The first meeting of the new season of the Irish Cultural Society features a talk by Dr. Eileen Sullivan with the intriguing title, “The Shamrock and the Cross: Irish-American Novelists Shape American Catholicism.” Professor Sullivan will examine the role of popular fiction in 19^th century America in shaping the identity of Irish immigrants and the Catholic culture in America in the 19^th century, a culture which lasted for well over a century.

The venue for this meeting will be the Garden City Casino at 51 Cathedral Avenue, Garden City on the corner of Sixth Street.  The change in meeting place was caused by the repair of the elevator in the Garden City Library.  The meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 14.  The meeting is free and open to the public. 

Dr. Sullivan teaches political theory at Rutgers University.  She earned her Doctoral Degree in Political Science from Columbia University.  She is widely published, including a recent essay in the American Journal of Irish Studies published by NYU and other articles in scholarly publications like the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Handbook of Public Policy Analysis.  Professor Sullivan’s book The Shamrock and the Cross: Irish American Novelists Shape American Catholicism was recently published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Those attending this talk will appreciate the well appointed Garden City Casino and a talk by a scholar of the Irish in America.

At the meeting, President Clare Curtin will announce the details of a theater trip to the Irish Repertory Theatre to see Finian’s Rainbow.