The Irish Seminar
Since 1999, the Keough-Naughton Institute has sponsored a summer graduate seminar that brings together Irish scholars, graduate students, and faculty in Irish Studies from around the world. An intense intellectual exchange, the seminar has been a formative experience for scores of Notre Dame graduate students and their peers from universities around the world.
Alongside formal sessions, there are readings, theater visits, archive and library visits, and field trips.
The themes of past IRISH Seminars include Ireland and Britain, Classical Influences, Irish Modernisms, Ireland and Rome, and Periphereal Modernities? Ireland, Argentina, and Latin America.
Locations include Dublin, the Notre Dame Kylemore Global Centre on Ireland's west coast, Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Oxford.
Faculty have included two Nobel Prize winners (Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott) as well as leading academics and writers.
Notre Dame graduate Irish Studies minors receive generous funding to attend the IRISH Seminar.
This summer, the Irish Seminar will be in New York City.
Irish Seminar
New York City
20 June--1 July 2023
Despite being separated by an ocean, Ireland and America are inextricably linked through emigration, trade, political collaboration, and cultural exchange. Irish immigrants in America helped shape the political and cultural institutions of the United States while American political and cultural organizations have in turn helped shape modern Ireland. Whether we look at the presence of the Fenian Brotherhood in America or Facebook’s headquarters in Ireland, the linkage between Ireland and America is profound, sustained, and abundant with events and issues of scholarly interest. The two places an ocean apart are also bound by shared and parallel processes of change. Both became, for better or worse, important nodes in a global system. This did so in entangled ways. As such, any study of the two places lends itself to comparative perspectives.
The IRISH Seminar 2023 will take a broad look at Ireland and America while we take residence in New York City, the landing site for millions of Irish immigrants in America. We will explore the rich history of the Irish in New York by immersing ourselves in the neighborhoods and institutions they called home. This year’s Seminar is graciously being hosted by the Irish Arts Center, the premier institute for the study and celebration of Irish culture in New York City. We will also be working closely with our colleagues at NYU, who are deeply invested in the study of Ireland and America.
The IRISH Seminar 2023 will bring together graduate students and distinguished scholars to explore the complex intersections of Ireland and America. This will explore immigration, contemporary politics, theatre, literature, and history broadly construed.
This year, we will ask our student participants to take a lead in the discussions, to enter into dialogue with the distinguished scholars, and to present their own research. The Seminar will act as a forum for the students to advance their ideas and scholarship in a supportive and collaborative setting.
Students from the University of Notre Dame can apply here.
Students from outside the University of Notre Dame can apply here.
Please send any questions to irishseminar@nd.edu.
Irish Seminar Past Themes
- 2022: 1922
- 2021: IRISH Seminar, webinar format with a variety of themes
- 2020: Ireland and the Future (canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic)
- 2019: Ireland and Britain
- 2018: Ireland 1600-1800: Kingdom, Colony, Union, Empire
- 2017: Ireland and Rome
- 2016: Classical Influences
- 2015: Peripheral Modernities? Ireland, Argentina, Latin America
- 2014: The Vernacular Imagination
- 2013: Contemporary Irish Poetry
- 2012: Contemporary Irish Theatre
- 2011: Irish Modernisms
- 2010: The Irish Revival
- 2009: Apocalypse and Utopia
- 2008: Republics and Empires
- 2007: Irish Classics
- 2006: Capitals of Culture: Paris and Dublin
- 2005: Genealogies of Culture
- 2003: The Irish Body2004: Boston or Berlin?
- 2002: Ireland and Globalisation
- 2001: Contemporary Ireland
- 2000: Modern Ireland 1880-1930
- 1999: Memory and History: Ireland 1500-2000