Glucksman Ireland House Events Calendar Spring 2004

GLUCKSMAN IRELAND HOUSE –NEW YORKUNIVERSITY

Thursday, February 12 7 p.m.	Celebrating the 150th anniversary of that beloved and lively New York institution, McSorley’s Old Ale House, Glucksman Ireland House is please to present the opening of an exhibition by New York artist Gregory de la Haba, entitled The McSorley Series, a lively and representational series of charcoal drawings, pastel and oil paintings. The exhibition will run until mid April.
Thursday, February 19 7 p.m.	Novelist Colum McCann reads from his most recent work, Dancer, a ‘beautiful, floating novel about Nureyev’s life and art’. McCann is the author of novels This Side of Brightness and Songdogs, as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. He has received many literary prizes including the Grace Kelly Memorial Foundation Award and the Princess Grace Literary Award.
Saturday, February 28 7 p.m.	Screening of Pat Murphy’s 2001 film Nora, the story of Nora Barnacle, wife of James Joyce, starring Susan Lynch and Ewan McGregor. This event is organized by GRIAN as part of their annual Irish Studies Conference at Glucksman Ireland House, entitled Anthologizing Ireland, Collection, Curation, Dissemination. For more information see www.grian.org Venue: NYU Cantor Film Center 36 East Eighth Street

March, 2003

Thursday, March 4 7 p.m.

Mayo-born John Feeney (1903 - 1967) was the leading Irish-American tenor of his era. During his thirty year professional singing career in the United States, John recorded fifty 78 rpm records, became a well-known radio personality on the New York airwaves through his Schaefer Beer program, and he also performed extensively on the concert stage. Irish music radio producer Harry Bradshaw researched John Feeney's life and career and published a booklet and a re-mastered selection on two CDs of the singer's 78s, radio broadcasts and concert appearances to mark the centenary of his birth in 2003.

Thursday, March 23 7 p.m.

Niall O Cíosáin, lecturer in the Department of History, National University of Ireland, Galway, speaks on Print and the Irish Language. Over the last four centuries, the spoken language of the majority of people in Ireland changed from Irish to English. This was one of the most fundamental cultural changes of the period, but it is also one of the least understood. Printing had a crucial role in this transformation. This lecture will trace the culture of print in Irish and explore its complex relationship with the wider questions of language and cultural change.

Thursday, March 25 7 p.m.	The Battle of Kinsale (2003), proceedings of a comprehensive and acclaimed conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of a pivotal conflict in Irish history, receives its American launch together with a talk entitled Renaissance Images of the Irish, by the volume’s editor, distinguished historian Hiram Morgan. A visual essay of eighty slides, Morgan takes a critical look at how the Irish were depicted in drawings, engravings and paintings executed by Continental and English artists between 1520 and 1690. It seeks to explain the contexts of courtly entertainment, anti-Catholic propaganda and renaissance self-fashioning in which the images were produced.
Thursday, April 1 7 p.m.	Historian Peter Gray of the University of Southampton, currently in residence at Boston College as the 2004 Burns Scholar, speaks on Accounting for Disaster? The 1851 Irish Census and the Great Irish Famine. Gray is the author of Famine, Land and Politics, British Government and Irish Society 1843-50, and is the editor of a major project to digitize the British Parliamentary Papers relating to Ireland between 1801 and 1922.
Tuesday, April 6 7 p.m.	Medbh McGuckian, Billy Collins, Greg Delanty and Richard Tillinghast read from their work and speak of their experiences at The Poets’ House, Teach na hÉigse, in Donegal. Hosted by New York poet, Sabra Loomis, this evening’s readings and conversation offer members of the public an opportunity to learn about the conferences and the Master’s Degree in Creative Writing offered by The Poets’ House, from those who have participated as resident poets and faculty members.
Thursday, April 8 7 p.m.	Richard English, Professor of Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast, speaks on ‘The Politics of the IRA’ based on his most recent book, Armed Struggle: The History Of The IRA, a detailed synthesis of the motives, actions and consequences of the IRA, which won the Political Studies Association's Politics Book of the Year Prize for 2003. His previous books include Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State 1925-1937 and Ernie O’Malley: IRA Intellectual.
Thursday, April 15 7 p.m.	W. B. Yeats and the Ireland of Synge's Time Even before the J. M. Synge's death in 1909, W. B. Yeats had begun the careful refashioning of his friend's character, contribution and gift for controversy. Synge is rendered an iconic force within Yeats's poetry. But during the years of his brief and brilliant dramatic career, it was Synge's reputation that dominated, altering the image of Yeats in Ireland's public eye. This talk by Ben Levitas examines the way in which the public perception of Yeats was shaped in the battle over Synge's potent plays.
Saturday, April 17 7:00 p.m.	A Taste of the Yeats Summer School: an all-day program in cooperation with the W.B. Yeats Society of New York. Each August aficionados of the poet William Butler Yeats come from all over the world to enjoy two weeks of lectures, readings, and theater in Sligo, Ireland, and to tour nearby "Yeats Country". Here is an opportunity to sample the Summer School for a day in New York.

Thursday, April 22 7 p.m.	Mona's Bar is well-known for its venerable Monday night traditional music sessions, led by guitarist Eamon O'Leary and fiddler Patrick Ourceau.  Acting as local hosts for the international Irish music scene, they have collaborated with the greatest artists in Irish music. After recording a number of such nights over the last year, they will again gather the New York Irish music scene to release America's first pub session album, Live at Mona's.
Thursday, April 29 7 p.m.	Airneál na Bealtaine: an evening of traditional music and song with NYU students and local musicians to celebrate the beginning of the Celtic summer with Irish Language Lecturer, Pádraig O’Cearúill. Bí Linn!