In The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature, acclaimed scholars Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus examine modern cultural responses to child sex abuse in Ireland. Through close, critical readings of scandal narratives by nine major modern Irish authors, they suggest how Ireland’s postcolonial heritage served to enable such abuse. The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature refines the debates on why so many Irish children were lost by offering insight into the lived experience of both the children and those who failed them.

Alongside the authors and Ambassador, joining us to reflect on this essential new work of scholarship are:

• Sean Kennedy, Professor of English, St; Mary's University, Halifax Nova Scotia

• Claire Bracken, Associate Professor, Union College, New York

• Anne Fogarty, James Joyce Professor, University College Dublin

This launch is part of ‘‘The Ambassador’s Hour’’ series, a series of digital seminars arranged by the Embassy of Ireland & the American Conference for Irish Studies to profile important new work by Irish studies scholars in America.

Biographies

Joseph Valente is UB Distinguished Professor of English and Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo. He is the Treasurer of the International Yeats Society and Vice President of the Northeastern Modern Language Association. He has authored The Myth of Manliness in Irish Nationalist Culture, 1880-1922 (University of Illinois Press, 2011), Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness and the Question of Blood (University of Illinois Press, 2002, 2012), and James Joyce and the Problem of Justice: Negotiating Sexual and Colonial Difference (Cambridge UP 1995, 2009). His edited collections include Quare Joyce (University of Michigan Press, 1997), Urban Ireland (a special issue of Eire-Ireland) and, with Marjorie Howes, Yeats and Afterwords (Notre Dame University Press, 2014), and, with Seán Kennedy and Macy Todd, Ireland in Psychoanalysis (a special issue of Breac). Most recently, he co-authored, with Margot Backus, The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable (Indiana University Press, 2020). His current project is entitled “Against Type: Autism and Moral Authority in Modern Literature.”

Margot Gayle Backus is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston. Her books include Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), and The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (Duke University Press, Post-Contemporary Interventions, 1999). With Joseph Valente, she has co-authored The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable (Indiana University Press, 2020). She was 2014-15 Queens University Fulbright Scholar of Anglophone Irish Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.