Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford, is author of the recent and widely-acclaimed Vivid Faces: the Irish revolutionary generation 1890-1923, which has just been awarded a President’s Medal from the British Academy for “transforming the understanding of a period or subject of study.”

He will lecture on the history of the Irish Revolution of 1912-1922, focusing on the central event of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the motivations which drove the people behind it. His lecture will also consider the agendas, elisions and implications of commemorating events in history that are at once inspirational and divisive: raising issues such as the changing historical interpretations of revolutionary change, the psychological uses of memory in Irish history, the challenges presented by the current centennial observations of the Irish revolutionary decade of 1912-22, and the possible lessons of Irish history for the larger United Kingdom and European picture.

Seminar: “Literature and History in Modern Ireland,” 11.00AM, 26 October, 245 Patterson Office Tower. Open to all students. (Please RSVP)

FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/events/391350427742018/

Sponsored by the College of A&S Year of Europe, UK Department of History and UK Department of English