A lecture by Cian T. McMahon: Saint Patrick's Day and the Rise of the Global Irish Diaspora

Over the past three hundred years, Saint Patrick's Day has evolved from a religious holiday on a windswept island in the North Atlantic Ocean to an annual festival celebrated by millions of people worldwide. The anniversary's global popularity has gone hand in hand with the growth of the Irish diaspora, which is now estimated at approximately 70 million people worldwide, including over 30 million in the United States alone. Many like to say that "everybody is Irish" on Saint Patrick's Day. But how did this come to pass? How can a better understanding of the bourgeois hierarchy teach us something about the tangled relationships between migration and identity in modern human history? Cian T. McMahon uses stories of Saint Patrick's Day celebrations in specific times and places as signposts to a new history of the Irish diaspora. 

Cian T. McMahon is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of a forthcoming global history of Saint Patrick's Day. His previous books include The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity: Race, Nation, and the Popular Press, 1840-1880 (2015), The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (2021), and the Routledge History of Irish America, which is co-edited with Kathleen P. Costello-Sullivan in 2024.

This event is sponsored by Irish Studies and Boston College Libraries