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Declan Kiberd Presents Shannon Clark Lecture at W&L

Declan Kiberd, the Keough Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, will give the Shannon Clark lecture at Washington and Lee University on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 8 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library.

The title of Kiberd’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Samuel Beckett: Mystic.”

Long-time chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College, Dublin, Kiberd is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Irish Studies. After teaching at the University of Kent and Trinity, Kiberd taught at University College, Dublin from 1979 to 2012.  A legendary teacher and lecturer, he has served as director of the Yeats International Summer School, has taught and lectured on Irish studies in over 30 countries, and is a regular contributor to The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the New York Times.

Kiberd has authored scores of articles and many books taking on the full range of Irish literary studies. Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living (2009) approaches Joyce’s classic epic as a book not meant for the rarified elite, but rather as a book that offers a vision of humane living that applies to all of us in the modern world. Irish Classics (2001) takes up the entire history of Irish literature, ranging from Gaelic and Bardic poetry through the Anglo-Irish writers of the 18th and 19th centuries and into the high modernists and late 20th-century writers. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (1995) is a discussion of the emergence of the Irish nation in the 20th century and the relation of that nation to its great writers. Synge and the Irish Language (1979) examines the playwright’s engagement with the Irish language in every facet of his work.

Kiberd received his undergraduate degree from Trinity College, Dublin and his doctorate from Oxford University.

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