Sean Farrell

Associate Professor

Fields of Study: Modern Europe (Britain and Ireland), Agrarian Societies, Atlantic World, Colonial Empires, Comparative/Transnational, Nationalism and Identity, Race and Ethnicity, Religion, Violence

Education: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996

E-mail: sfarrel1@niu.edu
Office: Zulauf 615
Phone: 815-753-0131 

Current Research:  In general, my research has focused on the links between violence and the formation of communal identities in modern Ulster.  My first book, Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886, examined the relationships between Catholic/Protestant rioting and the emergence of a divided political culture in the north of Ireland. In recent years I have co-edited two volumes of essays on aspects of the modern Irish experience (with Danine Farquharson and Michael de Nie) and am currently writing a series of articles on evangelical Protestantism and popular politics in early Victorian Belfast.  This summer I'll be starting serious work on my next major project, a study of the nineteenth-century Irish and Irish-Australian intellectual and politician Charles Gavan Duffy.  I am currently President of the American Conference for Irish Studies.

Major/Recent Publications:

• Farrell, Sean and Michael de Nie, ed., Power and Popular Culture in Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of James S. Donnelly, Jr. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010).
• Farrell, Sean and Danine Farquharson, ed., Shadows of the Gunmen: Violence and Culture in Modern Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2007).
• Farrell, Sean, ed., Eire-Ireland , Volume 39: 1 and 2 (Earrach/Samradh; Spring/Summer 2004). (special issue on unionist identities)
• Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000). Awarded Donald F. Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
• "The Burning of Freeduff Presbyterian Church, 1743," New Hibernia Review/Irish Eireannach Nua, Volume 9, Number 3 (Autumn 2005), 72-85.
• "Recapturing the Flag: The Campaign to Repeal the Party Processions Act, 1860-72," Eire-Ireland XXXII (Summer/Fall 1997), 52-78.

Teaching Interests: As a historian of the British Isles, I teach survey courses on Late Medieval and Early Modern England, Scotland and Wales, Modern Britain and Modern Ireland. In my upper division and graduate courses, I'm particularly interested in exploring questions of empire and nation, so most of my courses revolve around those broad themes.

Courses Taught:

• HIST 171  The World Since 1500
• HIST 356  Modern Ireland
• HIST 357  History of the British Isles, 1066-1688
• HIST 358  History of the British Isles, 1688 to the Present
• HIST 391  Historical Methods
• HIST 452  Nation and Empire in Modern Britain
• HIST 454  Industry, State and Society in Modern Britain
• HIST 491  Senior Thesis
• HIST 498  Ireland and India
• HIST 540  Nation and Empire in Modern Britain