Faculty Resources
Faculty Fellowship
Applications are closed for the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellowship Cohort.
Deadline to apply: March 8, 2024
Humanities Institute faculty fellowship program
This year the Humanities Institute welcomes its third cohort of Faculty Fellows for a year-long collaborative research experience. Jennifer Knight, Matthew Knight, and Elizabeth Ricketts-Jones will spend the year developing their research in “Global Irish Studies.” The group approaches Ireland and the Irish diaspora from a comparative standpoint, exploring what these past lessons can teach us about current global migration experiences as well as how they overlap or differ from other diasporas.
This work builds on existing research and the cohort plans to work with the “Irish Culture and Language Club Student Organization,” develop an interdisciplinary course on the Celtic Revival, and host the 2023 American Conference for Irish Studies Southern Regional Meeting. Drawing attention to USF’s significant holdings in Irish Studies, in particular the Dion Boucicault Theatre Collection, is a goal of the cohort, as is integrating these collections into to the curriculum.
MEET THE 2023-24 COHORT
Jennifer Knight
Associate Professor of Instruction
HistoryAbout
Jennifer Knight is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the History Department at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL, where she teaches in the fields of Irish Studies, Medieval Studies, and Public History. She regularly offers courses on early medieval Irish, Welsh, and Scandinavian history and literature, as well as directing the department’s Internship Program.
She holds a PhD in Celtic Languages and Literatures and Medieval Studies from Harvard University. Dr. Knight's current book project, forthcoming from Routledge, is Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Celtic World.
How long have you been a faculty member at USF?
I have worked at USF for 15 years, and been a faculty member for 10.
Book recommendation?
Right now I am reading Sacred Sisters: Gender, Sanctity, and Power in Medieval Ireland by Maeve Callan and loving it!
What is one interesting fact about you?
I am a wannabe farmer: I have 13 pets (some of them livestock), and am a member of Abby's Organic Community Farm.
Matthew Knight
Associate Librarian
USF Libraries
About
Dr. Matthew Knight is an Associate Librarian at the Tampa campus library and is also Affiliate Faculty in the Department of History where he teaches the 'Irish in America,' 'Irish Rebels,' 'Ireland at War,' and 'Curating Digital History.'
His book, Dion Boucicault: The Vampire and The Phantom is set for a Fall 2023 release from the University of Wales Press, and he is completing his monograph Éire Mhór: The Irish Language in the American Popular Press, which will be the first book-length study of the Irish language in America, revealing the tremendous influence that American newspapers and social organizations had on shaping both Irish-American identity and the language revival movement in Ireland.
How long have you been a faculty member at USF?
I've been a faculty member at USF since August 2013
Book recommendation?
I really enjoyed Patrick O'Mahoney's Recovering an Irish Voice from the American Frontier: The Prose Writings of Eoin Ua
Cathail, which shows that many Irish immigrants to the US preferred to write in their native
Irish language.
What is one interesting fact about you?
Interesting fact? Hmmm. I am a dedicated student of the Irish language and enjoy translating
Irish poetry found in 19th-century US newspapers into English.
Elizabeth Ricketts-Jones
Assistant Professor of Instruction
English
About
How long have you been a faculty member at USF?
I’ve been a faculty member for two years at USF. I also got my PhD from USF in 2021.
Book recommendation?
My book recommendation is Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan.
What is one interesting fact about you?
An interesting fact about me is that during my PhD studies I got to spend two months
in Galway and Dublin, Ireland doing archival research on 20th century Irish theater.
Global Irish Studies at USF
This year’s Faculty Fellowship Program is honored to welcome Dr. Christine Kinealy of Quinnipiac University to deliver a public lecture on Thursday, October 26th as part of this year’s Southern Regional American Conference for Irish Studies. Her talk is titled “’Mislike me not for my complexion’: Three Black Artists in Ireland, 1829 to 1860” and will feature her most recent research on the work of Black abolitionists and artists in Ireland. She will draw on her research of the Irish Abolition movement including her 2018 publication Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, and Black Abolitionists in Ireland, published in 2020.
Dr. Kinealy is the founding Director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute and a preeminent scholar of the Great Famine in Ireland. She has published extensively on the topic and has been involved in numerous public outreach efforts including presenting on the Famine before the British Houses of Parliament and in the U.S. Congress. She has also participated in the 100-mile walk from Roscommon to Dublin, following in the footsteps of tenants forced to sail to Canada in 1847 that now forms The National Famine Way. She has been named one of the top educators in Irish America and was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame in 2014. Her 2017 documentary, The Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora received an Emmy award.
This lecture is free and open to the public. For questions or more information, the Fellows can be contacted at IrishStudies@usf.edu.
For questions about the Faculty Fellowship Program, contact Liz Kicak.