Meet two Irish Studies Graduate Minors

Shinjini Chattopadhyay

English PhD Program, with a minor in Irish Studies

Shinjini studies the depiction of cities in Irish and British literature. She is especially interested in how the colonial and postcolonial imaginary shape the multiculturalism of modern cities in Ireland.

“With the generous funding of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, I have visited James Joyce archives and attended summer IRISH seminars. In Summer 2020, I was honored to be selected for the Institute for World Literature (IWL) organized by Harvard University. While moved from Belgrade to a virtual format because of the global pandemic, IWL was a rich experience that complemented the excellent lectures and coursework of the Irish Minor and helped me to forge transnational connections in modern Irish literature.

"Attending Declan Kiberd's Ulysses seminar in Fall 2019 has illuminated for me how James Joyce’s 1922 text is still heavily influencing contemporary Irish and world literature. Under the direction of Professor Barry McCrea, I am writing my dissertation on how multiculturalism shapes modern city spaces."

 

 

Lauren Jean

History PhD Program with a minor in Irish Studies

Using an array of sources in Irish and English, Lauren studies late-Medieval and early modern Ireland to demonstrate that honor was a concept that applied to all in Gaelic society, women and men, regardless of social station.

Winner of the American Conference of Irish Studies 2020 Larkin Dissertation Research Fellowship

"My experiences with both the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Department of Irish Language and Literature at Notre Dame have been instrumental in sharpening the focus of my graduate studies. Many Irish Studies faculty members, especially my advisor, Professor Rory Rapple, have been endlessly supportive and eminently helpful through all the twists and turns taken by the various strands of my research thus far.

"The opportunities provided by the Keough-Naughton Institute have been amazing, with two highlights the IRISH summer seminars I attended in Dublin and Oxford. Research funding by the Institute has given me unparalleled opportunities to have my work critiqued by the larger international community of Irish historians and have also allowed me to immerse myself in Irish language and culture in a way that has only strengthened my commitments to re-centering medieval Irish-language sources historiographically."