The Hibernian Lecture
Thanks to an endowment established by the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Cushwa Center is able to support the study of Irish and Irish American history through competitive research awards, lectures, and occasional special events and projects.
The centerpiece of the Cushwa Center’s commitment to Irish studies has long been the annual Hibernian Lecture. Each fall since 1982, the center has invited a distinguished scholar to speak at the University of Notre Dame on some aspect of the Irish experience.
2024
Hasia Diner, New York University
“How the Irish Taught the Jews to Become American”
2023
Julie Morrissy, Maynooth University
“Revolutionary Traces: Radical Women, Commemoration, and Public Space”
2022
Enda Delaney, University of Edinburgh
“Faith and Fatherland: Belief and the Irish Catholic Experience”
2021
Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame
“Ireland Now: Excavating the Present”
2020
Colin Barr, University of Aberdeen
“The Idea of Greater Ireland”
2019
Tara McCarthy, Central Michigan University
“A Century of Suffrage: Catholic Activism, Class Consciousness, and the Contributions of Irish American Women”
2018
Ruán O’Donnell, University of Limerick
“America and the Irish Revolution, 1916–1922”
2017
Ian McBride, University of Oxford
“The Struggle for Ireland’s Soul: Catholics under the Penal Laws”
2016
Thomas P. Lynch, author and poet
“Shoulder and Shovelwork: Dead Poets and Eschatologies”
2015
Gillian O’Brien, Liverpool John Moores University
“Blood Runs Green: The Murder that Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago”
2014
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, University of Limerick
“Chief O’Neill’s Music of Ireland”
2013
James R. Barrett, University of Illinois
“The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City”
2012
Kevin Whelan, University of Notre Dame
“Notre Dame: The Irish Connections”
2011
Robert Schmuhl, University of Notre Dame
“All Changed, Changed Utterly: Easter 1916 and America”
2009
Maurice Bric, University College, Dublin
“‘Squaring Circles’: Daniel O’Connell and Public Protest, 1823–1843”
2007
Edward T. O’Donnell, College of the Holy Cross
“‘Irish Blood, Brain, and Brawn’: The Campaign to Highlight the Irish Contribution to American History, 1880–1920”
2006
J.J. Lee, New York University
“Michael Davitt, the Catholic Church and Irish America”
2005
Ellen Skerrett, Historian
“Creating Sacred Space and Reclaiming Irish Music and Art in Chicago”
2004
Mick Moloney, New York University
“Irish Music on the American Stage: From Daddy Rice to John McCormack”
2003
Patrick Griffin, Ohio University
“How the Scots Irish Became White: An Irish and American Tale”
2002
Kevin Kenny, Boston College
“New Perspectives on the American Irish”
2001
Gary Giddins, Author
“Bing Crosby’s Identities”
2000
William H.A. Williams, Union Institute
“‘Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800–1920”
1999
Kerby Miller, University of Missouri, Columbia
“‘Scotch-Irish’ Myths and ‘Irish’ Identities in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America”
1998
Timothy Meagher, Catholic University of America
“Primitive Men, Tough Women and Defenders of the Old Order: Representations of Italian and Irish Americans in Twentieth Century American Popular Culture”
1997
James Connolly, Ball State University
“The Politics of Ethnic Conflict: James Michael Curley and the Boston Irish”
1996
Jim Smyth, University of Notre Dame
“1798–1998: Remembering and Commemorating The Great Irish Rebellion”
1995
Blanche Touhill, University of Missouri--St. Louis
“Famine, A Mark of the Past and a Change Agent for the Future”
1994
Seamus Deane, University of Notre Dame
“The Field Day Anthology”
1992-1993
David Emmons, University of Montana
“Faction Fights: Another Look At the Irish In the American West.”
James P. Walsh, San Jose State University
“Why the California Irish Seem So Different: History’s Perspective”
Margaret MacCurtain, Boston College
“The Waning of Patriarchy: Ireland in the 1990s”
1991
Randy Roberts, Purdue University
“On the Field of Struggle: The Irish-American Sporting Experience”
Gearoid O Tuathaigh, University College, Galway
“Anglo-Irish Relations: Models and Metaphors”
1990
Dennis Clark, Historian
“Paddy’s payback: The American Impact on Ireland”
1989
Patrick Duffy, Labour M.P. for Sheffield and President of the North Atlantic Assembly
“Is Peace Possible in Northern Ireland?”
James Donnelly, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Traditional popular Religion and its Decline in Ireland, 1700–1850”
1988
Timothy Meagher, National Endowment for the Humanities
“Looking Through the Lace Curtain: The Irish-American Search for Identity and Role at the Turn of the Century”
1987
James Carroll, Author
“Through the Green Fog: What Irish-Americans See When the Look Back at Ireland”
Peter Gunning, Consul General of Ireland
“Ireland Since the 1960s”
1986
William V. Shannon, Boston University
“Ireland and the American Irish: Two Views of Irish Nationalism”
1985
Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University
“Poverty and the Irish Economy Before Famine”
Lawrence McCaffery, Loyola University of Chicago
“Fictional Images of Irish-America”
1984
Anthony Malcomson, Public Record Office, Northern Ireland
“Research Opportunities and Manuscript Collections in England and Ireland”
David Montgomery, Yale University
“The Irish Influence in the American Labor Movement”
1983
James P. Walsh, San Jose State University
“Moving Up: the Irish in American Political Life”
1982
Patrick Blessing, Tulsa University
“The Irish in the United States: A Culture within a Culture”