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The Boston College Center for Irish Programs will inaugurate the Adele Dalsimer Memorial Lecture this fall, honoring a key architect of BC’s renowned Irish Studies Program – and featuring as its first speaker one of the program’s most accomplished graduates, Margaret Kelleher PhD’92, the first woman to hold the chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin.
Kelleher, who served as the Burns Library Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies in 2002-03, will present “Focla Déigheanacha (Dying Words): The Execution of Myles Joyce (Galway, 1882) and its Continuing Legacy,” on Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. in Devlin 101. A reception will follow in Connolly House.
She is widely regarded as an innovator in Irish literary studies, through her work on 19th-century literature, women’s writings, and the historical relationship between literature in English and Irish. Her books include The Feminization of Famine and the landmark publication The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, co-edited with BC English Professor Philip O’Leary.
Prior to joining University College Dublin, Kelleher was founding director of An Foras Feasa: The Institute for Research in Irish Historical and Cultural Traditions at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth.
The event Kelleher will help launch honors the memory of Adele Dalsimer, who co-founded the BC Irish Studies Program with Associate Professor of History Kevin O’Neill in 1978 and was its co-director until her death in 2000. Dalsimer received several honors for her work in the field of Irish studies, including honorary degrees from the University of Ulster and the National University of Ireland and was recognized as an honorary Irish-American by Irish America magazine in its “Top 100 Irish Americans” issue of 1996.
“I am honored to be invited to give this inaugural lecture in memory of Professor Adele Dalsimer, and to represent the myriad students and scholars inspired by her teaching, life and research,” said Kelleher, who first came to the University in 1985 as a graduate student via a scholarship that Dalsimer helped establish for Irish students to attend BC.
“My time at BC, and all my later work, was crucially shaped by Adele’s vision for an Irish studies that would be outward in perspective, constructively critical in focus and rooted in a deep love for our distinctive literature and history,” she said. “This is a living legacy cherished and continued by her many students and colleagues.”
“Adele Dalsimer was enormously important in Boston College’s rise to be the Irish studies leader in North America,” said Professor of History Oliver Rafferty, SJ, director of the Center for Irish Programs. “She was immensely well-respected throughout the field and beyond, to the extent that two leading Irish poets – Seamus Heaney and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill – wrote poems in her honor. It’s a testament to the high regard for her, not only in America but Ireland.
“Adele is still very much talked about, her memory still venerated, and she is still very much loved.”
Kelleher, added Fr. Rafferty, “is, from all points of view, the right person to give the first Adele Dalsimer Memorial Lecture. Margaret was a student of Adele, of course, but she has cultivated a very successful career in her own right and is a leading advocate for Irish studies internationally. It will be a delight to welcome her back to Boston College.”
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required; go to http://bit.ly/1XPFb8f.