News and Events

Fall 2020

A Reading with Mike McCormack
November 18, 2020

Acclaimed Irish novelist Mike McCormack reads from his prize-winning novel Solar Bones (2018 International Dublin Literary Award, winner of the 2016 Goldsmith Prize, and the 2017 Booker nominee) along with excerpts from his sci-fi side project. Irish Studies program director Prof. Catherine Flynn moderates the Q&A and discussion.

#blackIrish: Some Notes on Becoming a Trend
October 21, 2020

In this talk on multiracial Ireland and Irish-America, Kimberly McClain DaCosta (Associate Professor of Sociology, NYU Gallatin) considers emergent public discussion among those who identify as Black and Irish in the context of today's international reckoning with anti-blackness and white supremacy.

Spring 2020

Fall 2019

Catherine Flynn, Associate Professor of English/Director of Irish Studies, UC Berkeley
"James Joyce and the Matter of Paris"
September 26, 2019 | 7pm | City Lights Booksellers, San Francisco

Brian Ó Conchubhair (Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature, University of Notre Dame) and Cuan Ó Seireadáin (Curator and Project Director, Douglas Hyde Foundation)
Douglas Hyde in California
October 17 | 5pm | 300 Wheeler Hall

Eric Falci, Professor of English, UC Berkeley
Poetry reading: "Late Along the Edgelands"
November 5 | 5pm | 201 Moses Hall

Spring 2019

Barry McCrea, University of Notre Dame
"Language Change and Narrative Form from Ó Cadhain to Ferrante"
March 7, 2019 | 5pm | 315 Wheeler Hall

Renée Tosser, DIRE/Université de la Réunion, France
"Political imagery and Bonfires in Northern Ireland"
April 24, 2019 | 12pm | 201 Moses Hall

John O'Brennan, Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies (Ireland)
"Requiem for a Shared Interdependent Past: Brexit and the deterioration of UK-Irish Relations"
May 14, 2019 | 12pm | 201 Moses Hall

41st California Celtic Conference
March 15-17, 2019 | See the complete program here

Fall 2018

2018 San Francisco Irish Film Festival - "Short Stories and Tall Tales"
Irish Studies was pleased to sponsor the 2018 short films program, followed by a Q&A with Catherine Flynn (Associate Director, Irish Studies Program / Associate Professor of English, UC Berkeley) and filmmaker Amy Joyce Hastings.

An Evening with Paul Muldoon
A reading of recent and classic works by the Pulitzer Prize winner and 2017 recipient of Her Majesty's Gold Medal for Poetry. Co-presented with the Los Gatos Irish Arts & Writers Festival.

New Frontiers in Language Technology for Minority Languages
Kevin Scannell (Saint Louis University) presented research on how new technologies furnish speakers of Irish, Celtic, and other minority languages with greater opportunities to use their language on online platforms.

The Present and Future of the Irish Language
The Irish Studies Program convened a panel of experts from tech, media, business, and higher education, to discuss the current presence of Irish as a spoken and digital language and which new tools will be part of its future. Introduction by Robert O'Driscoll (Consul General of Ireland in San Francisco).

Official Visit by Ambassador Daniel Mulhall
In July 2018, the Irish Studies Program was pleased to welcome the Ambassador of Ireland to the United States, Daniel Mulhall. The visit to campus, led by Catherine Flynn (Associate Professor of English and Associate Director of the Irish Studies Program), was part of a full slate of meetings and events with community, business, and political leaders across the Bay Area and Northern California. Reflecting Ireland’s close ties with UC Berkeley, Ambassador Mulhall toured the Bancroft Library, home to one of the largest collections of Irish archives in Western US including historical documents on the Irish-American community as well as materials by notable academics and poets such as Seamus Heaney and William Butler Yeats. (Photo by Noeleen Pattison)