Founded in 2006, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute is dedicated to advancing Trinity College Dublin’s rich tradition of research ...
Hares Upon Hearthstones – Envisioning the Death of Civilization in Medieval Literature & Cognitive Reading of the Supernatural in Shakespeare’s Plays
Recorded February 25, 2025.
A lecture by Alan Armstrong and Yael Bassan (School of English, TCD) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series.
This weeks seminar will cover two lectures: Hares Upon Hearthstones – Envisioning the Death of Civilization in Medieval Literature & Cognitive Reading of the Supernatural in Shakespeare’s Plays.
English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series is a fortnightly meeting which has been integral to the School of English research community since the 1990s. The aim of the seminar series is to provide a relaxed and convivial atmosphere for staff and students to present their research to their peers. The series also welcomes distinguished guest lecturers from the academic community outside Trinity College to present on their work. It is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and engage with the diverse research taking place within the School.
Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub
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The Irish Network for Gothic and Horror Studies Keynote: Dr Miranda Corcoran
Recorded February 22nd, 2025.
A Keynote Address by Dr Miranda Corcoran (Chairs: Janice Deitner and Dara
Downey, TCD),entitled “Lizzie in America: Transatlantic Transformations and the Figure of
Elizabeth Style in Shirley Jackson's Fiction.”
Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub
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Resilience and Equity: Healthcare in a Changing Climate
Recorded 13th February 2025.
A hybrid seminar by Prof Cathriona Russell (School of Religion, Theology and Peace Studies) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series.
Healthcare faces comparable challenges to those of every other sector in society in the context of a changing climate. In relation to ongoing international agreements, healthcare will, for example, have to enact mitigation strategies for net-zero in its contributions to emissions, currently c.4.5% of global GHG emissions.
More significantly however healthcare will need to design strategies for adaptation, aiming at resilience in ongoing provision and effectiveness in securing justice; resilience in the face of more extensive and more frequent temperature and precipitation extremes, sea level rise, changes in land-use and food production; and resilience in social conditions, in housing provision, in providing access to health care, in disease prevention, all while demographies continually shift (age and gender, poverty, and displacement)[1].
The expected continuing increase in intensity and frequency of adverse events will worsen health outcomes and health inequalities, which themselves are drivers of climate change. If healthcare contributes to the ‘good life’ through its impact on health, then a key measure of its effectiveness will be its commitment to building capability e.g. for preventative medicine (A. Sen), and for ‘living with and for each other in just institutions’ (P. Ricoeur).
[1] IPCC, 2023 Summary for Policy Makers, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub
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Fellow In Focus: Prof Ronan McDonald
Recorded February 13th, 2025.
Pay Attention!: Literary Studies, Neurohumanities and the ‘Distraction Economy’
Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Prof Ronan McDonald (University of Melbourne, Australia) in conversation with Prof Christopher Morash (School of English, TCD) and Prof Shane O'Mara (TCIN, TCD).
‘Attention studies’ is burgeoning in academic and popular fora, not least because there is a common perception that we live in an era of digital distraction. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, this project considers the relationship between reading and attention in literary studies. It considers how reading orientates our mind, between various affective states that compel or distract: between willed concentration, raptured enchantment or receptive, wide-minded noticing. Opening up a cross-disciplinary conversation between literary studies, psychology and neuroscience, it seeks to provide new purpose and direction for literary studies.
About Ronan McDonald:
Ronan McDonald holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is widely published in Irish literary studies, with a particular interest in Irish modernism and Irish-Australian literature. He also has a research interest in the history of criticism and the value of the humanities. His books include Tragedy and Irish Literature (2002), The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett (2007) and The Death of the Critic (2008). Recent edited collections include The Values of Literary Studies: Critical Institutions, Scholarly Agendas (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Flann O’Brien and Modernism (2014). He is series editor of Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture. Current projects include an ARC Discovery Project with Prof Katherine Bode and Maggie Nolan, ‘Close Relations: Irishness in Australian Literature’. and a ARC Discovery Project, with Professor Simon During, on 'English: The History of a Discipline, 1920-70'. He is currently working on a book on ‘attention’ in literary studies.
Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub
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Children and Childhood in World War I Lebanon: Class, Crisis and Social Perceptions of a Vulnerable Group
Recorded January 16th, 2025.
A hybrid seminar by Dr Tylor Brand (Near & Middle Eastern Studies, TCD) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series.
Children were among the most vulnerable groups within the famine that struck Lebanon during World War I, which made them a special focus of humanitarian interventions during the wartime period. However, shifting social perceptions of poverty and vulnerability over the years of the famine altered how people who lived the crisis regarded children, and even the very concept of childhood. Based on memoirs, humanitarian reports, and contemporary accounts, I argue that as a "discourse among adults" (Maksudyan, 2014) childhood in the famine was conceptually fractured and redefined according to famine-specific biases. As a result, a child's identity and social standing made them either worthy of a protected childhood that shielded them from the realities of the famine, or of pity and often revulsion befitting their physical and social misery.
Speaker:
Tylor Brand is assistant professor in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. He specializes in the history of crisis and famine in the Middle East, in particular the famine in Lebanon during World War I. His book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford University Press, 2023) examines the intimate effects of famine on the lives and the perceptions of those who endured the crisis in World War I Lebanon.
Learn more at www/tcd/ie/trinitylongroomhub
Founded in 2006, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute is dedicated to advancing Trinity College Dublin’s rich tradition of research excellence in the Arts and Humanities, on an individual, collaborative and inter-disciplinary basis.
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