October 2013 NUI Galway to Host Public Lecture Series on the Humanities

NUI Galway’s School of Humanities have organised a series of free public lecture series on the humanities, commencing on Wednesday, 23 October. All lectures are open to the public and will be held in the Galway City Library on Augustine Street at 6.30pm.

Professor Lionel Pilkington, Personal Professor in English at NUI Galway, will deliver the first of the series of talks entitled 'What's the use of Acting? Thoughts about Theatre and a Market Economy' on Wednesday, 23 October. This talk will examine the connection between theatrical acting and the ways in which we think about how we might act socially and politically. Specifically, Professor Pilkington will look at particular issues of labour, poverty and social justice in the Irish Free State in the mid-1920s and then move on to consider these alongside Ria Mooney’s tour de force performance of the prostitute Rosie Redmond in the first 1926 production of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars.

On Wednesday, 13 November, Professor Patrick Lonergan, Personal Professor in Drama and Theatre Studies at NUI Galway, will discuss ‘Irish Theatre and Social Media/Social Media as Irish Theatre’. He will explore the relationship between theatre and social media, showing that social media resources can be seen as a performance space - like a theatrical stage - in which people "perform" versions of themselves to the outside world. He will also consider how authors are developing, and changing, their reputation by engaging with audiences on Twitter, and how major theatre companies, such as the Abbey Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, are using social media to interact in new ways with audiences.

The third and final lecture will be delivered by Professor Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, School of Humanities at NUI Galway, on Wednesday, 22 January. Professor Ní Dhonnchadha will pose the question ‘Medieval Irish literature, why read it today? '. Professor Ní Dhonnchadha will argue that we should take a long view of culture and that medieval and even earlier writers may be regarded as our contemporaries. She will call attention to some of the customary ways of reading pre-modern Irish literature, and ask how we can move beyond these to a fuller appreciation of the riches of pre-modern Irish writing and its authors.

For further information, contact Karen Walsh in the School of Humanities, NUI Galway at 091 495689 or email karenm.walsh@nuigalway.ie.

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