LUNCH WITH BOOKS: Frederick Douglass and Ireland with Dr. Christine Kinealy

February 19, 2019
12:00pm - 12:00pm

Dr. Christine Kinealy will discuss Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, the book she edited for Routledge Publishing.

Frederick Douglass spent four months in Ireland at the end of 1845 that proved to be, in his own words, ‘transformative’. He reported that for the first time in his life he felt like a man, and not a chattel. Whilst in residence, he became a spokesperson for the abolition movement, but by the time he left the country in early January 1846, he believed that the cause of the slave was the cause of the oppressed everywhere.

This book adds new insight into Frederick Douglass and his time in Ireland. Contemporary newspaper accounts of the lectures that Douglass gave during his tour of Ireland (in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Belfast) have been located and transcribed. The speeches are annotated and accompanied by letters written by Douglass during his stay. In this way, for the first time, we hear Douglass in his own words.

Read the review in The Irish Times.

Dr. Christine Kinealy is the Director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where she completed her doctorate on the introduction of the Poor Law to Ireland. She then worked in educational and research institutes in Dublin, Belfast, and Liverpool. She has published extensively on the impact of the Great Irish Famine and has lectured on the relationship between poverty and famine in India, Spain, Canada, France, Finland, and New Zealand. She also has spoken to invited audiences in the British Parliament and in the U.S. Congress. Based in the United States since 2007, she was named one of the most influential Irish Americans in 2011 by "Irish America" Magazine. In 2013, she received the Holyoke, Mass. St. Patrick's Day Parade's Ambassador Award. In March 2014, she was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame.

She is the editor of Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, Routledge; 1 edition (June 25, 2018).

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Frederick Douglass and Ireland with Dr. Christine Kinealy

- Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - 
Lunch With Books starts at noon in the Library Auditorium.