Faculty in the W&L English department have a number of scholarly interests in Irish literature and Irish Studies. Below are our publications, reviews, conference papers, and other ongoing work:
Professor Marc Conner
September 29-October 1, 2006, I will participate in the twelfth international Lady Gregory Symposium, "An Autumn Gathering," at her ancestral home of Coole Park, Co. Galway, Ireland.
My interview with Irish novelist Jamie O'Neill is forthcoming from New Hibernia Review in the winter of 2007.
Book review of George Cinclair Gibson’s Wake Rites: The Ancient Irish Rituals of Finnegans Wake, in South Atlantic Review, forthcoming 2007.
Book review of Edna O’Brien’s The Light of Evening, in The Irish Literary Supplement, forthcoming Spring 2007.
Book review of Seamus Heaney’s District and Circle in Shenandoah, forthcoming Winter 2007.
Book review of Brett Bourbon’s Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Mind and Meaning in Literature and Philosophy in The James Joyce Quarterly, forthcoming 2006.
“A Theatrics of Protest”: Book review of Lucy McDiarmid’s The Irish Art of Controversy in The Irish Literary Supplement 25:1 (Fall 2005): 13-14.
Book review of Ben Howard’s The Dark Pool (poems set largely in Ireland), in Shenandoah 55:1 (Spring/Summer 2005): 198-201.
This past spring I delivered the paper, “Mapping the Rebellion: Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim, Two Boys,” at the national meeting of The American Conference of Irish Studies, St. Louis, MO, April 20, 2006.
For the 100th anniversary of "Bloomsday," the day on which Joyce's great epic Ulysses is set, I attended the International James Joyce Symposium in Dublin. I delivered a paper titled “Chamber Music and Joyce’s Poetics of Knowledge.” (19th International James Joyce Symposium, Dublin, Ireland, June 12-19, 2004.) (Organized & chaired panel)
(paper) 2003 Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Conference of Irish Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, October 24-25. Professor Conner presented the Irish Studies Web Portal at a 2-hour "poster session" at this conference. The conference theme was "Material Ireland / Virtual Ireland," and new digital technologies were featured prominently in the focus. Thus the web portal fit well with the other panels and sessions. To view the entire conference program, see http://www.mith1.umd.edu/acis/
(Irish language study) Professor Conner spent 8 days at the Oideas Gael Irish Language Institute in Gleann Cholm Cille in Co. Donegal, Ireland, from August 23-31, 2003. The 8-day intense immersion program focuses on the first-year course in Irish language. This venture was supported by a grant from the Global Stewardship Program at Washington and Lee. Fore more information on Oideas Gael, see http://www.oideas-gael.com
(paper) 2003 National American Conference of Irish Studies, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, MN, June 4-7. Professor Conner delivered a paper titled "'News of the Invisible World': The Gnostic Lady Gregory," on a panel devoted to re-evaluations of the Irish Revival, at this gathering. He also gave a reading for the Creative Non-Fiction panel at this conference. The A.C.I.S. National meeting is the largest and most prestigious Irish Studies conference in the world. For more information, see http://www.acisweb.com/index.html
"The Unseen Book: Gnosticism in Modern Irish Literature: The Example of Synge and the Blaskets," The National American Conference of Irish Studies, Annual Meeting 2001, Fordham University, New York, June 6-9, 2001.
Professor Suzanne Keen
(book chapter) Victorian Renovations of the
Novel: Narrative Annexes and the Boundaries of Representation. Cambridge
Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture 15 (Cambridge UP, 1998).
Chapter 2, on Trollope’s response to the Irish famine in a series of letters to
the Examiner and in his novel Castle Richmond, pages 42-64.
(essay) “Catching the Heart Off Guard: the Generous Vision of Seamus Heaney.”
Catholic Writers Series. Commonweal 17 May 1996: 10-14.
(book review). “Irish Troubles.” Rev. of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors,
by Roddy Doyle. Commonweal 11 Oct. 1996: 21-3.
Professor Lesley Wheeler
(essay) “Both Flower and Flower-Gatherer: Medbh McGuckian’s The Flower Master and H.D.’s Sea Garden.” Twentieth-Century Literature 2003 (49.4. 494-519).
(essay) “Medbh McGuckian’s The Flower Master As a Critique of Female Modernism.” HOW2 2000 (1.3). On-line: http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_3_2000/current/readings/wheeler.html
(review) Medbh McGuckian’s Shelmalier (poetry) and The Wake Forest Book of Contemporary Irish Women Poets. Shenandoah 51.1 (2001).