HASS Inaugural Lecture Professor Sinead Moynihan

The faculty are warmly welcomed to attend Professor Sinead Moynihan’ Inaugural Lecture, taking place on 15th October 2025 Wednesday in Streatham Campus, University of Exeter.

Our standard running order for the event is as follows:

• 15:45 doors open - 15mins
• 16:00 welcome/intro (DPVC) - 5 mins
• 16:05 Lecture – 50-55mins
• 16:55 closing (HoD) - 5mins
• 17:00 drinks reception
• 18:00 finish

This talk uncovers the extent, variety and significance of Irish writers’ contributions, mostly fiction and travel writing, to U.S. magazines in the period 1940 to 1975. Until now, scholars interested in Irish writers publishing in U.S. magazines at mid-century have focused almost exclusively on The New Yorker, particularly the relationships that Frank O’Connor, Maeve Brennan and Mary Lavin enjoyed with the magazine. During these decades, however, there was exponential growth in Irish writers’ contributions to heterogeneous U.S. magazines. The venues were markedly varied: from the pulps (later slicks) to the so-called “smart” magazines; from the weeklies to the national monthlies; from fashion to “women’s service” magazines; from special-interest to Catholic magazines, Irish writers – from Elizabeth Bowen to Maurice Walsh – were publishing voluminously and were being handsomely remunerated by U.S. magazines. Of mid-twentieth century Irish literature, Eve Patten asks: “where has the persuasive ‘national’ label on Ireland’s literary output obscured the impact of alternative spatial and political formations – trans-local and transatlantic, cross-continental and cross-border – in the shaping of Irish literary tradition?” By identifying how mid-twentieth century Irish prose was written, sold and circulated in a transatlantic magazine marketplace, this paper provides one answer to that question.

Bio:

Sinéad Moynihan is Professor in American and Atlantic Studies. She has published widely on American, Irish and transatlantic literatures in Éire-Ireland, Modern Drama, MELUS, American Literary History, Studies in the Novel and other journals. She is also the author of three monographs, the most recent of which – Ireland, Migration and Return Migration: The “Returned Yank” in the Cultural Imagination, 1952 to present (Liverpool UP, 2019) – was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies. From 2019 to 2022, she was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Studies (Cambridge UP). Her current book project, “For Export Only”: Irish Writers and U.S. Magazines, 1940-1975, is supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2025-26).

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