Comparative Literature in Ireland and Worldwide – An Interview with Professor Declan Kiberd

Professor Declan Kiberd is Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin, where he has taught for many years after having taught at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Trinity College Dublin. He is a director of the Abbey Theatre. He has been Parnell Fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge, and a visiting professor at Duke University and the Sorbonne. He has also been Director of the Yeats International Summer School (1985-7), Patron of the Dublin Shaw Society (1995-2000), a columnist with The Irish Times (1985-7) and The Irish Press (1987-93), the presenter of the RTÉ Arts programme, Exhibit A(1984-6), and a regular essayist and reviewer in The Irish Times, TLS,London Review of Books and The New York Times. Professor Kiberd is the author of many books including his seminal Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (1995), Irish Classics (2000), and The Irish Writer and the World (2005), as well as Ulysses and Us, published just this year, and he was also the editor of the Penguin edition of theAnnotated Students’ Ulysses (1992). He is one of the most important voices in Irish Studies. Beyond that, he is also a prominent public intellectual, and he continues to be an inspirational figure for generations of students. In this interview, we discussed the relevance of the comparative approach to Irish Studies and the future of Comparative Literature in Ireland and worldwide