In February 2020, the Irish Studies graduate students of Boston College held the third annual Comhfhios conference. Comhfhios, meaning “knowledge together” or “open to all knowledge” in Irish, was chosen to signal a collaborative invitation for discourse on Irish Studies between faculty and students from multiple fields. This year’s theme was “In Awe of All Mná: A Study of Irish Women,” exploring the role of women in history and literature. In the era of #MeToo and #WakingThe Feminist, the goal was to reflect on topics about the importance of women to the story of Ireland.
The conference began with a panel titled “Subject(ion): Women and Literature” at which Hannah Clay (Boston College), Matthew Ryan (Villanova University), and Shannon Callahan (Boston College) explored the role of both female characters and authors. Spanning the centuries from Victorian literature to 2018’s Milkman, their papers led to a series of discussions regarding identity, literary theory, and the male gaze in fiction. At the following panel, “Good Irish Girls: Faith, Hair, and Food,” Gina Maire Guadagnino (New York University), Samantha Haddad (New York University), and Rowan Robertson-Smith (New York University) discussed women’s access to higher education, hair cropping during both the War of Independence and the Troubles, and Irish-American women’s roles in the New York nineteenth--century food industry. The conference’s final panel was “Women and Autonomy: Education, Class, and the Economy in the Twentieth Century.” Katie Omans (Central Washington University), Mollie Kervick (University of Connecticut), and Mary Burke (University of Connecticut) explored economic and educational methods for women’s empowerment. The keynote speaker Dr. Leeann Lane of Dublin City University is a Boston College alumna herself. Her concluding presentation discussed the relationship between Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and historian Dorothy Macardle, the female propagandist who wrote The Irish Republic—one of the most frequently cited anti-treaty accounts of the Irish War of Independence and its aftermath.
