News & Announcements

• Dr Philip Coleman will be giving a lecture as part of the "Transatlantic literature in context" series sponsored by the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, on Wednesday the 6th of March. His talk is entitled: " 'Cross-fertilization in International Poetry': John Berryman and the problem of influence" and will take place in English Faculty Seminar Room B at 5 p.m. For more information contact Dr Tara Stubbs: tara.stubbs@conted.ox.ac.uk.
• Monday 11 February 2013, 'The Pollard Collection of Children's Books: Constructing a History of Irish Children's Literature', a lecture by Dr Pádraic Whyte, School of English, as part of the Trinity Long Room Hub Library Lecture Series to mark the tercentenary of the Old Library. In the Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, at 19.00. Admission is free and all are welcome.
  The Pollard Collection of Children’s Books, a generous bequest to the Trinity Library from  Mary ('Paul') Pollard (1922-2005), is a collection of over 10,000 books covering the period from late 17thC to early 20thC.

• The annual TCD/UCD Philosophy and Literature Symposium will take place in the Humanities Institute of Ireland in UCD from 10.00 am to 17.30, this Saturday 26th of January.
  The theme of this year's symposium is 'Vision(s)': What does it mean to have vision or to have a vision? How have personal visions shaped literature and popular culture? What separates a dream from a vision? What role does vision or sensation play in the constitution of the subject?
  A diversity of postgraduate speakers from literature, philosophy and related disciplines will explore these issues and more. You may find a complete schedule and set of abstracts here. 

• Information for Hilary Term Visiting Students can be found here.
• Auction of autographed Paradise Lost read-a-thon poster: bids now being accepted. Bids are now being accepted by email for the large (A0) poster that was signed by all of the readers who participated in the read-a-thon on the 14th of December 2012, including Terence Brown, Gerald Dawe, Seamus Heaney, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, David Norris, Peter Sirr, Enda Wiley, Joseph Woods, Macdara Woods, and many others. If you are interested in owning the poster, email Philip Coleman with the subject line "bid for poster" stating the amount you wish to bid. The highest bidder will be notified by email on Friday the 1st of March 2013. Bids start at €50 and all proceeds will go to NCBI, the National Council for the Blind of Ireland.

• Congratulations to Dr David O'Shaughnessy, Assistant Professor for Eighteenth-Century Studies in the School of English, who has been awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Career Integration Grant of €100,000 to fund a research project, 'The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843'. This project will draw on manuscript collections at the British and Huntington Libraries to produce the first integrated study of British theatre censorship between the Stage Licensing Act (1737) and the Theatres Act (1843), with particular focus on Irish and Scottish playwrights working in London during this time.

• On 6th December 2012 the School hosted a public reading by the acclaimed American actor and writer Sam Shepard, who has been awarded an honorary doctorate by TCD. At the end of his reading Shepard invited on stage the legendary singer-songwriter, poet and artist Patti Smith, who read from one of their collaborative dramatic works before joining Shepard in a duet.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC7o9Af6wOE

• On Friday 14 December 2012, Trinity College will host the first full reading in Ireland of Paradise Lost, written by John Milton after he had lost his sight. The event will raise money for NCBI - Working for People with Sight Loss. Participants include Seamus Heaney, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, David Norris, students and staff. The reading will be held from 10am until 2pm in the Graduate Memorial Building (GMB), and from 2pm until early evening the Gallery Chapel, Trinity College Dublin, on Friday 14 December 2012. Further details: http://www.tcd.ie/English/ and http://www.ustream.tv/channel/trinityfm Enquiries to Diane Sadler (sadlerd@tcd.ie, 01 896 1111). Paradise Lost read-a-thon

• The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens Dr Edward Clarke (St Catherine's College, Oxford) Tuesday 4th December 2012, Trinity College Dublin and the Mater Dei Institute 2-4 p.m. W.B. Yeats, chaired by Dr Tom Walker (TCD) Venue: Room 0.54, School of Nursing, D'Olier Street Reading material: W.B. Yeats, "Cuchulain Comforted" and "The Black Tower" 6-8 p.m. Wallace Stevens, chaired by Dr Michael Hinds (MDI)
  Venue: Mater Dei Institute, Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra. Reading material: Wallace Stevens, "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself" and "Of Mere Being". Followed by launch of Edward Clarke's The Later Affluence by Terence Brown. Inquiries to: Dr Philip Coleman, School of English, Trinity College Dublin: philip.coleman@tcd.ie

• The Borderlines Medieval and Early Modern Conference, now entering its 17th  year, is an Irish interdisciplinary conference for postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers. The School of English is pleased to support  Borderlines XVII- Occupying Space, April 19-21, 2013, in the Trinity Long Room Hub. Check http://borderlinesxvii.wordpress.com/ for the Call for Papers.   

• Sir Terry Pratchett OBE is visiting the School of English this week, 12-14 November. He will give masterclasses in writing to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and adjudicate a public debate, ‘This House would see Unseen University run by Witches’, Monday 12th November, 6.30pm, Quek Hall, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Pearse Street.

• On Thursday Nov 8th, Dr Pádraic Whyte delivered The 2012 Betsy Beinecke Shirley Lecture on American Children’s Literature at Yale University. His talk, ‘Navigating New York City in Children’s Books; A Whistle-Stop Tour’, drew on the work of numerous authors and illustrators from Margaret Wise Brown to BrianSelznick, and traced the shared relationship between literature and the city in the context of urban transformation in the 20th and 21st centuries.

• Dr Paul Delaney completed the Dublin Marathon on Monday 29th October in an impressive 4 hours and 2 minutes, raising €1,253 for the Andrew Grene Foundation. Congratulations to Paul, who now limps back to running the Sophister Office.   

• The School of English is delighted to participate in the international 'Year Of Ulysses' (YoU) celebration, coordinated by the Modernist Versions Project <modernistversions.com>, and marking the 90th anniversary of the text’s first publication. On Wednesday 10th October Terence Killeen's talk, ‘Ulysses in the Mirror of Modernism, was delivered to a full house in the Trinity Long Room Hub. On Wednesday 24 October at 12.00 we will host a lecture by Hans Walter Gabler. For further details on the TCD talks see dh.tcd.ie/dh

• Prof. Perry Nodelman (Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg)  will give a public lecture, “‘Clever Enough to Do Variations:’ Maurice Sendak as Visual Musician”, on Tuesday October 30th at 10am in the Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin.

• The School of English, the Trinity Long Room Hub and the National Library of Ireland have jointly launched 'A Family at War: The Diary of Mary Martin'. This online digital resource was a class project of the Digital Scholarly Editing Module of the MPhil in Digital Humanities and Culture, taught by Professor Susan Schreibman. The Diary is a poignant document written in 1916 by Dublin woman Mary Martin to her son Charlie, reported missing in action in the First World War. Visit the diary at http://dh.tcd.ie/martindiary

• The School of English is delighted to report that Gerald Dawe and Darryl Jones have been promoted to full professorship. In the current climate, for the School to have one new professor may be considered  good fortune, to have two…peerlessness! Our warmest congratulations to Gerry and Darryl.

• Prof Sam Slote has brought out a new edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, published by Alma Classics. The edition reprints the 1939 printing of the Odyssey Press edition, and contains 9,000 all-new annotations by Prof Slote, addressing the full range of references in Joyce's seminal work.

• School of English student and scholar Conor Leahy has been named as a prize winner in the English Literature category at this year’s International Undergraduate Awards. His winning essay was "Power, Conduct, and Fortune in the Alliterative Morte Arthure". Warmest congratulations to Conor, who has just begun postgraduate study at Oxford, in English Literature 650-1550.
• Crawford Gribben has been given an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Collaborative Project award for his work on "Radical Religion in the trans-Atlantic world, 1500-1800." The award will support Professor Gribben's work on the biography of John Owen (1616-83) and fund a conference on "Puritanism and Catholicism in the trans-Atlantic world, 1500-1800."
• Professor Gerald Dawe has been awarded a prestigious Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship to the National University of Ireland, Galway for 3 months during the academic year 2012-2013. For more, please click here.
• New Metre online archive: please click here for more details.
• The School of English has done even better in the new QS World University Rankings for Arts & Humanities than it did last year. We are now 14th in the world and 3rd Europe, just behind Oxford and Cambridge.
• For more news and events please click here