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Biography

I primarily teach courses in modern and contemporary Irish literature, modernism, drama and performance, and academic writing. In these classes, we develop the skills to read and analyze challenging texts such as Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) or Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond (2015). I ask students to say something new and interesting about our readings, and to use “the words on the page” to prove their claims in discussion and in papers. In our lively and provocative class discussions, you’ll learn to take intellectual risks and to embrace the fun of thinking critically about literature and the arts.

We also work together to produce clear and persuasive writing that conveys original insights about literature and performance. To help in this endeavor, I demonstrate for students the pleasures and challenges of being a “teacher-scholar,” a professor who integrates her classroom practice and scholarly research. In my “Modernist Afterlives” seminar, for example, we examine how and why the innovative tactics of high modernism, an early twentieth-century cultural movement, continue to appear in contemporary drama, poetry, and fiction – a concern that inspired my recent monograph, , as well as my edited collection, . My research and teaching have informed opinion pieces I’ve published in venues including the , , and , as well as in podcasts for and .

Thanks to the Edward Callahan Support Fund for Irish Studies, students have the opportunity to meet and talk with Irish writers whom we read in class, such as Kevin Barry, Anne Enright, Eimear McBride, Mary Morrissy, Paul Muldoon, and Colm Tóibín, and to discuss Irish literature and culture with visiting scholars in Irish Studies. We also support the Writers Room at the in Dublin, where we are building rich partnerships with Irish cultural institutions and contemporary writers to enable exciting cross-cultural opportunities for the ������̳ community. My classes have travelled to Boston, Providence, New Haven, and New York to see productions of plays, and you might just find us at a local pub discussing poetry or at my house screening a film relevant to our class.

Sample Courses

Introductory Courses

• Critical Reading and Writing: Drama
• Critical Reading and Writing: Fiction
• Critical Reading and Writing: Poetry
• Critical Reading and Writing: Multi-genre
• Introduction to Academic Writing

Touchstones, Readings, Masterpieces, and Seminars

• Touchstones II: British Romanticism to the Present
• Readings in Twentieth-Century British Literature
• Masterpieces of British Literature: Audiences and Actors
• Seminar: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Things (with Sarah Stanbury)
• Seminar: Modernist Afterlives

Irish Studies Courses

• Modernism and the Irish Literary Revival
• Contemporary Irish Literature
• Irish Sex
• Irish Drama
• Irish Literary Activism
• The Irish Short Story
• James Joyce
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll in Irish Literature (non-majors)
• Modern Irish Literature (non-majors)
• Seminar: Joyce's Ulysses and Critical Theory
• Seminar: Irish Women's Writing
• Seminar: Catholicism in Irish Literature and Culture
• Tutorial: Gender in Contemporary Irish Literature and Culture
• College Honors: Irish Experience (with Suzanne Kirschner)

Selected publications

Books

  (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Paperback, 2010. Honorable Mention, Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book, American Conference for Irish Studies, 2007

Edited Volumes

• Editor.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Co-Editor (with Eric Falci). Irish Literature in Transition, Volume 6 (1980-2020). Series Editors, Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Invited Guest Editor.  48:1 (Summer 2018).
• Editor.   Anthem Irish Studies Series. London: Anthem Press, 2016.  Paperback, 2019.
• Invited Guest Editor.  64:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2011). 

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• “Bird Girls: Modernism and Sexual Ethics in Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.”&�Բ�����;.  Ed. David James.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• “Theatrical Ireland: New Routes from the Abbey Theatre to the Gate Theatre.”&�Բ�����; (1880-1940). Ed. Marjorie Howes.  Series eds. Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 55-72.
• “Contemporary Irish Drama and Media.”&�Բ�����;Irish Literature in Transition vol. 6(1980-2020). Eds. Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds. Series eds. Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 81-95.
• “The Irish Times and Tramp Press.”&�Բ�����;Irish Literature in Transition, vol. 6 (1980-2020). Eds. Eric Falci and Paige Reynolds. Series eds. Claire Connolly and Marjorie Howes.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 392-400.
• “Sean O’Casey’s Late Modernism: Gender, Race, and Disabled Bodies on the Irish Expressionist Stage.”&�Բ�����;  Eds. Patrick Bixby and Gregory Castle.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.  227-242.
• “Prose, Drama, and Poetry, 1891-1920,” .  Eds. Heather Ingman and Clíona Ó Gallchoir.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 131-148.
• “Spectacular Nostalgia: Modernism and Dramatic Form in Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer,” 48:1 (Summer 2018). 54-67.
• “’Publish Little, and Publish Well’: An Interview with the Founders of Tramp Press.”52:1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2017). 372-390.
• “The Avant-Garde Doyenne: Mary Manning, the Poets’ Theatre, and the Staging of Finnegans Wake”39:2 (Winter 2017). 109-133.
• “Direction and Design to 1960.”&�Բ�����;. Eds. Nicholas Grene and Christopher Morash.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 201-216.
• “Modernist Periodicals.”.  Eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 118-138.
• “’A Theatre of the Head’: Material Culture, Severed Heads, and the Late Drama of W. B. Yeats.”&�Բ�����; 58:4 (Winter 2015). 437-460.