Spring 2010 talks
sponsored by the Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Endowed Chair in English
Posted in: Center for Writing Excellence, Upcoming Events
Everyone is welcome to attend. If you would like to meet any of the speakers for lunch or coffee, please let Lucy McDiarmid know (mcdiarmidl@gmail.com, x4274).
Thursday, February 4
2:30 pm, Dickson 432
Professor James L. Pethica, Williams College
Spreading the News and Hyacinth Halvey by Lady Gregory
Professor Pethica will team-teach a class in these plays with Lucy McDiarmid.
James Pethica is the editor of the Norton edition of Yeats’s poems, Lady Gregory’s Diaries, 1892-1902, and the Cornell edition of Yeats’s Last Poems. He is writing the definitive biography of Lady Gregory and has just been appointed director of the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo.
Tuesday, February 9
5:30 pm, Dickson 179
Professor Rhona Richman Kenneally, Concordia University, Montreal
“Reproducing the authentic Irish cottage: The Quiet Man as text-film-museum”
Rhona Richman Kenneally is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, and a Fellow of Concordia’s School of Canadian Irish Studies. She holds a B.A. in English literature, an M.A. in social history, and both a professional degree and a Ph.D. in architecture. She writes on Canadian food culture, especially as it relates to the domestic foodscape, and on architecture, landscape, and material culture as constructions of Irish and Canadian-Irish identity. She has just appointed editor of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
Tuesday, February 23
2:30 pm, Dickson 432
Anne Fogarty, Professor of James Joyce Studies, University College Dublin
“He’s out in pampooties to murder you”: James Joyce and the Legacy of John Millington Synge”
Anne Fogarty is president of the International James Joyce Foundation and director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre. She has been Academic Director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School since 1997 and has edited many books about Joyce. Currently she is writing a study of the historical and political dimensions of Ulysses, entitled James Joyce and Cultural Memory: Reading History in Ulysses.
Tuesday, April 13
5:30 pm, Dickson 179
Professor Maria DiBattista, Princeton University
“Beckett and Derelict Comedy in Lenny Abramson’s film Adam and Paul”
[dvd of this film will be available for faculty who wish to view it; it’s wonderful]
Maria DiBattista is author of Fast-Talking Dames, a much-acclaimed book about the women in screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. She has also written First Love: The Affections of Modern Fiction, Virginia Woolf’s Major Novels, and, most recently, Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography. She teaches film and fiction at Princeton.
Tuesday, April 20
2:30 pm, Dickson 432
Professor Nicholas Grene, Trinity College Dublin
[Contemporary Irish Drama]
Professor Grene will speak on a recent Irish play, title TBA.
A text of the play will be made available to all faculty & students who would like to read it.
Nicholas Grene is one of the foremost authorities on Irish and international theatre. He is the author of many books, including The Politics of Irish Drama, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays, and Bernard Shaw: A Critical View. He is editor of Interpreting Synge and Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey, and many others. He was also the founding director of the Synge Summer School in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, Ireland, and has served as a judge for the Irish Times drama prize.