SIUC Department of English

Faculty in Irish and Irish Immigration Studies

Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, Assistant Professor (PhD, Tufts University)

Jane Elizabeth Dougherty is an assistant professor of English and Women's Studies. She earned her Ph.D. at Tufts University, where she wrote her dissertation on the marriage metaphor of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland of 1801. Her most recent article, published in The New Hibernia Review, is "Nuala O'Faolain and the Irish Literary Girlhood," and she is currently working on a book, 'That strange country called childhood': Gender and the Irish Literary Childhood. She has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Keough-Notre Dame Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Midwest Modern Language Association and the Newberry Library, and the National University of Ireland-Galway. Her teaching interests include nineteenth-and twentieth-century Irish literature, British representationsof Ireland, Irish women writers, Irish film,and the Irish maturation narrative.

Charles Fanning, Emeritus Professor of English and Distinguished Scholar, (PhD, University of Pennsylvania)

Professor Fanning has written primarily about the Irish in American literature and history. His latest books are New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora (2001); The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction, (Second Edition, 2000); The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction (Second Edition, 1997); and Chicago Stories of James T. Farrell (1998). Current teaching interests include Irish history since 1600, Irish culture in the early Christian era (400-800 AD), contemporary Irish poetry, comparative perspectives on Irish-American and Jewish-American writing, and ethnicity in American, Australian, and New Zealand literature. Current research interests include the image of Irish patriot Robert Emmet in America, Irish-American culture in the 1930s, and the O'Neill-O'Flaherty novels of James T. Farrell. Fanning received the SIUC Outstanding Scholar Award in 2004.

Beth Lordan, Professor and Director of Irish and Irish Immigration Studies Program (MFA, Cornell University)

Beth Lordan is the author of the novel August Heat and the short-story collection And Both Shall Row. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best of American Short Stories 2002, the Atlantic Monthly, and Gettysburg Review, as well as on NPR's Selected Shorts. The recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an O. Henry Award for her short fiction, Lordan teaches fiction writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois, with her husband.

Dan Wiley, Assistant Professor (PhD, Harvard University)

Dan M. Wiley is assistant professor of Irish and Irish immigration studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University with a specialization in the medieval languages and literatures of the British Isles. His primary research interests include early Irish saga literature, Gaelic paleography, and textual criticism. He is the editor of Essays on the Early Irish King Tales (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008) and the author of articles on various aspects of medieval Irish literature, including ‘Níall Frossach’s True Judgment’ (Eriu 2005) and ‘The Maledictory Psalms’ (Peritia 2001). Currently, he is working on an edition and translation of both recensions of the Middle Irish saga Aided Díarmata meic Cerbaill ‘The Violent Death of Díarmait mac Cerbaill’.

For information on Graduate Students working in Irish and Irish Immigration Studies at SIU-C, click here.