Annual Breakfast on October 15

The ICC’s Annual Breakfast is a great opportunity to meet and mingle, with good food, pleasant company, and a review of the year’s activities. The public is welcome to attend this annual event.

Please join us on Sunday, October 15 at 10:00 am at the Irish Cultural Center’s new building at 429 Morgan Road in West Springfield. Please note the new venue! Tickets are $18 for ICC Patrons and $22 for the general public. Please call the ICC at 413-333-4951 for more info or to order tickets. Or download and mail in the order form. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

Dr. Mary C. Kelly, our featured speaker, will share her findings on the topic “From Irish-American to American-Irish: The Irish Question and the Ethnic Identity, 1919-1922.” Dr. Kelly is noted for her outstanding work making astute connections between the Irish of yesterday and today, including the subject of Irish immigration and assimilation.

Dr. Kelly’s talk will focus on how the enduring bond between immigrant community and ancestral home has shaped and influenced Irish-American culture from earliest times. At the heart of that connection, the struggle for Ireland’s freedom has stamped its distinct imprint on the immigrant Irish story in the United States. This talk will focus on Irish-American engagement with Ireland’s independence movement between the 1919 visit of Éamon de Valera to the United States and the birth of the Free State in 1921. The lecture will also reveal that Irish-American response to the Irish Question in 1919–1921 played a crucial role in redefining the ethnic identity for generations to come.

Dr. Kelly is a historian of the Irish-American immigrant experience. She graduated from National University of Ireland, Galway, and from Syracuse University, and has served as Professor of History at Franklin Pierce University for twenty years. She researches the ethnic identity in spheres of political culture, faith, and the enduring relationship with Ireland. Her latest book, Ireland’s Great Famine in Irish American History: Enshrining a Fateful Memory (Rowman & Littlefield), is now available in paperback (2016). She is currently working on Irish-American involvement with the 1916 Rising and Irish Revolution. Professor Kelly was honored with a 2014 Keene State College President’s Outstanding Women in New Hampshire Award and the 2016 Holyoke St. Patrick’s Day Committee Ambassador Award.