This trip has been completed. View photos of the trip.

June 3-14, 2009 with Paul Muldoon, Director of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts; Michael Cadden, Director of the Program in Theater and Dance. The last two Princeton Journeys led by this pair sold out; we expect this journey to do likewise.

In marking the tenth anniversary of the founding of Irish Studies at Princeton, Paul Muldoon and Michael Cadden are at it again. For the third time, this dynamic duo has put together a custom-designed travel program on "literary Ireland." The 2009 program centers on islands—whether physical or metaphorical. Discuss the concept of Irish Isles in frequent precepts with our faculty team from the perspective of literature, oral tradition, anthropology, and other disciplines.

Begin on the Dingle Peninsula, visiting Blasket Island, which lends itself to readings and discussions of the self-reflective nature of the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Visit Coole Park, the home of Lady Augusta Gregory, dramatist and co-founder with Yeats and Edward Martyn of the Abbey Theatre, and Thoor Ballylee, home of William Butler Yeats. Alight upon Tory Island, hear tales of the island’s mythological heroes, Balor of the Evil Eye and the Son of Gora, and explore some of the archeological sites. Cross the Giants Causeway, comprised of an estimated 40,000 basalt hexagonal stones and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway in order to walk across to Scotland to fight his enemy. Diverge from the beaten path to Rathlin Island and tour this wild island, which has been inhabited since Mesolithic times and is home to virtually all of Irish history: bronze age grave, an iron age fort, standing stone, landlords manors. And as a tonic to the literary history, sample life in the modern cities of Belfast and Dublin, meeting today's literati in each.

About the Study Leaders
Paul Muldoon and Michael Cadden will serve as the study leaders for this program.

Paul Muldoon, a Princeton faculty member since 1990, was named in 2006 as the first chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts, where he is a professor of creative writing. He also is director of the Princeton Atelier and chair of the Fund for Irish Studies. In addition, he serves as poetry editor of The New Yorker. Between 1999 and 2004 he was professor of poetry at the University of Oxford, where he is an honorary fellow of Hertford College. Professor Muldoon won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel, his ninth collection of poems. His tenth collection, Horse Latitudes, was published in the fall of 2006. The recipient of multiple awards and commendations, this Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was most recently feted at Princeton upon the conference of the Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities.

Michael Cadden is currently enjoying his twenty-sixth year of teaching at Princeton, his sixteenth as the Director of the Program in Theater and Dance. He began his career at the Yale School of Drama, where he worked for four years as a dramaturg at the Yale Repertory Theatre/Yale School of Drama. Since 1981, he has been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English, teaching summer programs for high school teachers of English in Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, and at Oxford University. In his classrooms, public lectures, and written work, Cadden has consistently attempted to build bridges between the world of academia and the world of professional theater; in 1995, he served as the Chair of the Modern Language Association’s Drama Division. He has also served as editor of a CD-ROM version of Ibsen's A Doll House, curator of a major library exhibition centered on the life and work of Oscar Wilde, and co-editor of Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism. He has published essays on Athol Fugard, Tony Kushner, Martin McDonagh, Edward Albee, Frank McGuinness and many other contemporary dramatists. For the last fourteen years, he has been a judge for the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He is also proud to have offered Princeton's first course in Gay and Lesbian Studies. In 1993, he was awarded the University's President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2003, he helped inaugurate the Roger S. Berlind Theater—the jewel in the crown of Princeton's performing arts community.

To make a reservation, fill out the form in the brochure or contact Princeton Journeys at (609) 258-8686 or journeys@princeton.edu.