Alice Milligan, 150 – 26 Sept

It is fitting that first event of the ILS 2016-17 125th anniversary season marks the anniversary of one of its earliest members and a central figure in the Irish Cultural Revival. Dr Catherine Morris will reflect on her life and legacy of Alice Milligan on the 150th anniversary of her birth in her talk ‘Transformative Art and the Irish Cultural Revival.’

Morris’ book is the first study to explore the life and work of Alice Milligan (1866–­1953). A prolific writer for over six decades, she published her work in a range of genres (including poetry, short stories, novels, travelogues, biography, plays, journalism, letters, and memoirs). From 1891 to the 1940s, she founded a series of cultural, feminist, commemorative and political organizations that put the north on the map of the Irish Cultural Revival and provided a new resonance to Irish visual culture. The biography not only reclaims an unjustly forgotten Irish cultural and political activist during this foundational era in modern Ireland, but also provides new ways of interpreting the Irish Cultural Revival itself.

… A profound and moving analysis of one of the greatest inventors of modern Ireland, this account of Alice Milligan itself displays those qualities of intellectual versatility and imaginative audacity which ennobled her life through its many astonishing phases.Professor Declan Kiberd

A graphic novel exploring the life of Alice Milligan and her role in the revival of Irish culture during the early 20th century is available to download and view. Developed by Dr Morris and Nerve Centre’s Creative Centenaries project, in conjunction with Revolve Comics, the short story charts some of the experiences of Alice Milligan and her work in the preservation of Irish cultures and beliefs: Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival

Speaker:

Dr Catherine Morris
Catherine Morris is Liverpool Central Library’s first Writer-in-Residence. Her project, Intimate Power: Autobiography of a City, montaging life-writing with photo-essays and community interviews is being made on location at resonant sites across Liverpool. Her monograph, Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival, uncovered the forgotten arts practice of one of the founders of modern Ireland. In 2016, she worked with Nerve Centre in Derry to launch a graphic novel of Milligan’s life as part of the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum for schools in Northern Ireland. Her exhibition Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival at the National Library of Ireland was opened by Fiona Shaw (2010). In 2012, she gifted her research archive to Omagh Public Library. She was curatorial advisor on the Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition El Lissitzky: the Artists and the State; is co-founder of the Artist Centre for Human Rights, co-editor of The Cassandra Echo & an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool.