Colin Barr will deliver the 2020 Hibernian Lecture, titled "The Idea of Greater Ireland."
Medieval sources spoke of Hibernia major, far to the west of Ireland; the Vikings called it Írland hið mikla, and located it in the seas beyond Greenland; a character in Ulysses spoke of “our greater Ireland beyond the seas”; and the Catholic Church boasted of its own spiritual empire, a Greater Ireland “where the sun never sets on the spiritual empire of St. Patrick’s Apostolate.” Yet what was this Greater Ireland? How did it develop? Whom did it encompass? Does it endure? And how does it relate to the more familiar concept of Diaspora?
With an appointment as a visiting faculty fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Barr is in residence at Notre Dame this academic year from the University of Aberdeen, where he is senior lecturer in modern Irish history. He is the author of Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
The 2020 Hibernian Lecture is cosponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute.
This virtual event is free and open to all, but registration is required to participate. Registrants will receive a Zoom link in advance of the event.
Register Here