2016 Conference Programme

*Please note that this programme is provisional and subject to change

Friday, 10 June

11.00-12.00: Registration (Hardiman)

12.00-13.30:

PANEL 1

  • Bernadette Cunningham (RIA): Antiquity and authenticity: the quest for the ‘Psalter of Tara’ in the early eighteenth century.
  • Liam Mac Mathúna (UCD): Poems for all seasons: the Ó Neachtains address their Catholic clerical friends in good times and bad.
  • Diarmaid Ó Catháin (Ind.): ‘Peadar Ó Muireagáin:  ball de chrobhaing Thaidhg Uí Neachtain’.

PANEL 2

  • Christina Morin (UL): Regina Maria Roche, the Minerva Press, and the bibliographic spread of Irish gothic fiction.
  • David O’Shaughnessy (TCD): ‘Looks like we got ourselves a reader’: Charles Macklin’s Library.
  • Andrew Carpenter (UCD): Subscription lists as an indicator of social structures in eighteenth-century Ireland.

13.30-14.30Lunch and Presentation of Irish Trade and Economic Data: New Sources and Perspectives (Aidan Kane, Patrick Walsh, Daniel Cassidy and Eoin Magennis)

14.3014.45: Official opening by Lesa Ní Mhunghaile (NUIG) and Eoin Magennis, President of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society

14.45-16.15: 

PANEL 3

  • Clíona Ó Gallchoir (UCC): The Enlightenment and Narratives of Childhood in Ireland: Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality.
  • Alvin Chen (Oxford): George Berkeley and Enlightenment(s): The Problem of Stability from Passive Obedience to Discourse to Authority.
  • Tomás Ó Maolalaidh (NUIG): Francis Hutcheson: Educator, Scholar and Enlightenment Pioneer.

PANEL 4

  • Lee Morrissey (Clemson): “Fit to execute any villainy, but rich”: The painful arrival of an Irishman in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.
  • Ciarán McDonnell (Irish Archaeology Field School): Traitors or patriots? Irish identity in the British service in the long 18th century.
  • Paul Smith (TCD): Sir William Talbot:  Restoration Lawyer, Colonist and Comptroller of the Royal Harem.

16.15-16.45: Tea/Coffee

16.45-17.45: PLENARY LECTURE

Norma Clarke (Kingston): Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street.

17.45: Book launch of Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (Harvard, 2016) and Michael Brown, The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard, 2016). Launches sponsored by Harvard University Press.

19.45: Conference Dinner at No. 15 Restaurant, Meyrick Hotel

Saturday, 11 June

9.30-11.00:

PANEL 5

  • Vincent Morley (Ind.): Athspléachadh ar bhunús na gcúirteanna éigse.
  • Pádraig Ó Liatháin (DCU): Tionchar Virgil ar litríocht na Gaeilge san ochtú haois déag.
  • Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh (Aberstwyth): Debating Ossian, via text: The Friendship of Charles O’Conor and James McLagan.

PANEL 6

  • Brendan Twomey (Ind.): ‘Societies for the support of widows and orphans’; Financial innovation in early eighteenth-century Dublin.
  • Emma Lyons (NLI): To ‘form the[ir] minds and manners … so as to render them happy in themselves and useful to society’: The education of Catholic girls in eighteenth-century Ireland.
  • Dan Carey (NUIG): Francis Hutcheson’s Irish Critics: Edmund Burke and Charles-Louis de Villette on the Aesthetic Sense.

11.00-11.30: Tea/Coffee

11.30-12.30: The Alan Harrison Memorial Lecture

Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail (UCD): Transcripts from the Long Eighteenth Century and their Transcribers.

12.30-13.30: Lunch/AGM

13.30-15.30: 

PANEL 7

  • Conrad Brunstrom (NUIM): George Nugent Reynolds’ Bantry Bay: A Catholic Loyalist Fantasy.
  • David Clare (NUIG): Brian Friel’s Invocation of Edmund Burke in Philadelphia, Here I Come!
  • Michael Griffin (UL): Poets militant: William Kenrick’s abuse of Oliver Goldsmith.
  • Moyra Haslett (QUB): Irish Song in the eighteenth century.

PANEL 8

  • James Robert Wood (UEA): William Molyneux and the Unfinished Atlas.
  • Brant Vogel (Ind.): Samuel Molyneux Beyond the Pale.
  • Ciaran McDonough (NUIG): “Here begins the province of the antiquary, who will never be deemed an unserviceable member of the community”: an Investigation into the Role of the Eighteenth-century Irish Antiquarian.

15.30-16.00: Tea/Coffee

16.00-17.00: PLENARY LECTURE

Michael Brown (Aberdeen): Anglo-Irish Elective Affinities.

17.00: Closing remarks Rebecca Barr (NUIG)