Claire Connolly, professor of Modern English and head of the School of English at University College Cork, will present a lecture entitled “The Holyhead Road” on Friday, November 13 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. Part of the 2015-16 Fund for Irish Studies series at Princeton University, the event is free and open to the public.

Ms. Connolly will explore how journeys along the Holyhead Road from London to Dublin and across the Irish Sea, which have been represented by novelists, playwrights, and poets from Jonathan Swift to James Joyce, create a cultural exchange between Ireland and Britain. This is part of her larger research into the ways in which the Irish Sea scales and shapes diverse relationships between infrastructural links and cultural identities.

Ms. Connolly’s research has focused on the cultural history of 18th- and 19th-century Ireland, as well as Scottish and Welsh romanticism. Her books include A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790-1829 (2012); The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, edited with Joe Cleary (2005); and Theorizing Ireland (Palgrave, 2002).

Information about Fund for Irish Studies series events can be found at fis.princeton.edu.