Since 1999, the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies has sponsored a summer graduate seminar that brings together Irish scholars, graduate students, and faculty in Irish Studies. An intense intellectual exchange and experience, the seminar has been a formative experience for scores of Notre Dame graduate students and their peers from universities around the world.
For summer 2017, two annual graduate-level Notre Dame seminars—the IRISH Seminar and the Rome Seminar—will come together to hold a joint seminar on "Ireland and Italy" at the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway (June 16-30). The seminar's executive director is Barry McCrea, Donald R. Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English, Irish Language and Literature, and Romance Languages and Literatures.
A variety of scholars, from Ireland, Italy, and the United States will address the historical, cultural, political and social connections between the two countries, including some of the following broad areas: Ireland and the Vatican; the early modern Irish presence in Italy; Joyce and Italy; Yeats and Ravenna; Yeats and Fascism; political and revolutionary thought in Ireland and Italy; the reception and translation of Irish literature in Italy; Italian themes in contemporary Irish literature; Ireland, Italy and the European Union. The seminar will include a tour of the Irish College, trips to Roman and Vatican archives to explore their Irish holdings, a launch of the new Italian translation of Finnegans Wake, an exhibition on the reception of Irish literature in Italy, a reading by the poet Michael Longley, and tours of sites of Irish interest in Rome such as the tomb of the Great O’Neill in San Pietro in Montorio, the Irish basilica of San Clemente, and the apartment near the Spanish Steps where Joyce wrote “The Dead”.
Read more about the 2017 joint IRISH and Rome seminar "Ireland & Italy"