The Irish Influence

In any other year, Connolly House would now be abuzz with faculty organizing not only their classes, but also the many events that Irish Studies has always brought to the campus and to the community. But not now—and we all know the reason…. As soon as Covid upturned our lives, we began to wonder whether there was a way that the Irish Studies Program could continue its work of outreach. We discovered such a way— and established The Irish Influence or, in Irish, Tionchar na nGael. Under the direction of faculty member Joseph Nugent and BC Ireland Academic Director Michael Cronin, The Irish Influence established its goal: to explore how Irish culture has shaped and still shapes the story of America by bringing those at the center of Ireland’s cultural life today to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The Irish Influence organized a weekly series of interviews with writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and academics who in normal times would be lecturing, performing and meeting with us at Connolly House. Our means would be— yes, Zoom.

This coming semester offers another sparkling line-up of Irish cultural icons thanks to our association with the Consulate General of Ireland in Boston. The series began again on January 8 with the award-winning novelist Donal Ryan, followed on the 15th with prize-winning writer and memoirist Emilie Pine. A series of interviews to commemorate the Irish Nobel laureates Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney will be featured between January 22 to February 12. These interviews will also mark the installation of Rowan Gillespie’s Four Irish Nobel Literary Laureates in BC Ireland and will also be included in a forthcoming Zoom program series currently being undertaken by BC Ireland and John J. Burns Library. Later in the semester The Irish Experience will investigate the richness of the Irish language, the influence of Irish music on the Boston area, and the rise of new Irish film. Participants will meet journalist and public intellectual Fintan O’Toole, psychoanalyst Eve Watson, radio presenter Brian O’Donovan, film director (“Normal People”) Lenny Abrahamson, historian Shahmima Akhtar, novelist Claire Kilroy, and television personality Manchán Magan—a rich panoply for all wanting to understand the intertwined stories of Ireland and America.

Join our trans-Atlantic conversations at The Irish Influence on Zoom every Friday at 4:30pm EST.

Or visit the website: https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/sites/ireland/the-irish-influence.html