UDLA hosts Boylan
Boylan discusses family odyssey in Ireland during UDLA Annual Faculty Lecture
10:51 a.m., March 25, 2016--The University of Delaware Library Associates sponsored the 2016 Annual Faculty Lecture, “20th-Century Ireland: A Family Odyssey,” in conjunction with the exhibition “‘A terrible beauty is born’: The Easter Rising at 100” on March 15 in the Morris Library.
Wilson J.C. Braun Jr., president of the University of Delaware Library Associates, opened the program followed with remarks by Sandra Millard, interim vice provost and director of libraries.
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George Watson, dean of UD’s College of Arts and Sciences, introduced the featured speaker, Anne M. Boylan, a historian of 19th-century United States and of women and gender, and professor emerita of the departments of History and Women and Gender Studies. Over 160 persons were in attendance, including students.
In her talk, Boylan discussed four ways in which her family’s history intersected with the history of 20th-century Ireland.
First was her father’s experience of living in Dublin during the Irish Civil War, in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. Second, she analyzed the 1937 Irish Constitution through the lens of her mother’s experience as a young working woman in the 1930s.
She then examined 1940s and 1950s Ireland’s “sexual regime” of rigid control of non-marital sexuality through the story of her cousin’s adoption from Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, County Tipperary, the same institution profiled in the recent movie Philomena.
Finally, she described the economic conditions that led her family to emigrate from Ireland in 1957.
She concluded with some thoughts on how historical commemorations, such as this year’s centenary of the Easter Rising, reflect both historical memory and historical amnesia.
A reception followed the program during which Boylan interacted with a large number of attendees including students. She also signed copies of her book, Women’s Rights in the United States: A History in Documents, during the reception.
Photos by Duane Perry