Events

• Faculty/Staff Tour of Ireland - Join Jim Murphy, Director of the Irish Studies program, on a two week journey through Ireland. The trip will visit many places in Ireland including Kenmare, Kinsale, Kilkenny, and Dublin. Date to be determined.
• Villanova Irish Festival - The department of Theatre and Irish Studies presents a lecture series delivered by several renown Irish writers. March - April 2007

News

• Visiting Irish Studies Professor Enlivens Courses with Creativity Expanding Techniques - Dr. Justin Quinn’s advanced creative writing class assignments did, by his own admission, get “a bit weird.” Students were asked to lose, not find, their voices. They were required to write poetry using edgy literary devices such as “flarf,” a collage-based form of avante garde poetry that combines “capture” phrases from Google searches, and “cento,” a technique that assembles a poem from excerpts of other authors' writings. Blogs and spam were also mined for experimental literary treasure. And, no one walked away unchanged...Read more here. (Blueprints - May 2007)
• Poet Versed in Irish and Czech Cultures - A renowned Irish poet, Dr. Justin Quinn, is visiting this spring as the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Endowed Chair in Irish Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences. Quinn, who is from Dublin, is teaching courses in 20th-century Irish poetry and advanced creative writing at Villanova. A prolific poet, author, lecturer and educator, he has lived for more than a decade in the Czech Republic. At Charles University in Prague, he has been an associate professor of English and American Studies and a former lecturer in American and Irish Studies. The Heimbold Chair enriches Villanova’s Irish Studies Program and the campus community through hosting leading Irish literary and theatrical figures. Their presence also strengthens the historically strong links between Ireland and Villanova.
• Irish Studies Program sponsors James Joyce Birthday/Advent of Irish Spring Celebration - Irish writer James Joyce is a literary titan and deserves proper respect. That is the conviction of Dr. James J. Murphy, associate professor of English and head of the Irish Studies Program at Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences who, for the past 14 years, has paid homage by inviting the community to a combination birthday bash/welcome Celtic spring celebration in Joyce’s honor. This being the 125th anniversary of Joyce’s birth, the fete took on an added lustre...Read more here. (Blueprints - February 2007)
• Irish Studies lecture to Examine the Role of Irish American baseball players to the Development of the National Past Time. - On Thursday, Sept. 28, Dr. Jerrold Casway, professor of history and chair of the Social Sciences/Teacher Education Division at Howard Community College in Columbia, Md., will speak on his recent biography of Ed Delahanty (1867- 1903), an Irish American baseball player at the turn of the 20th century. Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball (University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) recounts the life and tragic death of an Irish kid from Cleveland, Ohio, who grew up to play for the Philadelphia Phillies and who was a popular slugger at a time when the children of the Famine Irish dominated baseball....Read more here. (Blueprints - September 2006)
• Sebastion Barry to hold Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies -  Sebastian Barry, Irish playwright, novelist and poet, will hold the Charles A. Heimbold Endowed Chair in Irish Studies for the spring 2006 semester. Barry, whose novel A Long Long Way (Viking, 2005) was short-listed for the 2005 Booker Prize, will teach “Modern Irish Voices” to undergraduates and a playwriting course for graduate students...Read more here. (Blueprints - October 2005)
• President of Ireland to Address Graduates - Dr. Mary McAleese, Uachtarán na hÉireann (President of Ireland), will address the members of the class of 2005 at the University’s Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 22. The president also will receive the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. in the Villanova Stadium. In the event of inclement weather, it will be moved to the Pavilion...Read more here. (Blueprints - May 2005)