The Smurfit-Stone Corporation Endowed Professorship in Irish Studies
Learn more about our upcoming symposium, Irish America Past, Present, and Future: A Seminar in honor of Charles Fanning
Dr. Eamonn Wall
Professor of English and Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professor of Irish Studies
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A native of Co. Wexford, Éamonn Wall is the Smurfit-Stone Endowed Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St Louis. Éamonn Wall received his degrees from University College, Dublin, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000) which received the Michael J. Durkan Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies for excellence in scholarship, and four collections of poetry by Salmon Publishing, Ireland, including Iron Mountain Road (1997), The Crosses (2000) and Refuge at DeSoto Bend (2004). He has published articles, essays, and reviews in such publications as New Hibernia Review, Triquarterly, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Tribune, Review of Contemporary Fiction, The Recorder, and An Sionnach. He was the guest editor of Natural Bridge: A Journal of Contemporary Literature published by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2002. Éamonn Wall is past president of The American Conference of Irish Studies. He has lived in the US since 1982.
Executive Summary: Smurfit-Stone Endowed Professorship in Irish Studies
In 1996, Dr. Michael Smurfit pledged the funds to create the Smurfit-Stone Endowed
Professorship in Irish Studies. As a major multinational corporation with more than
50,000 employees in 25 countries, Smurfit-Stone clearly exemplifies what it means to
be a good corporate citizen in the era of global economic interdependence. Integral to
the efforts to internationalize the University of Missouri-St. Louis, this professorship
represents another important step in ensuring that our students and the local community
understand and communicate with people of different cultures.
Professor Eamonn Wall provides leadership in the development of Irish Studies on our
campus. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to promote teaching, research and
community service in the Irish arts, humanities and history. Working with UMSL Global,
the Irish-American community, and the community at large, Professor Wall develops
programs for campus and community audiences about Ireland and the Irish expatriate
experience. He also collaborates with the other international endowed professors and
International Studies and Programs to develop a comprehensive international program
highlighting the diversity of St. Louis' ethnic heritage.
The establishment of the Smurfit-Stone Distinguished Lecturer series has permitted
UMSL Global to offer outstanding programs for campus and community audiences.
Among them were the week-long visits of Dr. Nicholas Canny, a noted Irish historian
from the National University of Ireland, who spoke on the colonization of Ireland, New
York Times best-selling author Colum McCann, and the late Northern Irish politician
John Hume, Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spoke about the peace process in
Northern Ireland.
The Irish Studies Professorship has also brought a number of internationally acclaimed
artists to campus as part of the International Performing Arts Series, including Cherish
the Ladies, Black 47, Solas, Lunasa, and Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, among many
others.
