July 29, 2013
How nice it is just to be Irish: President Kennedy’s trip home.
Wednesday, 31 July at 7pm
Please join us for our last JFK Homecoming inspired lecture! Professor Mike Cronin, the Academic Director for Boston College-Ireland, will be giving a talk on JFK’s historic 1963 visit this Wednesday, 31 July at 7 PM at the National Library of Ireland. No reservations are necessary and there will be no fee to attend.
More on Professor Mike Cronin:
Having completed his D.Phil at Oxford on the history of the Blueshirt movement in Ireland, Professor Cronin worked for a number of years in the History department at Sheffield Hallam University. In 1998 he moved to take the post of Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester. In 2003/4 Mike was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad fellowship which he held at the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway, and in the same year was also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Irish Programs at Boston College. Since March 2005 he have been the Academic Director of the Centre for Irish Programmes at Boston College in Dublin.
Emigration Road, presented by Poetry Ireland in association with the National Library of Ireland, is one of five “Plays for Voices” devised written and directed by Eamon Grennan from New York and performed by Curlew Theatre Company from Galway.
Emigration Road explores a number of themes of the great wave of emigration from Ireland to the United States such as ‘The American Wake’ , ‘The Voyage Across the Atlantic’, ‘The Arrival in America’, ‘The Homesickness’ . It also looks at emmigration as an aspect of contemporary Irish life.
After the performance, there will be an audience discussion with the performers about the piece and on memories of emigration.
This event will take place on Monday, 22 July at 1:05 pm at the National Library of Ireland. No bookings are required and there is no entrance free, so feel free to pop by!
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” -President John F. Kennedy. Rice Stadium. 1962.
Wednesday evening, Irish radio presenter for RTV2 fm and space enthusiast Rick O’Shea moderated a fascinating discussion on JFK and his space exploration legacy. Panelists included Karlin Lillington, technology journalist with The Irish Times, Dr. Joseph Roche of Trinity College and member of Trinity’s Astrophysics Group, and Kevin Nolan, Irish coordinator of the Planetary Society, science “communicator,” and a leading expert on the exploration of Mars. This discussion was organized by JFK Homecoming, the National Library of Ireland, as well as the Festival of Curiosity as a part of a series of evening presentations relating to the JFK Homecoming Exhibit.
The event and discussion highlighted JFK’s famous Rice Moon Speech and had panelists discuss the importance of this speech in regard to both funding and morale for the space program. Panelists also discussed the science behind the space program, the Apollo missions, and the future of the US space program as well as the role private space companies have had in recent years and will continue to have in the future. Panelists also compared the space program of the 1960s/70s with that of today and discussed how Cold War pressures and current safety restrictions have framed differing attitudes toward space exploration. It was a perfect evening for both the history buff and science junky alike.
Thanks so much to the National Library of Ireland, The Festival of Curiosity, Rick O’Shea, Karlin Lillington, Dr. Joe Roche, and Kevin Nolan for making this evening possible!
On the occasion of President John F. Kennedy’s birthday on May 29th, the National Library of Ireland in partnership with the U.S. Embassy and RTÉ Archives will be launching a social media campaign and website which celebrates the 50th Anniversary of his visit to Ireland in June 1963. The goal of the campaign is to encourage people to share their family stories, photos, memories and thoughts on the visit.
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