September 3, 2015

New Chair of Princeton’s Fund for Irish Studies Announces 2015-16 Series

PU Irish Studies

Clair Wills, Princeton University’s new Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Chair of Irish Letters at Princeton, has announced the Fund for Irish Studies’ 2015-16 series, featuring talks by leading Irish writers, filmmakers and scholars, presented in collaboration with Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

The Fund for Irish Studies, previously chaired by Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities Paul Muldoon and now led by Wills, affords all Princeton students and the community at large a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, politics, and economics, not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.”

Wills formerly taught at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Essex. A co-editor of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions (2002), she has written five books, including Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry (1994), That Neutral Island: A History of Ireland During the Second World War (2007), and Dublin 1916: the Siege of the GPO (2009).  She won the International PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History for That Neutral Island. Her most recent study, The Best Are Leaving published by Cambridge University Press, examines the literature and culture of post-war Irish emigration to Britain.  Her reviews have appeared in The Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books.

“I am delighted to be joining the faculty at Princeton,” notes Wills.  “It is a particular honor to have the opportunity of taking forward the world-class series of events organized by the Fund for Irish Studies.  I look forward to some lively events this year!”

In the first event of the season, Ian McBride, a professor of history at King’s College, London, will present a lecture entitled “Truth and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland” on Friday, September 18 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public.

McBride has written on various aspects of modern Irish history, including the role of the historian in national memory. His forthcoming works include Irish Political Writings 1: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift (2016) and The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (2015), co-edited with Richard Bourke. Other books include Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves (2009), Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century (1998), and The Siege of Derry in Ulster Protestant Mythology (1997).

McBride’s current research centers on eighteenth century Ireland and the role of historians in making sense of the Northern Ireland conflict. His talk will focus on debates over truth and reconciliation in Northern Ireland since 1998 and the relationship between political violence, representations of the past, and professional historiography. Given that the Good Friday Agreement is often presented as a pathway to peace for other conflicts, the political and moral dilemmas presented by these subjects have an audience well beyond Ireland.

McBride is currently Professor of Irish and British History at King’s College, London and Patrick B. O’Donnell Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame. Having earned his B.A. at Jesus College, University of Oxford, and his Ph.D. from the University of London, he is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the British Association for Irish Studies.

For further information, visit http://fis.princeton.edu.