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!