Lecture Four ‘In the Streets: performing identity through parades, rituals and festivals in Ireland, 1750 – 2014’.

 For our final lecture of the series I'm delighted to announced that Dr Niamh NicGhabhann, the course director of the MA in Festive Arts at the Irish World Academy will be joining us to speak about performing idenity through parades, rituals and festivals. 

The talk takes place on April 14th (Monday) at 7pm in T1.16, Tara Building, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. 

All are welcome!

Abstract

This lecture reflects the path of the MA Festive Arts programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Beginning with the origins of festivals and their meanings in societies, it will trace the movement of festivals through parade, protest, ritual, carnival and riot. There will be an emphasis on festivity and ritual in Ireland in particular, from the uses of medieval sites as the locus of festival throughout the modern period, to the ritual processions and parades in the changing cultural context of late nineteenth-century Limerick. In examining the creation of meaningful space between the medieval cathedral of St. Mary and the new cathedral of St. John, ideas of place, space, movement, body and authority will be explored.

Bio:

Niamh NicGhabhann is the course director of the MA Festive Arts programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Prior to moving to Limerick, she was the doctoral fellow on the IRC-funded ‘Reconstructions of the Gothic Past’ project, based at TRIARC: the Irish Art Research Centre at Trinity College, and postdoctoral researcher on the ‘Monastic Ireland’ digital humanities project, based at UCD School of History and Archives and the Discovery Programme. She is a writer and curator, and a founding director of the NovaUCD campus company, Stair: an Irish Public History Company (http://stairpublichistory.wix.com/stair). With Dr. Maeve Houlihan at the Kemmy School of Business, she is also currently engaged in the ‘Innovation and the Humanities’ research project. Her monograph, Building on the Past: medieval buildings in Ireland 1789 – 1915, will be published by Four Courts Press in winter 2014.

Lecture Three: From Blackboard to Bestseller

Have you ever dreamed of giving it all up and becoming a writer? Well that's just what out third speaker this season did - becoming a best selling author. A former pupil of Mary Immaculate College, Roisin Meaney's lecture is sure to be interesting and entertaining!

Monday, April 7th at 7pm in T1.16.


Roisin Meany: From Blackboard to Bestseller

Abstract:

In my lecture From Blackboard to Bestseller I’ll chart my rather scenic route into the world of fiction writing, an occupation that had never featured in my career plans when I was growing up. I’ll outline the various serendipitous stepping stones that led me out of the classroom and brought me to where I am today. I’ll also share the glitches that tripped me up from time to time, the things I have learned about the world of publishing and my hopes for the future.

Brief Biography:

In August 1977, just before beginning her three years in MICE, Roisin Meaney wrote seven words and won a car. Twenty-four years and one teaching career later she wrote eighty thousand words and won a book deal. In 2008 she put her red pen out to pasture and left the classroom to become a fulltime writer. Today she’s the author of nine (soon to be ten) published novels, four of which have ended up in the top five of the Irish fiction charts, one (The Last Week of May) going all the way to the top and another (The People Next Door) making it as far as number two (Anne Enright was hogging the top slot at the time with The Gathering). Two of Roisin’s books have been published in the US, and she has been translated into Danish, German and Italian. She’s been described as the new Maeve Binchy and the Irish Joanna Trollope. On the first Saturday of each month she tells stories to toddlers and their teddies in the library at The Granary. She is a fan of cats, chocolate and random acts of kindness. 

www.roisinmeaney.com

Twitter: @roisinmeaney

Facebook: Roisin Meaney