Maynooth University Department of English

Oliver Jeffers at Illuminations

Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Oliver Jeffers is internationally renowned for his award winning children’s books, illustrations and artwork.  Illuminations will exhibit a wide range of Jeffers’ retrospective artwork, highlighting the development of his ideas and techniques, his humour and his profanity.

Featuring over one hundred images, grouped thematically, the exhibition opening on February 10th will afford audiences the opportunity to witness the vitality and imagination of one of Ireland’s most important contemporary artists at work. 

The New York based artist has exhibited widely across the world and has accumulated numerous prestigious awards including the Kate Greenaway Medal, The Bisto Book of the Year Award, The Irish Times Book Awards, The Blue Peter Book Award and a New York Emmy Award.  In addition, his books have been translated into over 30 different languages to date. 

As recently as December 2013 Jeffers was invited to direct U2’s ‘No Ordinary Love’ music video for the film, ‘Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom’.  In the same year his children’s book ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ was #1 in the New York Times Best Seller List.   

Oliver Jeffers at Illuminations is curated by Dr Colin Graham, Maynooth University Senior Lecturer of English.  Illuminations is a digital-visual exhibition space in the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies at Maynooth University. Illuminations brings together work in the visual arts and in academia, celebrating innovation, ideas and creativity.
See illuminations.nuim.ie.

Department of English Panel Discussion: Remembering Ann Lovett

February 5, 2014

Ann Lovett was 15 years old when she left her school early on the 31 January 1984. She didn’t go home. Instead she disappeared into the grotto by the graveyard in the town of Granard, Co Longford. There, all alone, she gave birth to a baby boy. Several hours later they were both found dead.

The lonely death of Ann Lovett and her son said everything about a society that could claim to respect and value women’s lives while abandoning a frightened pregnant teenager. Her death ignited a public conversation about the type of society that Ireland was and what it needed to become.

To remember the thirtieth anniversary of Ann Lovett’s death and its significance for Irish society the Department of English at Maynooth University convened a panel discussion. Joining in the conversation were Catríona Crowe (Head of Special Projects, National Archive), Justine McCarthy (Journalist, Sunday Times), Anne Mulhall (School of English UCD) and Ailbhe Smyth (Feminist). It was be chaired by Sinéad Kennedy (Department of English Maynooth University).

The evening began with a short performance in memory of Ann Lovett by singer Christy Moore.
 

Retirement of Professor Peter Denman

October 2013

After many years service to Maynooth, including two terms as Dean of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Philosophy, Prof. Peter Denman retired from the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies in Maynooth University. 

To mark his retirement, the School published The Lighter Craft, in which some of Ireland’s leading poets have come together in an original collection to honour Peter – a festschrift  of poetry. The collection is available from the University Bookshop. Paperback €15, hardback €25.

Modernism, Memory and Media: Ireland 1913-1916 Conference

21-23 June 2013

New Voices - Multidisciplinary Postgraduate and Early Career Scholars’ Conference 2013
Diversities in Literary and Cultural Studies

13-15 June 2013, Maynooth University

Performance of “Revolution”

Thursday 13th of June, 2013 (as part of the New Voices Conference)

An unknown group starts a chain of events that lights the fuse to rebellion across Ireland. Revolution tells the story of four people caught up in a rebellion started by the Citizens Movement; Pensioner Lizzy Murphy; Stand up Comedian, David Prendergast; Single Parent, Sandra Byrne and Fine Gael TD, Malcolm Reynolds. Who exactly are the Citizens Movement and will this revolution be televised on RTE? Revolution is a devised piece of theatre created by free rein theatre company in early 2013, which directly reflects what is happening in Ireland today and the possibility of revolution!

Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and the desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!

The Rebel by Pádraic H. Pearse

Eighteenth Century Ireland Society / Cumann Éire san Ochtú Céad annual conference, 7-9 June 2013 

2013 marks the tercentenary of the Treaty of Utrecht and the 250th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris, concluding two of the most “global” wars of the eighteenth century.  Accordingly, the theme of the conference was  “Ireland and Geopolitics”.

‘Gender, Performativity, Play’ Symposium

Girlhood in/and Ideologies and Nature

Thursday May 16th 2013

Crossroads in African Literatures

Thursday, 18th April

Paulo Farias “The seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicles: the emergence of a new genre”

Paulo Farias is a historian (and medical doctor) who has developed epigraphic sources for the medieval history of West Africa. His Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali (2003) won the Paul Hair Prize (2005) conferred by the USA African Studies Association together with the Association for the Preservation and Publication of African Historical Sources. A discussion to explore the issues raised by the work was held at the Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains, Université de Paris-1, and was later published in Afrique & Histoire 4 (2005). Reviewers have pointed out that in addition to revealing a corpus of new sources the book deconstructed the established paradigm of Sahelian historical studies, which had originated with Heinrich Barth in the 1850s. Other Moraes Farias publications (on the Almoravids in the Western Sahara, “Silent Trade”, oral traditions, and the interaction of Islamic and other cultures) are similarly credited with producing shifts of perspective in African studies.

Karin Barber “‘The life-story of me, Segilola’: 1920s Lagos and the first Yoruba novel”

Karin Barber is an anthropologist with a particular interest in popular culture, religion, and the verbal arts, both oral and written. While working as a lecturer in the University of Ife, Nigeria, she conducted research on Yoruba popular theatre, joining the Oyin Adejobi Theatre Company, travelling extensively with them and performing in their improvised Yoruba-language plays, both on stage and on television. After eleven years in Nigeria, Karin was appointed to a lectureship at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, where she is now Professor of African Cultural Anthropology. Several of her books have won prestigious prizes. I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (1991) won the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology, awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute. The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre (2000) won the prestigious Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of the USA.  Her most recent book, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics (2007) won the Susanne K. Langer Award of the Media Ecology Association. Karin was President of the African Studies Association of the UK (2000-2002). She is the editor of Africa, the journal of the International African Institute. In 2003 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and she served as the British Academy's Vice-President (Humanities) 2008-10. She has been given a Yoruba chieftaincy title, and is the Iyamoye of Okuku.

Poetry Reading with Paula Meehan

Wednesday April 17, 2013

Paula Meehan is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary poets. Her six collections include: The Man Who Was Marked by Winter (1991), Dharmakaya (2000) and Making Rain (2009). Mysteries of the Home, a selection of her early poetry, was recently re-issued by Dedalus press.

Between Bodies, Bodies Between: Two-Day Conference

Maynooth University, April 5th and 6th 2013

Plenaries: Professor Francis O’Gorman, Dr Vike Plock, Dr Moynagh Sullivan

Poetry readings by Mary O’Donnell and Eva Lindroos

This conference engaged bodies and embodiment in literature and the humanities, seeking to survey the state of scholarship and future directions after over a decade of groundbreaking work. It comprised delegates presenting research across a diverse range of topics, disciplines and methodologies, including panels on maternity, stigma, disembodiment, decay, pain, skin, race, medicine, and performance art.

Organisers: Dr Margaret O’Neill, Dr Christopher Stokes

Dr H H Stewart Literary Scholarship in English

The Department of English is delighted to announce that two of our Second Year students were prize winners at the NUI Awards at The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham on 7 November 2012.  The Dr H H Stewart Literary Scholarship in English was awarded to Michael Craughwell and second prize was awarded to Thomas Scott.   The awards were for the best performances in First Year English in any constituent college of National University of Ireland.  Michael was presented with his medal and scholarship prize by Dr Maurice Manning, Chancellor of the University, at the ceremony which was also attended by Professor Jim Walsh,  Deputy President of Maynooth University and Dr Emer Nolan, Acting Head of the Department of English. 

Warm congratulations to Michael and Thomas and we wish them and all our students continued success in the years ahead.
 

Symposium on “Irish Studies: Ideas and Institutions After the Crash”

On the 22 June 2012 the Department of English, with the support of An Foras Feasa, hosted a one-day symposium on "Irish Studies: Ideas and Institutions after the Crash" in the Iontas Lecture Theatre, Iontas Building, North Campus, Maynooth University.   Over 100 people, including many US- and UK-based  research students and lecturers in Irish Studies, were in attendance to hear presentations and to debate the recent history and possible futures of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies.  Speakers included Professor Chris Morash (NUIM), Prof Diane Negra (UCD), Prof Luke Gibbons (NUIM), Susan McKay (Author and Journalist), Professor Seamus Deane (University of Notre Dame), Professor Margaret Kelleher (NUIM),  Professor Shaun Richards (University of Staffordshire), Dr Lionel Pilkington (NUI Galway), Dr Heather Laird (UCC), Professor Joe Cleary (Maynooth University and Yale) and Professor Tom Inglis (UCD).  Further details of the programme available at rockyroadto2016.com and some of the papers will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Irish Review.  The large attendance and lively response to the Rocky Road symposium have smoothed the path for a further series of conferences to be hosted by the School of English, Theatre and Media Studies in 2013.

October 2013

After many years service to Maynooth, including two terms as Dean of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Philosophy, Prof. Peter Denman retired from the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies in Maynooth University. 

To mark his retirement, the School published The Lighter Craft, in which some of Ireland’s leading poets have come together in an original collection to honour Peter – a festschrift  of poetry. The collection is available from the University Bookshop. Paperback €15, hardback €25.

June 2013

Faculty member Michael G. Cronin has published Impure Thoughts (Manchester University Press, 2012).

Impure Thoughts offers an innovative history of the twentieth-century Irish Catholic bildungsroman. It explains how in the hands of diverse writers, from James Joyce to Edna O’Brien, this popular genre provided an imaginative space where Irish culture thought about, worried over, and negotiated the connection between sexuality and modernity.

This comparative examination of six Irish novelists tracks the historical evolution of a literary genre and its significant role in Irish culture. With chapters on James Joyce and Kate O’Brien, along with studies of Maura Laverty, Patrick Kavanagh, Edna O’Brien and John McGahern, this book offers a fresh new approach to the study of twentieth-century Irish writing and of the twentieth-century novel.

 But these author’s novels were not the only stories of youth circulating in Irish culture during these decades. Impure Thoughts includes an original assessment of varied archival material, most notably Catholic advice pamphlets for teenagers. It maps out the distinctive forms of sexual discourse – from Catholic moral theology to Freudian psychoanalysis – used in various combinations by the novelists and by the proponents of Catholic sexual morality. The result is a nuanced and provocative reappraisal of how sexuality was regulated and controlled in twentieth-century Ireland.

March 2013

  Faculty member Eva Lindroos has published The Wave-Rider. Her first collection reads back through the past to explore the experiences of living and loving, and of learning to recognise oneself.

About the author: Eva Lindroos is a Dramatherapist with a background in the Performing Arts and Education. She qualified as a Dramatherapist in 2000 from Roehampton University, where she was a Senior Lecturer on the Dramatherapy MA Programme. She also holds a Masters Degree in German, English and Scandinavian Literature and Languages from the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe Universitaet in Frankfurt/M, Germany specialising in the field of Children and Young People’s Literature and Theatre. She is the Subject Leader and Course Co-ordinator for the MA Dramatherapy programme at National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her extensive clinical Dramatherapy experience includes working with various client groups mainly in Adult Mental Health for the NHS in the UK and for the HSE in Ireland. Her theatre background includes experience both as a performer and director in several European and African countries including her country of origin, Sweden. She is currently working on her PhD in Dramatherapy in the Education Department at Maynooth University. Her research interest is the education and training of Dramatherapists in an academic environment.

September 2011

Faculty member Conrad Brunstöm has published Thomas Sheridan's Career and Influence: An Actor in Earnest. This book considers the varied careers of controversial Irish adventurer Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788) in terms of a continuum of phonocentrist obsession. Variously employed as an actor-manager, elocutionist, lecturer and educational theorist, Sheridan believed that the key to Irish national renewal and European cultural revival was the cultivation of the spoken word. His stewardship of the Smock Alley Theater in Dublin was marked by considerable innovation along with bitter controversy. Brunström argues that the author's many failures are as interesting as his successed and that he stands as a fascinating example of the power of a single idea, variously interpreted and implemented.

April 2011

Factulty member Christopher Stokes has published Coleridge, Language and the Sublime. The first full-length study to engage Coleridge's work through the aesthetics of the sublime. It argues for a double-edged Coleridge whose poetic and metaphysical commitments to transcendence were played out, under the sign of sublimity, against his sharp awareness of weakness and lack. Traversing the themes of language, terror and representation, his position in a conversation about finitude - a conversation that encompasses Longinus, Burke and Kant as well as modern theorists of the sublime - is shown to be an important element of our own Post-Romantic legacy.

February 2011

Shane McCorristine, who holds an IRCHSS-funded postdoctoral fellowship jointly with the English Department of Maynooth University, and the Scott Polar Institute in the University of Cambridge, has just published Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750-1920 with Cambridge University Press.