Professor Ray Cashman

AN CUMANN LE BÉALOIDEAS ÉIREANN/THE FOLKLORE OF IRELAND SOCIETY

Tá an áthas orainn cuireadh a thabhart duit chuig léacht leis tOllamh Ray Cashman, ar an Luan, 11 Márta, ag 7.00 PM, sa James Joyce Centre ar Sraid Sheoirse Thuaidh.

We are delighted to invite you to a presentation by the distinguished folklore scholar, Professor Ray Cashman, at the James Joyce Centre, North Great George’s Street, on Monday 11^th March at 7.00 PM. This is a rare opportunity to hear the internationally renowned folklore scholar give a presentation in Dublin.

Professor Ray Cashman, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

“Luck’s Pennies, Butter Witches, and the Hungry Grass: Community in a World of Limited Good” 

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instil enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, a project in need of continual maintenance.  Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community than the mid nineteenth-century Famine.  If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning this social contract for mutual support.

Biographical note

Professor Ray Cashman is  director of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. He is currently visiting professor at NUI Galway.

Professor Cashman has carried out extensive folklore and ethnological research in Ireland. His books include  Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (2016, 2017 paperback 2^nd edition)  and  Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2008, 2011 paperback 2^nd edition) , and many articles. The numerous awards he has received for his work include the Michael J Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture (for Packy Jim), and Donald Murphy Award for Distinguished First Book (for Storytelling on an Irish Border)  both awarded by the American Association for Irish Studies, and the Chicago Folklore Prize (for Storytelling on an Irish Border). He is a Fellow of the     American Folklore Society.