Mary Mullen will present her research on Irish famine novels on Wednesday, April 3 at the Novel Theory Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. She will participate alongside scholars Claire Connolly and Mary Burke in an event titled, "Irish Fiction Then and Now." This is a hybrid event that will take in person and online, you can register here.
Here is the abstract for her talk:
Irish famine novels often begin by addressing a skeptical public fatigued by stories of Irish suffering. Many authors passively “place” or “lay” their novels before the public, insisting that however strange their narrative seems, they depict the truth. The preface to William Carleton’s The Squanders of Castle Squanders (1852) is defensive, suggesting that despite his concern “for the general welfare of my countrymen,” he expects that all parties will be disappointed with the novel’s politics. Considering these prefaces and other public addresses within Irish famine novels, this talk considers how these Irish novels reveal the limits of liberal publics and liberalism’s emphasis on consensus and shared public interest. These novels not only depict multiple publics but irreconcilable understandings of public interest as they demonstrate liberalism’s inability to account for colonial catastrophe.
