Irish Studies at the University of South Florida

Please join the USF Irish Studies initiative,the USF Humanities Institute and the Irish Culture and Language Club at this wonderful film screening, arranged by the Irish Consulate in Miami . We are really excited for this documentary on such a fascinating and impactful individual! Discussion to follow the screening.

Come check out this amazing event!

USF Irish Studies here at beautiful Appalachian State University for the Southern Regional Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies! There’s already some fall colors on the trees, and the mountain scenery is absolutely stunning. Looking forward to a wonderful few days of great panels and presentations!

Check out the fantastic coverage of our Gael Scoil event!

Inaugural ‘Gael Scoil USF’ event shares Irish traditions with the Tampa Bay community University of South Florida

Calling all USF humanities students! Check out this wonderful opportunity for a paid internship!

Can’t wait for the next Gael Scoil at USF? Check out the original Gael Scoil in New Jersey!

🌟 Halfway to Gael Scoil! 🌟

Mark Your Calendars: Gael Scoil Returns on February 14 and 15, 2026!

We’re officially halfway to Gael Scoil—and the countdown begins!
This year, our beloved celebration of Irish heritage, language, and culture will take place on Valentine’s Day, bringing even more heart to the tradition we cherish.

💚 What to Expect in 2026

• Immersive Irish language workshops
• Traditional music and dance
• Celtic arts and storytelling
• Community connections that last a lifetime

Whether you’re a longtime participant or new to the Gael Scoil family, we invite you to join us for a weekend filled with learning, laughter, and love for Irish culture.

📅 Save the Date:
Gael Scoil 2026
February 14 and 15, 2026
Riverbank Charter School of Excellence, Roebling NJ
Registration details coming soon!

Let’s keep the spirit alive as we journey toward another unforgettable Gael Scoil.
Halfway there—and the best is yet to come!

Please consider joining us at this fabulous regional ACIS meeting! Submit your proposal here: https://sites.google.com/view/acissouthernregional/call-for-papers?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwMAnnVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHrvboDtY3Hw8J-Y8uAnsLw__u0rmE9vE8n9BJVFpJUCQdreqFi7U5d1lOs_7_aem_juWLSnJMDLa3VuwRfFLnsQ

Hello Irish Studies colleagues and enthusiasts! Please consider attending the ACIS Southern Regional meeting in beautiful Boone, NC! Call for Papers and conference information below.

Conference Theme: Ireland Beyond the Anthropocene

September 25 – 28, 2025
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC

The Irish Times reported in December of 2024 that a subcommittee of the International Union of Geological Sciences had decided after deliberating for 15 years that there is insufficient evidence to call our post WWII era the Anthropocene. The Union said that some disciplines will no doubt continue to use the term to refer to “human induced planetary scale changes, of nuclear weapons, human-caused climate change and the proliferation of plastics, garbage and concrete across the planet." However, by their lights, we have not yet exited the Holocene, an era of stable climate that allowed human civilizations to arise.

Ireland’s EPA reports that in line with global trends, the island is experiencing its highest temperatures on record, intense storms, flooding and threats to wildlife, with 20% of species currently at risk of extinction according to the National Biodiversity Data Centre. As Sharae Deckard observes, “climate change promises to affect the whole web of life in Ireland.”

If some scientists have decided that our era is too close to call, some cultural critics have found that the term Anthropocene inadequately names the root causes of climate crisis by failing to include the role that capitalism and colonialism play in devaluing multispecies life. So we might take the opportunity to revisit and rename the difference of our time of soaring temperatures, droughts, devastating floods and fires, and mass extinctions. Is the Capitalocene, as James Moore has argued, a more apt description of an era of unrestrained capital accumulation that injures our planetary web of life? (Ireland’s Celtic Tiger era offers multiple examples.) Or does the Plantationocene better describe the harm inflicted on human and nonhuman life by colonialism and the forced labor of monoculture plantation practices? (Again, Ireland’s colonial history of deforestation, sovereignty loss, and an ecology of political violence is a case in point.) Alternatively, is it more useful to adopt the aspirational language of Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene by envisioning a living, thriving mutually constituting and enabling multi-species earth? For Haraway, the term Anthropocene locates humans at the center of climate crisis rather than an historical, situated set of influences. One aim of this conference is to generate work that envisions, in more ways than one, a world beyond the Anthropocene.

Malcolm Sen has observed that “Climate change is a cultural problem and needs cultural solutions at least equal in measure to technical ones.” How do Irish authors, filmmakers, and musicians past and present tell stories about habitats, ecosystems, and species? How do contemporary Irish writers address the climate crisis? Are there threads from the past we might helpfully draw into the present? How do makers of poems and narratives both witness to the present and conjure alternative futures? Or in Anna Tsing’s terms, in these final stages of capitalism when definitions of progress as material growth have stopped making sense, might we look around rather than look ahead and embrace the future as indeterminant and multidirectional?

ACIS South invites paper and panel proposals for the 2025 regional conference to be held at Appalachian State, a university with a focus on sustainability in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Paper topics might include but are not limited to:

Rewilding Ireland and Irish writing
Ecology, empire, and economy
The Blue Humanities in Irish writing
Posthumanist futures
Ireland’s climate, past and present
Human exceptionalism in Irish writing and film
Mutuality between species
Habitable futures beyond the Anthropocene
Soliphilia in Irish writing and film
Irish multispecies soundscapes
Colonialism, postcolonialism, and environment
Irish landscapes, past and present
Environmental grief and anxiety in Irish writing and film
Conjuring cultures of care in climate crisis
Irish cli-fi
Deforestation in Irish writing
Ecologies of political violence
Local tragedies and global threats
Earth as a character in Irish writing
Ecological poetics/Animal poetics
Climate crisis and trauma
Apocalyptic visions
AI in the ecosystem
Beyond narratives of progress
Beyond a traditional “sense of place”
Ireland, cooperation, and symbiotic science
Citizen assemblies in a multispecies world

We also welcome papers on any aspect of Irish Studies, and we encourage graduate student submissions. Besides individual and panel submissions (three to four participants), we invite roundtable discussions, performances, and dramatic readings. Plenary keynotes include poet Eammon Wall (University of Missouri-St. Louis) and Malcolm Sen (University of Massachusetts, Amhurst).
Abstracts for individual presentations should be 250-300 words and include a brief (100-word) bio of the presenter. Panel proposals are no more than 500 words, including a rationale for the panel, plus a brief description of each paper and of the participants. Proposals of 500 words for other presentations should include a rationale and short biographies. The deadline is August 1st, 2025. Submit your papers and check out our website here:

ACIS South - Call for Papers Ireland Beyond the Anthropocene September 25 – 28, 2025 Appalachian State University Boone, NC The Irish Times reported in December of 2024 that a subcommittee of the International Union of Geological Sciences had decided after deliberating for 15 years that there is insufficient evidence to

It was an overcast rainy evening in Galway but that didn’t stop us from exploring!

One of the highlights from our recent study abroad trip was the beautiful Antrim Coast. Next time I want to add a longer stop at Dunluce Castle. We did a quick photo stop but it’s definitely worth spending some time there!

Our final official activity of our study abroad travel was a wonderful day at Brú na Bóinne. We toured the Neolithic passage tombs at Knowth and Newgrange with their impressive collections of ancient art. We had probably our best weather yet on our last official day of our trip. The tombs date back to 3200 BC - they’re older than the Great Pyramid and Stone Henge. It was quite beautiful and fitting for our trip to end at the beginning.

We loved our visit to the in Bellaghy! The exhibit was fascinating - a highlight was listening to Seamus Heaney read so many of his poems while learning about the contexts that inspired them. We also loved our visit to the strand at Lough Beg, where we read his poem “The Strand at Lough Beg.” Bonus points for our students who solved the Church Island puzzle - apparently only one other museum visitor has done so!