CofC Professors Dive into the Rich Heritage of Irish Literature and Film

_{^{Students on a study abroad in Ireland in 2017 at the site of The Quiet Man film in Cong, County Mayo.}}

On this episode of Speaking of … College of Charleston, we have a great conversation about Irish books and movies. Our guests are Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies and Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College. The pair met while playing faculty softball and quickly became friends. With her knowledge of Irish films, Glenn became a natural addition to his study-abroad trips with students to Ireland.

“When we do those visits, the students follow our discussions of films, like In the Name of the Father, and they’re really able to see the landscape and the culture that inspired the movie they saw on the big screen,” Glenn says.

On the podcast, they recount some of their trips around Ireland, where they emphasize locations such as Dublin, Galway, Connemara and Belfast featured in Irish films. Films discussed include The Quiet Man, Michael Collins and Banshees of Inisherin, among others that illustrate the socio-political history and cultural identity of Ireland. The episode also touches on significant Irish cinematic movements and celebrates the storytelling legacy and literary richness of Irish culture.

The way Kelly describes the landscape and the novels are a clear indicator of his knowledge and love for the country. He’s an in-demand professor for a reason.

“John Huston did a film version of The Dead, which is a very quiet story,” Kelly says. “And it ends with this beautiful scene where Gabriel Conroy is looking out the window at the snow falling onto the streets of Dublin, and he imagines it falling across the mutinous Shannon waves and the bog of Allen and out onto the crooked crosses in the graveyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It’s the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, and it’s a absolutely beautiful 10 minutes of cinematography, too.”

Featured on this Episode:

Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College, has been studying and writing about Irish literature since the 1990s. In the last 15 years, he’s been writing narrative histories about American democracy. His next book, The Biggest Lie: A Hundred Years of American Fascism, 1818-1918, will be out next year.

Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College, teaches courses on film history and American cinema as well as special topic courses, such as Irish Cinema & Hollywood Auteurs. In addition to co-editing an anthology on stardom, she has published articles on Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart and other film stars.

Irish movies discussed:

The Quiet Man (1952)

My Left Foot (1989)

The Field (1990)

The Commitments (1991)

The Crying Game (1992)

In the Name of the Father  (1993)

Michael Collins (1996)

Waking Ned Divine (1998)

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

Once (2007)

Hunger ( 2008)

Philomena (2013)

 ’71 (2014)

Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Small Things Like These (2024)