Lecture: James McDonnell May 9, 2005

James McDonnell, the Class of 1941 Professor of English and the Liberal Arts, will present a speech on the Irish writer William Trevor at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10 at Carleton College?s Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

William Trevor, novelist and short story writer, was born in 1928. His fiction is primarily set in Ireland and England. His black comedies and short stories explore Irish history and politics, expressing the tensions between Irish Protestant landowners and Catholic tenants. Highly influenced by prolific Irish writers such as James Joyce and Frank O?Connor, Trevor?s stories have been adapted for the stage, television and radio. His novels include ?The Old Boys,? ?Fools of Fortune,? ?The Silence in the Garden? and ?Two Lives,? among others. He has received the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread Award in 1976 and 1983, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.

McDonnell, an expert in the field of Irish studies, also is a specialist in British literature of the Victorian period. Born to Irish parents, he has kept in touch with his Irish roots by regularly attending conferences on Irish literature, history and culture, presenting papers on contemporary Irish fiction. In 1989, he organized Carleton?s first Ireland Program for the study of Irish literature. He has published four entries in a new encyclopedia titled ?Everything Irish: The History, Literature, Art, Music, People, and Places of Ireland from A-Z? and has delivered speeches at meetings and universities including Creighton University, University of St. Thomas, University College and University of Nebraska, among others.

McDonnell has been on Carleton?s English faculty since 1969 and has served as a visiting lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin. He currently teaches introductory English courses, as well as courses on Shakespeare and Irish literature. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Downing College at Cambridge University and his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s English department at (507) 646-4322.