2023 American Conference for Irish Studies – Southern Regional Conference
Invited Speakers
Public Lecture Event: Dr. Christine Kinealy
Thursday, October 26, 2023 // Reception 1:00pm and Lecture 2:00pm
USF St. Petersburg Campus University Student Center Ballroom
Christine Kinealy will be delivering a public lecture on the first day of the conference (Thursday, Oct. 26th) titled "'Mislike me not for my complexion': Three Black Artists in Ireland, 1829 to 1860."
Christine Kinealy is the founding Director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Christine has published extensively on Ireland’s Great Hunger and, more recently, the Irish Abolition movement. This includes the award-winning This Great Calamity: The Great Hunger in Ireland, and a graphic novel entitled, ‘The Bad Times’, or ‘An Drochshaol’. In 1997, she spoke in the British Houses of Parliament and in the American Congress on the Famine.
Christine is a Director of the African American Irish Diaspora Network. In 2018, she published Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In his own words. In 2020, Black Abolitionists in Ireland was published and a second volume is planned. This research led to the creation of Frederick Douglass Walking Trails in Belfast, Cork and Dublin.
Christine has been named one of the top educators in Irish America. In 2014, she was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame and, in 2017, received an Emmy for ‘The Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora’ documentary. In 2019, she was one of five historians who walked 100-miles from Roscommon to Dublin, following in the footsteps of tenants sent to Canada in 1847. This route now forms The National Famine Way. (source: https://www.qu.edu/faculty-and-staff/christine-kinealy-phd/)
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Molly Ferguson
Friday, October 27, 2023 // 2:00pm
USF St. Petersburg Campus University Student Center Ballroom
Dr. Molly Ferguson is Associate Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty in Women's and Gender Studies at Ball State University. She was the recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award at Ball State last fall. Her research focus is in contemporary Irish literature, with a specific interest in gender, shame, and folklore. She has published articles in journals including Irish University Review, Women’s Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, New Hibernia Review, and LIT, and is working on a book about contemporary feminist reinterpretations of Irish folklore.
Dr. Ferguson will be delivering a talk tentatively titled: "Going ‘Astray’: The Stray Sod and Buried Trauma in Contemporary Irish Texts." In Irish folklore, the concept of a site of buried trauma that absorbs disturbing
past events is represented through the “stray sod” story, a legend Irish women writers
have drawn inspiration from to depict anxieties around recent revelations of gender-based
violence. According to legend, a person who stepped on a “stray sod,” a spot governed
by the fairies, would be disoriented and forced to wander the area “astray” for hours,
unable to get home. Dr. Ferguson's talk will synthesize the stray sod legend with
the buried trauma of systemic gender-based violence in Ireland by exploring how the
legend is referenced at what she calls charged sites in contemporary literature. She
will apply this framework to the poetry collection Bloodroot by Annemarie Ní Churreáin (2017), the crime fiction novel In the Woods by Tana French (2018), and the novella Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021).
Guest Poet: Annemarie NÍ Churreáin
Saturday, October 28, 2023 // 2:00pm
USF St. Petersburg Campus University Student Center Ballroom
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is from the Donegal Gaeltacht in Ireland. Her poetry books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017) and Town (The Salvage Press, 2018). Her most recent collection, The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021), was listed as a Book of The Year 2021 in the Times Literary Supplement (UK). Ní Churreáin is co-librettist of Elsewhere, a new opera by Straymaker (IRL). She is a recipient of the Irish Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award and a former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany). In 2023 she is Writer in Residence at the Druskininkai Poetic Falls Festival, Lithuania. Ní Churreáin is the Guest Editor of Poetry Ireland Review Issue 140 and she is the incoming Poetry Editor of The Stinging Fly. Visit http://studiotwentyfive.com/