Irish Studies at Boston College

09/08/2026

Join us next Wednesday, September 9, for our first event, titled "This Hostel Life: Stories of Race and Migration in Ireland"

Nigerian-Irish author Melatu Uche Okorie will deliver our third Irish Studies/African & African Diaspora Studies Collaboration lecture. Okorie will discuss her award-winning 2018 book, This Hostel Life​​​​​​ (Skein Press). The novel tells varoius stories, from the daily struggles of women in Ireland's asylum-seeker program to a young Black woman's depiction of everyday racism in Ireland to the discussion of a universally shared female determination to carry on despite hardships. Okorie's nuanced writing shines a light on the injustice of Ireland's direct provision system and on the insidious racism experienced by migrant women in Ireland.

Melatu Uche Okorie is a Nigerian-born writer, educator, and creative writing tutor. Born in Enugu, the Eastern region of Nigeria, Melatu moved to Ireland in 2006. Her first foray into writing was with her short story, Gathering Thoughts, which later won the Metro Eireann Short Story Award in 2007. Melatu has an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin. Her stories have been featured in major anthologies, transcribed into audio forms, made into a short film, and turned into an opera by the Irish National Opera. She has been described as a brave and important voice in Irish literature, and her writing has been widely praised for its honesty, depth, and compassion. A dedicated educator, Melatu has taught creative writing at various universities, resource centers, festivals, and art events in Ireland. She is a strong advocate for diversity in literature and has worked to create opportunities for marginalized voices to be heard.

This event is co-sponsored by Irish Studies, AADS, and the ILA.

08/31/2026

is back with a full fall program!

08/27/2026

Congratulations to PhD candidate Cassidy Allen on being named the 2026/2027 Dalsimer Fellow!!

Titled "Gothic Specters in Contemporary Irish Women's Fiction," Allen's dissertation argues that contemporary Irish women writers such as Enda O'Brien and Sally Rooney employ Gothic elements to emphasize contemporary cultural anxieties and to identify ongoing issues for Irish women. Her work pairs close readings of novels such as Rooney's Normal People and O'Brien's The Country Girls with historical genre analysis and cultural studies methodologies to examine and explicate contemporary cultural anxieties for women. Her project utilizes a variety of print and digital sources beyond novels, from interviews with Irish women authors to TikTok videos documenting the explosion of 'trad-wife' content and the cultural shift toward traditional values for women currently underway.

08/27/2026

The Irish Studies Program at Boston College invites applications for the newly created role of Assistant Professor of the Practice / Assistant Director of Irish Studies. The successful candidate will be appointed to a full-time, non-tenure-track, three-year renewable contract faculty position in the interdisciplinary Irish Studies Program. The salary range is $90-100k The position includes a pathway to promotion to the ranks of Associate and full Professor of the Practice (without tenure).

The Boston College Irish Studies program is a vibrant academic community with a distinguished international reputation. In addition to offering an undergraduate minor in Irish Studies and supporting graduate and faculty research, it runs an intensive program of events, including conferences, lectures, seminars, workshops, panel discussions, literary readings, traditional music concerts, film screenings, and exhibitions, all of which bring notable scholars, authors, artists and public figures to Boston College.

The primary responsibilities of this position involve working with the director of Irish Studies and the program’s faculty to plan, organize and promote academic programming that enriches the experience of undergraduate and graduate students at Boston College, and also engages with the wider interested public in the greater Boston area.

In addition to the substantial organizational and programming responsibilities as Assistant Director of the Irish Studies Program, the position carries an annual teaching load of 1-1 in the program (a reduction from the typical 3-3 teaching load for a full-time, non-tenure track faculty member in a humanities or social sciences department at Boston College). The successful candidate will teach electives on subjects that significantly contribute to broadening the Irish Studies curriculum, with a preference for specialization in disciplines other than literature.

Teaching duties begin on the first day of classes for the fall semester, which in the Fall 2027 semester will be August 30, 2027.

Apply here:

08/10/2026

hosted our Burns Visiting Summer Fellow, Christina Morin, from the University of Limerick.

Here's what she had to say about her visit to Boston:

"The 2026 Burns Summer Visiting Fellowship in Irish Studies allowed me a wonderful opportunity to advance my current monograph project, Irish Gothic in the Global Nineteenth Century. This study explores the impact of Romantic-era Irish gothic fiction in the nineteenth-century global literary marketplace, focusing on Irish-authored novels published by London’s Minerva Press, c. 1780-1830. While at BC, I concentrated on completing the research for and drafting the book’s fourth chapter, which investigates the circulation and dissemination of Irish Minerva works in the early American republic, paying special attention to American reprints and circulating library holdings of these works in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Irish-born printer and bookseller Mathew Carey was a particular point of focus, and the holdings at the Burns Library and other area archives, the American Antiquarian Society Library especially, were essential in nuancing my assessment of the prominence of Minerva Press publications in the early American literary marketplace. Thanks to these resources, I was able to compile a spreadsheet of known American reprints of Irish Minerva works as well as the holdings of these works in nearly fifty circulating libraries along the east coast in the period from 1799 to 1829. This turned up some surprising findings, which I am now detailing in full as I make sense of all my notes and files from Boston and finish the chapter."

08/03/2026

Professor Seán Cahill helped organize a third annual course for advanced learners, 'Blaiseadh na Gaeltachta,' 'Taste of the Gaeltachta,' in Rann na Feirste, Co. Donegal. Among the teachers were Máiread Ní Dhomhnaill from the band Skara Brae, Tory Island singer Colm Joe Mac Ruairí, film producer Sonia Nic Giolla Easpaig, and storyteller Aela Ni Ghaoithín. The group visited Raidió na Gaeltachta and many of the students, organizers and teachers spoke with Aodh Máirtín Ó Fearraigh about the highlights of their week in the Gaeltacht.

Bhí an cúrsa, Blaiseadh na Gaeltachta ar siúl i Rann na Feirste le gairid agus d’fhreastal scór duine as ar fad fud na cruinne ar an chúrsa a bhí ar siúl don tríú bliain as a chéile. Thug siad cuairt orainn anseo agus labhair cuid de na rannpháirtithe agus na teagascóirí linn.

07/28/2026

PhD candidate Cassidy Allen has a chapter in the recently published Sally Rooney: Perspectives & Approaches (Bucknell University Press, 2026).

Titled "'Two Little Plants Sharing the Same Plot of Soil': Twinned Bildungsromans in Sally Rooney's Normal People," the article argues that Rooney's work provides an opportunity to see Irish literary girlhood and Irish literary boyhood side by side through Rooney’s twinned narratives of Marianne and Connell. In the novel, the characters reckon with Irish systems and state-sanctioned institutions such as the family cell and the education system while they navigate their relationship to one another. This essay argues that together, these twinned bildungsromans show how girls and young women continue to be used as springboards for the forming of male identity, and that Irish boyhood continues to be mediated through Irish girlhood, with negative effects for both young women and young men.

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.36019/9781684486045/html?srsltid=AfmBOopZglkbzmPZoGharFd8_M2i4kYguqp9SitkiEe2hwaMbm3fKqtP

07/16/2026

Next Wednesday, July 22, the Burns Library is hosting an event titled "The Story of US" at 5:30 pm

Learn about the newly released 1926 Irish Census database, search for family histories, view the National Archives of Ireland's special exhibition, and have some refreshments!

07/06/2026

The Supreme Court cited graduate Hidetake Hirota in their landmark birthright citizenship decision.

The justices referenced Hirota's 2017 book, "Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States & 19th C. Origins of American Immigration Policy."

The U.S. Supreme Court this week reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that Trump's executive...

07/06/2026

Congrats to our former student Rachel Brody on her appointment to Washington and Jefferson College!