Lecture

11 March 2024 at 7pm

Tá an áthas orainn cuireadh a thabhart duit chuig léacht leis tOllamh Ray Cashman, ar an Luan, 11 Márta, ag 7.00 PM, sa James Joyce Centre ar Sraid Sheoirse Thua.

An Cumann Le Béaloideas éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society and the James Joyce Centre were delighted to host a presentation by the distinguished folklore scholar, Professor Ray Cashman (University of Indiana, Bloomington), at the James Joyce Centre on Monday, 11 March 2024 at 7pm. This was a rare opportunity to hear the internationally renowned folklore scholar give a presentation in Dublin about Irish folklore and an Gorta Mór.

“Luck’s Pennies, Butter Witches, and the Hungry Grass: Community in a World of Limited Good”

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instill enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, a project in need of continual maintenance. Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community than the mid-nineteenth-century Famine. If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning this social contract for mutual support.

Professor Ray Cashman is director of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. He is currently Visiting Professor at NUI Galway.

Professor Cashman has carried out extensive folklore and ethnological research in Ireland. His books include Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border (2017) and Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community (2011), and many articles. The numerous awards he has received for his work include the Michael J Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture and the Donald Murphy Award for Distinguished First Book, both of which were awarded by the American Association for Irish Studies, and the Chicago Folklore Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.