A New Chapter: Women Writing Northern Ireland Now

Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 6 p.m.; Topper Theater, Villanova University

“The Villanova Center for Irish Studies, in partnership with the Consul General of Ireland in New York, will welcome award-winning women writers from Northern Ireland to campus for an engaging literary panel discussion and readings around the topics of women’s rights, the sectarian divide, and social class.” Panelists include: Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, and Michelle Gallen. Moderated by Yvonne Cassidy.

This ACS-approved event is presented in partnership with Columbia University, NYU, and Georgetown University, with support from the Government of Ireland and Northern Ireland Bureau. Co-sponsored by: Falvey Library, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Global & Interdisciplinary Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, Center for Peace & Justice Education, Creative Writing Program, the Writing Center, St. Joseph’s University Irish Studies Program, the Irish Diaspora Center of Philadelphia, and the Irish American Business Chamber & Network, Inc.

Register here.

By Jutta Seibert

Looking for news from Ireland? We’ve got you covered. Falvey Library has arranged trial access to Irish Newspaper Archives, a collection of over 200 current and historical newspapers covering all Irish counties. The Archives are updated daily and you can expect to read today’s issues of The Belfast Telegraph, The Corkman, The Donegal News, the Irish Independent, the Tipperary Star, and many other newspapers from Ireland and Northern Ireland whenever you log on. Also available are the archives of a long list of since defunct newspapers, such as The Freeman’s Journal (1763-1924), the Nation (1842-1897), and Punch (1844-1925). Those of our readers who have consulted the Irish Radical Newspapers collection in the past will be familiar with the search interface and collection platform.

Trial access to the Irish Newspaper Archives will be available until October 20. We noticed that the Archives’ response times are slow and ask for your patience. Let us know if you would like to recommend the Archives for the Library’s permanent collection.

Related resources in the Falvey collections:

• Irish studies research guide
• The Irish Times (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
  Presents a complete archive of the Irish Times back to 1859 (except for the most recent two years) and the Weekly Irish Times (1876-1958).
• Irish newspapers in Falvey’s Digital Library
  Available titles include The Free State, The Irish Felon, The Irish People, The Irish Tribune, The Irish Worker and People’s Advocate, The Irishman, The United Irishman, and The Waterford Chronicle.
• Irish newspapers on microfilm in the Falvey collection
  Titles available include: An-Phoblacht/The Republic, Belfast News-letter, Dublin News, Evening Freeman, Evening Telegraph, Freeman’s Journal, Irish Freedom, Irish Times, Irish Tribune, Irishman, Pilot, The Peasant, United Irishman, and The Weekly Nation.
• The Irish Press
  A weekly newspaper dedicated to Irish nationalism for an Irish American audience. It was founded by Joseph McGarrity and published in Philadelphia from 1918 to 1922.
• Radical Newspapers, 1886-1993 (Irish Newspaper Archives)
  Digital archives of more than 100 newspapers, bulletins, and pamphlets covering a broad sweep of nationalist, republican, feminist, and socialist publications.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

Please join us for readings from three acclaimed Irish poets, Jane Clarke, Katie Donovan, and Catherine Phil MacCarthy on Monday, Sept. 25, from 5-6:30 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner. This event, titled “Wonders and Realities: Three Irish Poets on Sustainability,” will explore how poetry helps us fine-tune our senses and pay attention to the wonders and realities of our threatened world.

Dig deeper and explore the links below for more information on the featured poets.

Jane Clarke grew up in County Roscommon, Ireland. She is the author of three poetry collections: The River, When the Tree Falls, and A Change in the Air. The latter is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023. When the Tree Falls was shortlisted for the Pigott Prize 2020, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2020, and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award in 2020.

• The River (Clarke, 2015)
• When the Tree Falls (2019)
• A Change in the Air (2023)
• Jane Clarke website
• Jane Clarke reads and introduces twelve poems from When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books)
• Three poems by Jane Clarke (And Other Poems)
• Conversation with Jane Clarke (Rattle Poetry)
• Interview with poet Jane Clarke (Writing.ie)
• NYU DC Salon Series: A Conversation with Jane Clarke

Katie Donovan was born near Camolin in County Wexford, Ireland and earned degrees from Trinity College Dublin as well as the University of California at Berkeley. Her five books of poetry have all been published by Bloodaxe Books. Her most recent, Off-Duty appeared in September 2016. It was shortlisted for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Prize in 2017. She is the 2017 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry.

• Entering the Mare (Donovan, 1997)
• Watermelon Man (Donovan, 1999)
• Day of the Dead (Donovan, 2002)
• Rootling (Donovan, 2010)
• Off Duty (Donovan, 2016)
• Katie Donovan website
• Expert workshop: Katie Donovan and how family inspires creativity (Irish Family History Centre)
• Writer’s Block with Katie Donovan (The Gloss)
• Poems from Off Duty by Katie Donovan (Poethead by Chris Murray)
• In conversation with Katie Donovan (The Attic Sessions)
• Katie Donovan reads from Rootling (Bloodaxe Books)

Catherine Phil MacCarthy was born in County Limerick, Ireland. The author of five poetry collections, she studied at University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, and Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She is the 2014 winner of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry. The Arts Council, An Comhairle Ealaíon, have awarded her a Bursary in Literature towards each of her 2013 and 2020 poetry collections.

• How High the Moon (MacCarthy, 1991)
• This Hour of the Tide (MacCarthy, 1994)
• The Blue Globe (MacCarthy, 1998)
• One Room An Everywhere (MacCarthy, 2003)
• Suntrap (MacCarthy, 2007)
• The Invisible Threshold (MacCarthy, 2012)
• Daughters of the House (MacCarthy, 2019)
• Catherine Phil MacCarthy website
• “Limbo,” read by Catherine Phil MacCarthy (UCD Library Special Collections)
• Interview with Catherine Phil MacCarthy (Island’s Edge)

This ACS-approved event, co-sponsored by the Center for Irish Studies, Falvey Library, and Global Interdisciplinary Studies, is free and open to the public.

Julia Wagner ‘26 CLAS is a Communication major from New Hampshire (Go Patriots!). She works as a Communication & Marketing Student Assistant at Falvey Library. Links provided by Kallie Stahl, Communication & Marketing Specialist at Falvey Library. 

Villanova faculty, staff, students and friends are cordially invited to join us on Monday, March 20, from 4-5:30 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner for a presentation by Robin Adams, DPhil, titled “Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution (1919-21)?”

Adams will discuss his recently published book Shadow of a Taxman (Oxford, 2022) which “investigates how the unrecognized Irish Republic’s money was solicited, collected, transmitted, and safeguarded, as well as who the financial backers were and what might have influenced their decision to contribute.”

Dr. Robin Adams is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. He graduated from Oxford University with a DPhil in economic and social history in 2019. His doctoral research, on the funding of the Irish Revolution, won the Economic History Society’s Thirsk-Feinstein prize for best dissertation in economic or social history and the Economic History Association’s Gerschenkron prize for best dissertation in economic history focusing outside North America. His first monograph, Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution? was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. The same year, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

This event, co-sponsored by the Center for Irish Studies and Falvey Library, is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Dig Deeper to Learn more about the Irish History and Culture:

• The Irish Revolution: A Global History Mannion, Patrick (Editor), McGarry, Fearghal (Editor)
• Women and the Irisih Revolution: Feminism, Activism, Violence  Connolly, Linda, 1971- (Editor)
• Atlas of the Irish Revolution  Crowley, John, 1966- (Editor), Ó Drisceoil, Donal (Editor), Murphy, Michael, 1966 February 3- (Editor), Borgonovo, John (Editor), Hogan, Nick (Editor), Roche, Charles (Cartographer, Researcher), O’Keeffe, Hélène (Researcher)
• Browse the McGarrity Collection, which consists of around 3,000 monographs focusing on Irish history, literature, folklore, description and travel, music, and Irish – American history.
• Explore the Irish Studies Research Guide to find a robust assortment of related resources like books, book chapters, academic journals, newspapers and magazines, primary sources, encyclopedias, handbooks, companions, and biographical information. The guide also has helpful tools for citation management.
• Contact Jutta Seibert, Director of Research Services and Scholarly Engagement,  subject librarian for Irish Studies, for research consultations, instruction, curricular support, and purchase requests related to Irish Studies.

Photo courtesy of Isabel Choi.

To celebrate the kick-off of the 25th annual Literary Festival at Villanova, I attended the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Chair of Irish Studies Mary O’Donoghue’s poetry reading. The event began with a couple speeches of appreciation from Jennifer A. Joyce, PhD, Associate Director, Center for Irish Studies; Villanova University President the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA, PhD; and Geraldine Byrne Naso, Ambassador of Ireland to the United States, who personally congratulated O’Donoghue on her new post. 

O’Donoghue’s reading invited people to sit and listen. The slightly warm yet cozy atmosphere of the President’s Lounge truly made the poetry reading seem like a personal performance. As an English major myself, I had high hopes for this event, and I was not disappointed. O’Donoghue’s poetry is deeply artistic and emotion-packed. She read a total of three poems, but one struck me most. Her villanelle, “My Daughter in Winter Costume,” inspired by the sculpture, Daughter in Winter Costume (1922) by John Storrs, uses biting language to give the stoic sculpture a personal dimension. In the formulaic villanelle style, the poem continually repeats the same lines, yet O’Donoghue delivered a different mood each time. 

The event concluded with a Q&A session with O’Donoghue who explained a bit of her writing process and struggles as a poet. Overall, the kick-off was enriching and a delightful way to spend my evening. Be sure to join us for the next Literary Festival event on Thursday, March 16, at 7 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner featuring a reading and talk by Tsering Yangzom Lama. 

Isabel Choi ’26 is a Communication & Marketing Assistant at Falvey Library.

Faculty, staff, students, and friends are invited to join us for the 2023 Literary Festival! Through this annual series, we’ve had the privilege of welcoming major poets and fiction writers on campus to give readings and meet with students.

The Literary Festival officially kicks off tonight with a reading by the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Chair for Irish Studies, Mary O’Donoghue, an award-winning poet, fiction writer, editor, and translator. A reception will start at 6 p.m. in the Presidents’ Lounge in Connelly Center prior to the 7 p.m. reading! In addition, we are delighted that the new Ambassador of Ireland Geraldine Byrne Nason will personally congratulate our 2023 Heimbold Chair, Mary O’Donoghue, at 6:45 p.m.

See the full line-up of Literary Festival speakers, below.

Feb. 23: Mary O’Donoghue
The President’s Lounge, Connelly Center

March 16: Tsering Lama
Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Library

March 30: Donika Kelly
Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Library

April 18: Steph Cha,
Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Library

All events take place at 7 p.m. and are ACS-approved!

You can learn more about the 2023 Lit Fest speakers and enjoy recordings of past events here.

By Ethan Shea

On Tuesday, September 13, Liz Roche Company put on the first professional dance performance in the John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts. This performance, titled “Yes and Yes!”, is inspired by the 18 sections of James Joyce’s magnum opus, Ulysses. The show ran for a total of 70 minutes with no intermissions and was met with a standing ovation.

Formed in 1999, Liz Roche Company is an Irish contemporary dance group led by choreographer Liz Roche. In 2020, Roche herself was elected to Aosdána, an affiliation of artists whose work has contributed significantly to Ireland’s creative arts. Among other achievements, Liz Roche Company has produced more than twenty original productions and performed in several nations, from China to the United States.

Regarding Tuesday’s show, there were a total of four dancers who took on the demanding performance (Diarmuid Armstrong, Sarah Cerneaux, Grace Cuny, and Mufutau Yusuf), and each of them left everything on the stage.

The performance managed to fit an immense amount of material from Ulysses‘s lengthy body of text into the relatively brief performance. In a post-performance Q&A with Dr. Joseph Lennon, Villanova’s Director of Irish Studies, Roche explained that she was taken aback by how clear Joyce portrays location throughout the piece. “Yes and Yes!” strives to maintain that quality of the text through Roche’s choreography.

Liz Roche Company would not have graced the stage of the John and Joan Center for the Performing Arts without the help of the Center for Irish Studies. With study abroad opportunities, Irish language courses, and classes offered in seven different disciplines, Irish Studies at Villanova is full of exciting academic opportunities.

If you’re interested in learning more about Irish Studies, check out the Irish Studies Research Guide on Falvey Library’s website.

Moreover, Falvey grants access to ample amounts of information on contemporary dance. For example, you can learn all about contemporary dance with Marc Strauss’ book Looking at Contemporary Dance: A Guide for the Internet Age, available for viewing online.

Keep an eye out for more Irish events planned for the Fall Semester, including a musical performance by Ian Lynch of the Dublin folk music group “Lankum” on October 20.

Ethan Shea is a graduate student in the English Department at Villanova University and Graduate Assistant at Falvey Memorial Library.

Happy April, Wildcats! The end of the semester is quickly approaching. Be sure to check out one (or a few) of the remaining events at Falvey Memorial Library. All events are ACS-approved and open to the Villanova University community. The lineup of events are listed below.

2022 Villanova University Literary Festival: Tiphanie Yanique

• Thursday, April 21, at 7 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner.
• Livestream link.
• Tiphanie Yanique is a novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. She is the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the 2016 Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection. Tiphanie is also the author of the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the 2014   Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts   and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and was listed by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2014. Land of Love and Drowning was also a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. She is a tenured associate professor at Emory University.
• For more information on Yanique, please visit her website.
• This event is co-sponsored by the English Department, the Creative Writing Program, Global Interdisciplinary Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, the Center for Irish Studies, and Falvey Library.

Polar Voyaging and the Humanities

• Tuesday, April 19, at 4 p.m.
• Virtual lecture on Zoom. Register here.
• Lecture by Hester Blum, PhD, Professor of English at Penn State.
• In the summer of 2019 Blum was the lone humanities scholar on a scientific expedition tracking climate change in the Northwest Passage. Drawn from her experience on the Arctic icebreaker (and on an Antarctic expedition), as well as her research on nineteenth-century polar expeditions, Blum’s talk offers a meditation on ice as a measure for visualizing, writing about, mourning, and mediating the state of the climate in an age of ecological and institutional crisis.
• This event is offered in support of Falvey Memorial Library’s current exhibit “That Fairyland of Ice”: Polar Exploration in Mind and Memoryand is included alongside Earth Week events.
• This event is co-sponsored by Falvey Memorial Library, the Office of Sustainability, the Department of Geography and the Environment, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest, and the Department of English.

Russia’s War on Ukraine: Historical Turning Points

• Monday, April 25, from 6-7 p.m.
• Virtual lecture on Zoom. Register here.
• A conversation about the ongoing war in Ukraine.
• Dr. Adele Lindenmeyr, Historian of Russia and the USSR, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Villanova University, and Dr. Mike Westrate, Historian of Ukraine and the USSR, Assistant Vice Provost, Graduate Education and Research, Villanova University, will discuss the turning points that led to Russia’s invasion.
• What were the historical turning points that led to Russia’s current war on Ukraine and its people? Join us for a discussion of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship, including: the Holodomor, WWII and its aftermath, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Budapest Memorandum, the Russian war on Georgia, and the illegal annexation of Crimea.
• This event is co-sponsored by Falvey Library and the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.

Falvey Library’s Semi-Annual Stress Busting Open House: Make Finals a Grand Slam

• Friday, April 29 (Reading Day) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. or until supplies last on the Old Falvey patio.
• Stop by for some major (league) fun and treats to make these finals a grand slam!
• Pals for Life therapy animals will be there to help you during the 7th inning stretch of the semester.
• This event is co-sponsored by Falvey Library, the Office of Health Promotion, and POWER.

CONCEPT Virtual Recognition Ceremony

• Friday, April 22, at 1 p.m.
• Virtual lecture on Zoom. Register here.
• Join us as we celebrate the official launch of the 2022 issue of CONCEPT, the interdisciplinary journal of graduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• The ceremony will recognize this year’s Graduate Research Prize for top paper, along with all of the student authors and editors, faculty editors, and peer reviewers.
• CONCEPT accepts submissions from Villanova graduate students in all fields of the arts and sciences and is an opportunity for them to share their scholarship and research.
• This event is co-sponsored by Falvey Library and the Office of Graduate Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Visit the CONCEPT website to learn more about the journal and to browse past volumes.

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jenna Renaud

Word of the Week: Abibliophobia 

(n) Someone who is afraid of running out of things to read 

I’ve definitely experienced this fear before, especially when getting ready to travel. I’ve always been anti-Kindle and pro-physical books, which has occasionally made it difficult to gauge how many books I need to bring with me when traveling, especially for long flights.  

The good thing about being on campus though is that there’s never a shortage of books in the Falvey collection. Stop in to pick up your next book before your abibliophobia kicks in.  

This Week at Falvey  

NOW–Wednesday, June 15

“That Fairyland of Ice:” Polar Exploration in Mind and Memory Exhibit | Falvey First Floor & Virtual | Free & Open to the Public 

Monday, April 4

Mindfulness Mondays | 1–1:30 p.m. | Virtual | https://villanova.zoom.us/j/98337578849 

Monday, April 4

Conversation with the 2022 Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Chair, Emma Dabiri| 6–8 p.m. | Speakers’ Corner| Free & Open to the Public | Find more info here 

Wednesday, April 6  

2022 Falvey Forum Workshop Series: Getting Started with Building Digital Exhibits in Omeka | 12–1 p.m. | Virtual | Register Here 

Friday, April 8

Villanova Gaming Society Meeting | 2:30–4:30 p.m. | Speakers’ Corner | Free & Open to the Public 

This Week in History 

April 4th, 1968 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated 

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot standing on his second-story balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. King, age 39, was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when he was shot. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. 

The day before, on April 3, King gave his last sermon in Memphis, saying, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

Today, movements such as Black Lives Matter continue to highlight racism, discrimination, and inequality experienced by Black people. 

The assassination was traced back to escaped convict James Earl Ray. Ray was arrested after being found in a London airport in early June. He was then sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Read more from History.com. 

Jenna Renaud is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department.