4pm conversation, 5:30pm reception
Burns Library
On 7 October 1924, Professor Timothy Smiddy presented credentials to President Calvin Coolidge, becoming Ireland's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the US. The United States was one of the first nations to recognize the newly independent Irish state and Ambassador Smiddy was the first diplomatic agent officially appointed to represent Ireland overseas. Since then, diplomatic ties between Ireland and the US have strengthened considerably with nine active Irish diplomatic missions and Honorary Consuls in eleven cities across the United States. This reflects the 
depth and strength of US-Irish relations which are based on deep historical ties, shared values and an influential Irish diaspora of over 30 million Americans who claim Irish heritage. Economic links are substantial with the US-Ireland trade and investment relationship worth over $1 trillion. US political and economic support for the Northern Ireland peace process has been critically important in securing and maintaining peace on the island of Ireland, whilst US backing for multilateralism and cooperation with the European Union has been to Ireland’s benefit.
As the centenary year of US-Irish diplomatic relations nears its end, Ambassador Byrne Nason will reflect on the past, present and future relationship between Ireland and the US. The Ambassador’s visit will also mark the re-launch of the Irish Institute of Boston College.
A complimentary drinks reception will follow the event at 5.30pm.
All are welcome but places are limited so registration is essential. Please register here.
For questions regarding parking, transportation and building accessibility, please refer to the Burns Library website or Contact Caroline Pace, Burns Library Administrative Assistant, 617-552-3282.
5:00pm reception, 6:00pm lecture
Burns Library
‘There cannot be a history of private property law’, Brenna Bhandar writes in Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership, ‘that is not at the same time a history of land appropriation in Ireland, the Caribbean, North America, and beyond’. In this lecture, Pat Palmer explores how English colonists in sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland field-tested strategies for translating land into property. Wheezes like ‘surrender and re-grant’ turned community-held land into the private property of the single individual through Common-Law title. This ‘invention’ of property transformed our engagement with the more-than-human in ways that continue to play out as crises of equality and biodiversity. This lecture asks whether recovering older (here, specifically, Gaelic) ways of engaging with the land as a place of enchantment rather than possession have anything to say to the present.
Pat Palmer is Professor of English at Maynooth University and the Fall 2024 Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies. She works on cultures in contact in, principally, early modern Ireland, on the conflictual exchange between English colonists and the Gaelic world, on linguistic colonisation, the aesthetics of violence, and the politics of translation. She is the author of Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Elizabeth Imperial Expansion (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue: Translating Violence in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Her current book project is a monograph provisionally entitled The Poetics of Property: Castle Poems and the Invention of Ownership in Early Modern Ireland. She is Principal Investigator on the MACMORRIS Project, a digital humanities project which maps the full range of cultural activity, across languages and ethnic groups, in early modern Ireland.
For further background on Professor Palmer and her Burns Visiting Scholar residency, please visit our Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies web page.
6:30 pm
In 1822, Dr. Charles Wild, a Harvard-educated homeopathic physician, and his wife Mary Johanna Wild, built a home, still standing today, at the foot of Brookline’s Aspinwall Hill. The Wild's son, Edward Augustus Wild, also a doctor, served as a medical officer in the army of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War and, during the American Civil War, commanded Union troops made up of freed slaves in North Carolina.
As told by Ken Liss, head of the Brookline Historical Society (and a former BC librarian) the Wild family — and the world of mid-19th century Brookline — emerges through letters, ledger books, and, especially, the 1851-1865 diary of Mary Wild, acquired by the Burns Library and transcribed and annotated by Liss and Brookline volunteers.
We kindly ask that guests park on the roof level of the nearby Commonwealth Avenue Garage. Please plan to arrive early to allow time to find parking and then walk to our building (hint: use a GPS app on your phone for walking directions; it will bring you to our main entrance). For individuals who require mobility assistance, please contact Caroline Pace, Burns Library Administrative Assistant at 617-552-3282. There are handicap parking spots at the rear of the building, along with an accessible ramp and elevator. Limited parking along Linden Lane (adjacent to Burns) may also be available for individuals who need mobility assistance, but Boston College prefers most guests to park in the Commonwealth Ave Garage.
4:30pm talk; 6:00pm complimentary buffet supper and bar service
Burns Library
Named as the most daring woman working for the Irish Republican cause by the Daily Mail in 1923, Máire Comerford (1893-1982) was an active participant in the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War (1919-1923), when she fought against acceptance of a partitioned Ireland, the new Irish Free State, and the creation of the Northern Ireland statelet, which remained part of the United Kingdom. Following arrests, imprisonment, beatings, hunger strikes, and a daredevil escape, Comerford was sent to the United States in November 1923 by jailed Anti-Treatyite leader Éamon de Valera to propagate the Republican cause and to raise funds for Republican prisoner relief. 
Marking the hundredth anniversary of Comerford’s mission, the editor of her posthumously published memoir, Hilary Dully, will trace Comerford’s footsteps from gentile beginnings in rural Ireland to Republican icon—a journey of extraordinary commitment to a national ideal, explored and reimagined through her unique archive, recently acquired by the Burns Library, with particular emphasis on Comerford’s letters home during her nine-month sojourn. Moving between the anecdotal, familial and political, the letters bear testament not only to a creeping sense of defeat for the Republicans but also lay bare both the homesickness and simultaneous wide-eyed wonder of a young woman traversing between New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington in the presidential election year of 1924.
A documentary filmmaker, writer, and film lecturer, Hilary Dully’s films have been commissioned and broadcast on RTE, Channel 4 and TG4 and shown at Irish and international film festivals. She has also taught documentary and film practice at the University of Galway. Dully lives in rural East Clare, where she has initiated
and produced a number of documentaries about, or in conjunction with, her local community. Related by marriage to Máire Comerford through Comerford’s nephew, filmmaker Joe Comerford, Dully’s publication of On Dangerous Ground: A Memoir of the Irish Revolution with Lilliput Press in 2021 has brought long overdue attention to Máire Comerford’s remarkable courage, character, and impact.
Copies of On Dangerous Ground will be available for sale and signing. Joe Comerford’s recently digitally restored and acclaimed 1988 film, “Reefer and the Model,” which features a character part based on Máire Comerford, will be screened at 7pm with discussion with Joe Comerford to follow.
All are welcome. RSVPs not required but appreciated: https://bit.ly/comerford-events-BC
Presented by Boston College Libraries in collaboration with Boston College Irish Studies and support from the Eire Society of Boston and Tom and Trisha Carty.
A complimentary cold buffet supper and bar service will follow Dully’s talk and discussion at 6pm.
6:00pm complimentary buffet supper and bar service; 7:00pm film screening
Burns Library
Irish filmmaker Joe Comerford brings his brand of sharp realist cinema to this 1988 drama about Reefer, an ex-IRA man who picks up hitch-hiker Teresa, a pregnant woman trying to overcome a drug addiction. Nicknaming her “the model,” Reefer takes Teresa back to the trawler where he lives with friends Spider and Badger. Shadowy connections to Irish Republican Army operations during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and a general lawlessness come to the fore as t
he makeshift family are forced to turn to crime to make a living. Conflicts and challenges – from IRA hunger strikes to homosexuality – are touched upon as Comerford’s sharp-eyed awareness for political and social nuance remains keen throughout.
Joe Comerford has worked as an independent director in Ireland for over 50 years, producing work that is distinguished by its cinematic subversion and social commentary, with a trademark twinning of film narrative and visual-aural abstraction. His films focus on socially marginalized characters, often in the midst of crisis. Comerford is a member of Aosdana, an autonomous affiliation of artists, established by Irish government in 1981 to honor artists whose work had made an exceptional contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. 
In 2023, Comerford was presented with the Súil Eile at the Irish Embassy in London for his outstanding contribution to Irish film over his long career. He is presently working on a feature film script evolving and expanding his lifelong interest in abstraction and realism in the development of film language and storytelling.
The screening of “Reefer and the Model” (80 mins.) will be followed by discussion with Joe Comerford.
All are welcome. RSVPs not required but appreciated: https://bit.ly/comerford-events-BC
Presented by Boston College Libraries in collaboration with Boston College Irish Studies and support from the Eire Society of Boston and Tom and Trisha Carty.
Sponsored by Boston College Libraries, English Department, Department of Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies, East European and Eurasian Studies Program, and Boston College Bookstore.
Tuesday, April 30
5:00pm - 6:30pm
Burns Library
Burns Library is pleased to host a celebration of two recent collections of poetry by Boston College faculty. Eric Weiskott will read from Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Maxim D. Shrayer will read from Kinship (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Fellow faculty poets Allison Adair and Andrew Sofer will offer introductions and Burns Librarian Christian Dupont will moderate the program and discussion. Refreshments and book sales and signings will follow.
Eric Weiskott is Professor of English at Boston College. He grew up in Greenport, New York, a whaling village on the east end of Long Island. Weiskott is the author most recently of the poetry chapbook Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and the scholarly monograph Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350–1650 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). His poems appear in Fence, Texas Review, and Exacting Clam.
Maxim D. Shrayer is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. He was born in Moscow and emigrated in 1987. Shrayer is the author of over twenty-five books in English and Russian. He has published four collections of poetry in Russian, most recently Stikhi iz aipada (Poems from the iPad, Tel Aviv, 2022) and two collections in English, Of Politics and Pandemics (2020) and Kinship (2024).
For more information, see the article about the event in the Boston College Chronicle.
Hosted in conjunction with Boston College Arts Festival and Department of English
Friday, April 26
1:00pm - 3:00pm
Burns Library
The Creative Writing Concentration is a special track of the English major. Brady Arquin, William Cornelisse, Kerin Dalton, Julia DiGregorio, Kathryn Gilmore, Isaiah Lopez, Beatriz Isabel Pugeda, and Sophia Shay are this year’s graduates. Seniors will read briefly from their work with a reception to follow.
Wednesday, April 10
5:00pm reception, 6:00pm lecture
Burns Library
Click here to watch the recording (closed captioning provided)
Irish historian Felix Larkin will outline the history of Irish cartoons, from Mathew Carey’s Volunteers’ Journal to Martyn Turner, and cartoons about the Irish, from Daniel O’Connell to Brexit.
Cartoons tend to be undervalued as historical sources. While good history – like good journalism – must be nuanced, reflecting the complexity of issues and situations, good cartoons cut through the verbiage with simple truths that override complexity and get to the heart of the matter. Cartoons can provide great insight into contemporary perceptions of past events, and the arguments – and passions – engendered by those events, as well as opportunities for historians to enhance their work with engaging images.
Felix M. Larkin is a former chairman of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland, and has published widely on the history of the press in Ireland and other topics.
The evening will begin with a wine, beer, and hors d'oeuvres reception at 5:00pm in the Burns Library Irish Room. The lecture will follow at 6:00pm upstairs in the Thompson Room. All are welcome.
Wednesday, April 3
4:00pm talk, 5:00pm refreshments and archives display
Burns Library
An introduction to the work of WWI war veteran, poet and visual artist David Jones will be presented by the directors of the David Jones Digital Archive, Anna Svendsen, a Lecturer at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Thomas Berenato, a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia.
Following the presentation, attendees will have an opportunity to view a display of original archival materials from Burns Library's David Jones Collection.
The event will open a two-day text encoding workshop intensive taught by the Cambridge University digital humanities librarians. Details are available from the following link: David Jones TEI Workshop & Archival Display – BCDS.
Monday, March 25
5:00pm - 7:30pm
Burns Library and other locations
In collaboration with the Romance Language and Literatures department, Burns Library will host programming and book display for the celebration of "Dante Day" ('Dantedì'), an annual commemoration of Italy's most celebrated poet and writer, Dante Alighieri. March 25 was chosen as it is recognized by scholars as the day the poet started his journey in the afterlife in the Divine Comedy.
Boston College's celebration will include the following five events:
For more information, please contact program organizer Maria Sole Costanzo (Romance Languages) at costanmh@bc.edu or 671-552-2064.
Presented by Professor Michael Noone and the Marian Consort, the British vocal ensemble directed by Rory McCleery
Wednesday, February 14
12:00pm lunch, 12:30pm program
Gasson Hall 100
Before and after the program, Burns Library staff will display a selection of rare books, including a recently acquired collection of motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria printed in Rome in 1585. The Marian Consort will perform pieces by Victoria as well as the Salve Regina composed by Juan de Anchieta, a cousin of St Ignatius. Professor Noone will discuss his discovery of a previously unknown manuscript of Anchieta’s Marian antiphon bound into the covers of an account book held in the archives of the cathedral of Segovia, Spain.
