Murdoch University
The Krishna Somers Foundation has been established through the generous benefaction of Dr Krishna Somers, a Perth physician and cardiologist. The aim of the Foundation, which is located in the Division’s Centre for Social Change and Social Equity, is to foster research in the study of diasporas. It is envisaged that the Foundation will award short-term visiting fellowships to researchers who wish to pursue a program of research in diaspora studies as well as support general research in this area in other ways
The Foundation’s third August lecture is by
Professor Nicholas Grene:
When: Thursday August 28 4.30 PM
Where: Education and Humanities 3.041
Title: The Irish Theatrical Diaspora
From the time of Farquahar, Goldmsith and Sheridan down to our own period with the work of Samuel Beckett and Brian Friel, Ireland has produced some of the most outstanding playwrights and theatre professionals in the English-speaking world. Irish drama has not been confined to the island of Ireland but has been widely staged by Irish touring companies as well as by theatres in Britain, North America and Australia. The Irish Theatrical Diaspora is an international network designed to co-ordinate and promote research on this global phenomenon of the production and reception of Irish drama. In collaboration with other theatre research enterprises, including Australia’s AusStage, the ITD will assemble data on Irish theatrical activity across the world, allowing scholars to explore the ways in which Ireland has been presented dramatically in different times and milieux, and how the presence of Irish diasporic communities may have affected that presentation. Nicholas Grene is Chair of the ITD and in this lecture will outline the project, its aims and aspirations.
NICHOLAS GRENE was born in the US, but grew up in Ireland where he was educated both South and North of the Border. He took his BA in English Language and Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and his PhD in Cambridge at St Catharine's College. From 1972 to 1979 he lectured at the University of Liverpool before returning to Trinity College, Dublin where he now holds the Professorship of English Literature, a Chair established in 1867 for the famous Shakespearean scholar Edward Dowden. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Professor Grene's interests have been divided between Irish studies - publications including Synge: a Critical Study of thePlays, Bernard Shaw: a Critical View, and The Politics of Irish Drama - and Elizabethan drama: he has written books on comedy, on Shakespearean tragedy and most recently Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays . He has acted as Head of the English Department in Trinity College and, for ten years, as the founder-director of the Synge Summer School. He has been an invited lecturer on Irish studies in many parts of the world, including Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Japan, and (in 1998) in Australia at the University of New South Wales, and Victoria University, Melbourne. Married, with four children, he lives on a farm in County Wicklow, and has been a part-time farmer for over thirty years.
Synge: a Critical Study of the Plays (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1975)
Shakespeare, Jonson, Molière: the Comic Contract (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980)
Bernard Shaw: a Critical View (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984)
Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992)
The Politics of Irish Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Shakespeare's Serial History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
