Offering snapshots of Italian and Irish immigrants on the move from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, Rituals of Migration (NYU Press, 2025) looks at social and cultural rites of passage as migrants navigated the challenges and tribulations of preparation, departure, transit, admission, exclusion, expulsion, and return. Focusing on Irish experiences, we will host a conversation on October 16 with co-editor Kevin Kenny (NYU) and chapter authors Jill Bender (UNC Greensboro), Hidetaka Hirota (UC Berkeley), and Gráinne McEvoy (Notre Dame), all of whom were previously at BC Irish Studies. Kenny will put the discussion in a broader context, Bender will talk about Irish women’s assisted emigration, Hirota will examine the aftermath of deportation from the United States, and McEvoy will consider the ambivalence of migration in Irish literature. The topic is particularly relevant in light of current debates on immigration, which too often show a lack of empathy for a perilous process marked with both fear and hope.
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Involved in psychoanalytic practice, training, education, and research in Dublin, Eve Watson is the academic director of the Freud Lacan Institute. She has published dozens of essays on psychoanalysis, sexuality, film, culture, and literature. At Boston College, her course offers a phenomenological and psychoanalytic study of Irish culture and psychology. Watson’s Burns Scholar lecture, titled “Giving Voice to Irish Culture and Psyche: Psychoanalytic, Cinematic, and Literary Reflections,” is scheduled for November 12 in the Burns Library.
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Irish writer Caitríona Lally spent four weeks examining correspondence held in the Burns Collection. Exploring the practical side of writing, she examined letters from Irish authors to determine the amount of paid work required to afford writing time, a topic closely tied to discussions about state funding for contemporary Irish writers.
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The Boston College Irish Studies Program, in conjunction with the Burns Library, invites applications for visiting summer fellowships in 2026, 2027, and 2028. The application is open to researchers and writers in any discipline pertaining to Irish Studies. Early-career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications can be submitted via our website starting in late September.
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Zoë Van Cauwenberg (Universiteit Gent & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is joining us as a visiting BAEF postdoctoral fellow for the current academic year. For her research project, “Echoes of Eire: Materializing the Past in Anglo-Irish Women’s Writing (1780-1830),” she will be working in consultation with Assistant Professor Colleen Taylor.
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September 17, 5 p.m., Connolly House
BC Irish Studies alumna Kelly Sullivan delivers this year’s Dalsimer Lecture. Her talk examines Harry Clarke’s censored 1926 stained glass window, which depicts various scenes from Irish literature. Sullivan contextualizes the window’s literary works to frame Clarke’s provocative representation of the Irish Free State within its contemporary cultural moment.
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September 24, 7 p.m., Gasson Hall 100
Award-winning bilingual poet and essayist Doireann Ní Ghríofa, who writes in both Irish and English, discusses her most recent prose work, A Ghost in the Throat. Named Book of the Year by various publications, the work is a hybrid work of memoir, biography, and autofiction that explores the life of an 18th-century Irish noblewoman.
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October 18, 10 a.m., Connolly House
Exploring humanity’s profound relationship with water, the film Our Blue World: A Water Odyssey (Ruán Magan, 2024) reveals how human agency and community spirit can rebalance the planet’s water systems. Director Ruán Magan, Burns Scholar Eve Watson, and BC faculty members Colleen Taylor and Joseph Nugent discuss the film in the broader context of studying the ‘Blue Humanities.’
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October 22, 5 p.m., Connolly House
Drawing from oral histories, memoirs, and archival research, Páraic Kerrigan (University College Dublin) discusses the emotional and political legacies of the Hirschfeld Centre, which opened in Dublin in 1979 and has an enduring place in the story of Irish LGBTQ+ resistance, resilience, and community formation, functioning as a site of individual and collective remembering.
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November 19, 5 p.m., Connolly House
Robert Savage (Boston College), Ron Dudai (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and Caroline Elkins (Harvard University) engage in a conversation addressing the British state’s counter-insurgency methods, focusing on the role of informers and agent provocateurs.
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November 20, 7 p.m., Boston Public Library
Richard Kearney explores the role of island imaginaries in human culture and politics, contrasting the insular island of isolation and escape with the oceanic island of adventure and experiment. Hosted at the Boston Public Library, the talk highlights Ireland’s dual role as both an island of war and peace.
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This summer, PhD student Paloma Carroll-Ryan completed an internship at the Burns Library. She designed and installed a physical exhibition for the Irish Room and created a corresponding digital exhibit. Titled A Part to Play, the exhibition draws on collections from the Burns Library and explores the cultural sphere of the Troubles.
After nearly 37 years of dedicated service to the Boston College Libraries, Beth Sweeney will be retiring. During her time at BC, Beth dedicated her attention to managing the collections in the Irish Music Center and regularly played keyboard at Irish music events on campus. Her passion for traditional music will be missed!
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Cassidy Allen presented her work at the International Association of Studies in Irish Literature at the University of Galway. Her paper was titled “Technology in Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times.”
Ph.D. students Jessica Oyler, Paloma Carroll-Ryan, Johanna Alden, and Rowan Bianchi conducted extended archival research trips at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College Dublin, the National Archives, and the National Library of Ireland.
Liam Schmidt and Quinn Fisher attended the Joyce in Paris Colloquium and studied the Irish language in Glencolmcille.
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In July, Daniel Crown defended his dissertation, “The Immigrant Revolution: Rhenish and Scots-Irish Colonists, Western Expansion, and the Remaking of British North America (1740—1775),” chaired by Professor Owen Stanwood. This fall, he begins a position as a visiting assistant professor in BC’s History Department.
Tiffany Thompson was named the 2025/-26 Dalsimer Fellow. Her dissertation, “Fleeing the Troubles: Gendering Violence, Displacement, and Migration in Northern Ireland, 1969-1976,” centers an analysis of women and their distinctive experiences of violence and displacement during conflict-related migration during the Troubles.
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