on 'Native and Foreign Radicals in Twentieth Century Irish Poetry' and will be introduced by Prof. Stephen Matterson.

Justin Quinn was born in Dublin in 1968. He received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin and now works at the Charles University in Prague, where he is Associate Professor at the Department of English and American Studies. He has published two studies of American Poetry, Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community, and American Errancy: Empire, Sublimity and Modern Poetry, as well as four collections of poetry, most recently Waves and Trees (Gallery, 2006). He was a founder editor of the poetry journal Metre. His translations of Czech poetry have appeared widely. In addition to teaching at Charles University, Quinn also served as visiting faculty at Villanova University for the Spring semester of 2007 as holder of the Heimbold Endowed Chair in Irish Studies, one of the most prestigious Irish Studies positions in the United States. His study The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry 1800 - 2000 is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

All are welcome!

Michaelmas Term Line Up

School of English Staff and Postgraduate Seminar Series

Seminars are held in Aras an Phiarsaigh, Room 3.19 at 5.15pm

24 October: Dr. Darryl Jones
‘Scenes from the Decline and Fall of the American Empire’

31 October: Dr. Bernice Murphy
‘“Conjure Wife”: Bewitched and the Suburban Gothic’

Simon Workman
‘“Not matching pictures but inventing sound”: Louis MacNeice & auditory imagination’

Followed by a wine reception for all staff and students.

7 November: Reading Week (No Seminar)

14 November: Mark Sweetnam
'A Place for Preaching and the Place of Preaching: John Donne and the Consecration of the Chapel at Lincoln's Inn'

Andrew Tobolowsky
‘The Dancer, the Dance, the Choreographer: Historiography in At Swim-Two-Birds’

21 November: Guest Speaker Justin Quinn (Charles University)

The renowned Irish Poet and Critic will give a talk on the subject of Irish Poetry in advance of the publication of his new study, The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry 1800 - 2000

28 November: Dr. Melanie Otto
‘White Creole or Rebel Slave?: The Discourse of Slavery in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark’

Antoinette Curtin
‘“Too Alluring to be Strictly Decent”: Physical Beauty in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature’

5 December: Book Launch (No Seminar)