Professor and historian of British and Irish literature Marilynn Richtarik will present a lecture entitled, “Stewart Parker: The Playwright in his Place,” on Friday, September 20 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. The lecture is part of a series presented by Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies. The event is free and open to the public.
Professor and historian of British and Irish literature Marilynn Richtarik will present a lecture entitled, “Stewart Parker: The Playwright in his Place,” on Friday, September 20 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. The lecture is part of a series presented by Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies. The event is free and open to the public.
Richtarik received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in American History and Literature, but focused her research on British works at Oxford University, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving her Doctorate of Philosophy in 1992. Her interests lie in Northern Irish theatre and drama, and the tumultuous intersection of the country’s politics and arts. In addition to several program notes for American, British, and Irish productions of the plays of Stewart Parker, Richtarik’s publications include Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980-1984 (1995), Counterparts: James Joyce and Stewart Parker (1998), and ‘Ireland, the Continuous Past’: Stewart Parker’s Belfast History Plays (2000). She has contributed to Bullán, Modern Drama, and appeared on Ireland’s RTE Radio One.
Following from her 2012 biography, Stewart Parker: A Life, Richtarik’s lecture will explore the brief but storied career of playwright, poet, and cultural critic Stewart Parker (1941-1988). A writer whose works spanned from a column on popular music in The Irish Times, to poetry, essays, and plays for television, radio, and the stage, Parker is, according to Richtarik, a figure wholly at the influence of the turbulent forces at play in his native Belfast. An Irish Times review described Richtarik’s biography as, “[one] you can trust; it also captures an important chapter of Irish cultural life.”
The Fund for Irish Studies, celebrating its 15th anniversary season and chaired by Princeton professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, politics and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.”
Information on the full 2013-2014 Fund for Irish Studies series can be found at fisprinceton.wpengine.com. Other lectures scheduled in the series include:
- Amy Martin on “The Origins of Irish Internationalism: Violence and Terror in Ireland, India and Jamaica, 1857-1870,” September 27
- Kevin Barry, reading from his book Dark Lies the Island, City of Bohane, October 11
- Performance by Irish jazz singer Christine Tobin of her award-winning settings of poems by W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,” October 18
- Philip King on “The Irish Song Lyric from Tom Moore to Christy Moore,” November 8
- Tony Award-winning playwright Enda Walsh in conversation with Senior Lecturer in Theater and Lewis Center Chair Michael Cadden, November 15
In addition, the Fund for Irish Studies will recognize this anniversary season by hosting a daylong symposium on Irish culture, politics, history, and life in April 2014.
To learn more about the over 100 events presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, visit www.princeton.edu/arts.
Link to photo: https://lca.sharefile.com/d/s5b6b5a9cd1c4af68
Photo caption: Literary historian Marilynn Richtarik lectures on “Stewart Parker: The Playwright in His Place” as part of a series presented by the Fund for Irish Studies at Princeton.
Photo credit: Photo courtesy of Marilynn Richtarik
