Sisters II lecture series

The seventeenth-century Boyle sisters and their letters

Wednesday, 17 August 2022

The first talk of this second series delivered by Dr Ann-Maria Walsh, School of English, Drama & Film, UCD. explores the lives of the seventeenth-century Boyle sisters writing family and voicing the female through their letters.

Ann-Maria studied English at University College Dublin and was awarded her PhD in 2017; the thesis was titled, ‘Writing Women’s Lives: The Epistolary Cultures of the Daughters of the First Earl of Cork. She teaches in the School of English at UCD as well as working as a researcher in the University’s cultural heritage collections area.

Her monograph, The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics, and Place was published by Four Courts Press in early 2020. She has an essay on the Boyle women in Women’s Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland eds. Julie Eckerle and Naomi McAreavey (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Ann-Maria is currently working on an edition of the Boyle women’s extant letters for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. Ann-Maria’s main research interests include seventeenth-century women’s letters, diaries, and other autobiographical writings, as well as early modern literature, material culture, and Irish and British history of that period.

Kate O'Brien and her sisters: archives, fictions and families?

Wednesday, 28 September 2022

The second lunchtime lecture of this series delivered by Gerardine Meaney MRIA, Professor of Cultural Theory in the School of English, Drama & Film at University College Dublin, on Kate O'Brien and her sisters.

Gerardine Meaney is Professor of Cultural Theory in the School of English, Drama and Film. Her current research interests are in gender, ethnic and national identities in literature and culture and the application of new digital methodologies to humanities research. Her current research projects include an exploration of Victorian anxieties around public health and migration in the British Library’s Nineteenth Century Corpus and a Decade of Centenaries project presenting the diaries of novelist and revolutionary, Rosamond Jacob, in blog form. She is the author of Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change (Routledge, 2010) intro online; Nora, Ireland into Film Series (Cork University Press); (Un)like Subjects: Women, Theory, Fiction (Routledge, 1993; reissued Routledge Library Editions, 2012) and numerous articles and book chapters on gender and culture, from Joyce to The Wire. She co-authored Reading the Irish Woman: Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714-1960, with Bernadette Whelan and Mary O'Dowd (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013). She was one of the major co-editors of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Women's Writing and Traditions, volumes 4 and 5 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002). Digital projects include a centenary multimedia exploration of an iPad app of James Joyce's short story 'The Dead' and the 17 research demonstrator projects of the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive. She was Chairperson of the Irish Humanities Alliance (2016-17) and Vice-Chair (2015-16). She was also previously Director of the UCD Humanities Institute, Vice-Principal for Research and Innovation in the College of Arts and Celtic Studies and Directors of the Centres for the Study of Gender, Culture and Identities and Film Studies at UCD.

Reassessing Anna and Fanny Parnell

Wednesday 19 October 2022

The third lunchtime lecture of this series held on 19 October 2022 and delivered by Dr Diane Urquhart, Professor of Gender History at Queen’s University Belfast, on Anna and Fanny Parnell.

Diane Urquhart is Professor of Gender History in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics (HAPP) of Queen’s University Belfast and President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland (WHAI). Her publications include Irish divorce: a history (Cambridge, 2020); The ladies of Londonderry: women and political patronage, 1800–1959 (London & New York, 2007); Women in Ulster politics, 1890–1940: a history not yet told (Dublin, 2000); and, with Lindsey Earner-Byrne, she co-authored Irish abortion journey, 1920–2018 (London, 2019).

Miss Sidney and Miss Olivia: the lives and writings of the Owenson sisters 

Thursday 10 November

The final evening lecture of this second series held on 10 November 2022 and delivered by Claire Connolly MRIA, Professor of Modern English at University College Cork, on the lives and writings of Miss Sydney and Miss Olivia Owenson.

Claire Connolly is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork. A cultural history of the Irish novel, 1790–1829 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism) won the Donald J. Murphy Prize. With Marjorie Howes (Boston College), Professor Connolly is General Editor of Irish literature in transition, 1700– 2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020); and editor of Volume 2 of the series, Irish literature in transition, 1780–1830.