The two-fold aim of the symposium will be to explore aspects of the history, literature, and culture of Irish America and to celebrate the life and achievements of Charles Fanning. Professor Fanning is the pre-eminent scholar of Irish America and the author of many seminal scholarly works including The Irish Voice in America. He taught courses in modern poetry and the history and literature of Ireland and Irish immigration at Bridgewater State University, the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and Southern Illinois University–Carbondale. Now retired, Professor Fanning and his wife Fran live nowadays in St. Louis.
The symposium’s keynote speakers will include the novelist Alice McDermott and the poet and musician Terence Winch. James Silas Rogers will conduct a live interview with Charles Fanning and there will be panels on various aspects of Irish America as well a special panel featuring Prof. Fanning’s former Ph.D. students.
The May 3 events will take place at the Webster Groves Public Library (7 - 9:30 p.m.) and the May 4 events will be held at the Missouri History Museum (10 a.m. - 5 p.m.). The symposium will conclude with a reading by Alice McDermott, Terence Winch, and Charles Fanning reading from his just-published first novel, The Music of What Happens.
The symposium is sponsored by the Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professorship in Irish Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the Webster Groves Public Library, The Ancient Order of Hibernians, Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, and New Hibernia Review/Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota.
The symposium will be free and open to the public. For further information and to book your place at these events, please contact Eamonn Wall at walle@umsl.edu.
Friday, May 3, 2024 - 6:45 - 9 p.m.
Webster Groves Public Library
301 E. Lockwood Ave.
Webster Groves, MO, 63119
Tel.: (314) 961-3784
7 - 7:15
Traditional Irish Music. Robert Ryan & Eileen Gannon.
7:15 - 7:45
James Silas Rogers interviews Charles Fanning.
7:45 - 8
Author Terence Winch reads from his new book.
8 - 8:15
Break
8:15 - 8:30
Traditional Irish Music. Robert Ryan & Eileen Gannon.
8:30 - 8:50
Author Alice McDermott reads from her new book.
8:50 - 8:55
Traditional Irish Music. Robert Ryan & Eileen Gannon.
There will be a reception sponsored by the Webster Groves Public Library, the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas/Minnesota, and the Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professorship in Irish Studies/UMSL Global.
Saturday, May 4, 2024 - 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Missouri History Museum
Forest Park
5700 Lindell Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63112
Tel.: (314) 746-4599
10 - 11:15 a.m. - Panel
Irish American History in our region
Prof. Timothy J. White (Xavier University) - "From Promoting Violence to Supporting Peace: The Role of Irish America in the Northern Ireland Peace Process"
Prof. Shawn Gillen (Beloit College) - "No Star Was Lost: Charles Fanning and the Danny O'Neil Pentalogy"
Greg Koos (Executive Director, McLean Co. Museum, Illinois) - "Along the Great Throughfares: St. Louis aned Irish Settlement in the Corn Belt"
Ellen Skerrett - "Fanning on Farewell"
Chair: Dr. David Gardiner (University of St. Thomas/Minnesota)
11:15 - 11:45 a.m.
Coffee break, meet and greet, introductions and appreciations for our sponsors.
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. - Panel
Charles Fanning’s Former Students
Prof. Eva Roa White (Indiana University-Kokomo) - "When Galicia Met Ireland"
Prof. Karen Golightly (Christian Brothers University) - "Irish Folk and Fairy Tales"
Prof. Jill Brady Hampton (University of South Carolina-Aiken) - "Charlie Fanning's Favorite Bartender: Mr. Dooley"
Chair: Prof. Ron Ebest (St. Louis Community College/Florissant Valley)
12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
Lunch on your own.
1:30 - 2:45 p.m. - Panel
The Women of Irish America: Past, Present, and Future
Prof. Linda Dowling Almeida (New York University) - "Dress for Success: The Relationship Between Irish American Women and Clothing"
Prof. Jane Elizabeth Dougherty (Southern Illinois University-Carbondale) - "The Woman Out of the House: Depictions of Domesticity in Postmodern Irish Fictions by Women"
Prof. Sally Barr Ebest (University of Missouri-St. Louis) - "Whence the Irish American Woman's Novel?"
Chair: Ann Neelon
2:45 - 4 p.m. - Readings, Launches, Celebrations
The symposium will conclude with readings from recently published books. Books for sale and signing.
Charles Fanning, Terence Winch, Alice McDermott.
4 - 5 p.m. - Closing Remarks and Book Signings
Alice McDermott’s new novel, Absolution, was published last year. Her eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, was published in 2017. Her seventh novel, Someone, 2013, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Patterson Prize for Fiction, and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Someone was also long-listed for the National Book Award. Three of her previous novels, After This, At Weddings and Wakes and That Night, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998 and was a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpers, Commonweal and elsewhere. She has received the Whiting Writers Award, the Carington Award for Literary Excellence, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for American Literature. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor Emerita of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.
https://www.alice-mcdermott.com/
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue.
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Terence Winch’s latest book is That Ship Has Sailed (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023). The Bronx-born son of Irish immigrants, he is the author of eight earlier poetry collections. Winner of an American Book Award and a Columbia Book Award, he has also written a young adult novel called Seeing-Eye Boy and two story collections, Contenders and That Special Place: New World Irish Stories. Also a musician and songwriter, he co-founded the original Celtic Thunder and composed its best-known song, “When New York Was Irish.” Terence Winch worked for the Smithsonian Institution for twenty-four years, for most of that time as Head of Publications at the National Museum of the American Indian.
James Silas Rogers is editor emeritus of New Hibernia Review and the director emeritus of the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas. He was president of the American Conference for Irish Studies from 2009 to 2011. Rogers’s publications focus on Irish-American literature, chiefly memoir. His Irish books are Irish-American Autobiography: The Divided Hearts of Athletes, Priests, Pilgrims, and More (Catholic University of America Press, 2017); Extended Family: Essays on Being Irish American from New Hibernia Review (Dufour Editions, 2013), which he edited and introduced; and After the Flood: Irish America, 1945-1960 (Irish Academic Press, 2009), which he co-edited with Matthew J. O’Brien.
Charles Fanning received B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from Harvard and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught courses in modern poetry and the history and literature of Ireland and Irish immigration at Bridgewater State University, the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Much of his writing has involved discovering and reclaiming the Irish-American literary tradition in books, essays, and editions. Three of his books received national awards. Finley Peter Dunne and Mr. Dooley: The Chicago Years won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction won the Book Prize in Literary Criticism of the American Conference for Irish Studies. His edited works include the “Mr. Dooley” columns of Finley Peter Dunne, eight novels and selected stories by James T. Farrell, and the selected writings of Irish Studies scholar John V. Kelleher. He also wrote Mapping Norwood: An Irish American Memoir. The Music of What Happens is his first novel and will be published this year.
Honorees’ and Keynotes’ Affiliations
Charles Fanning, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Three of his books received national awards. Finley Peter Dunne and Mr. Dooley: The Chicago Years won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction won the Book Prize in Literary Criticism of the American Conference for Irish Studies. His edited works include the “Mr. Dooley” columns of Finley Peter Dunne, eight novels and selected stories by James T. Farrell, and the selected writings of Irish Studies scholar John V. Kelleher. He also wrote Mapping Norwood: An Irish American Memoir. The Music of What Happens is his first novel and will be published this year.
Alice McDermott, Johns Hopkins University
Her new novel, Absolution, was published last year. Her previous novels include: The Ninth Hour (2017); Someone (2013), a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Patterson Prize for Fiction, and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and long listed for the National Book Award. Three of her previous novels, After This, At Weddings and Wakes and That Night, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998 and was a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpers, Commonweal and elsewhere. She has received the Whiting Writers Award, the Carington Award for Literary Excellence, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for American Literature. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
Terence Winch, the Bronx-born son of Irish immigrants, is the author of eight earlier poetry collections. Winner of an American Book Award and a Columbia Book Award, he has also written a young adult novel called Seeing-Eye Boy, the short story collection Contenders, and the memoir That Special Place: New World Irish Stories. Also a musician and songwriter, he co-founded the original Celtic Thunder and composed its best-known song, “When New York Was Irish.” Terence Winch worked for the Smithsonian Institution for twenty-four years, for most of that time as Head of Publications at the National Museum of the American Indian.
Participants’ Affiliations
Linda Dowling Almeida, New York University
Jane Elizabeth Doughtery, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Ron Ebest, St. Louis Community College
Sally Barr Ebest, University of Missouri-St. Louis
David Gardner, University of St. Thomas
Shawn Gillen, Beloit College
William J. Kerwin, University of Missouri
Greg Koos, McClean Co. Museum
Karen Golightly, Christian Brothers University
Jill Brady Hampton, University of South Carolina-Aiken
Ann Neelon, Murray State University
James Silas Rogers, University of St. Thomas
Ellen Skerrett, Independent Scholar, Chicago
Eva Roa White, Indiana University-Kokomo
Timothy J. White, Xavier University
A Grateful Thanks to Our Sponsors:
Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professorship in Irish Studies at UMSL Global; UMSL Global; Webster Groves Public Library; The Friends of Webster Groves Public Library; The Ancient Order of Hibernians; Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians; St. Louis Irish Arts; New Hibernia Review/Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota; UMSL 60.
Last updated 04/17/2024
