Basler Chairholder
JOHNSON CITY (Jan. 18, 2018) – East Tennessee State University’s Department of Appalachian Studies is hosting Dr. Liam Campbell as the 2018 Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence in the Arts, Rhetoric and Science during spring semester.
Campbell currently serves as “Built and Cultural Heritage Officer” for the Lough Neagh Landscape Partnership in Northern Ireland. His main area of research is the exploration of the history and heritage of place and space in the Irish landscape as a vital element of national heritage and identity.
Campbell believes that “landscape is the critical junction or intersection where matters of legal rights, economic forces, physical conditions, settlement, religious, ethnic and communal identity, power and imagination come together to provide the key narratives of experience.”
Throughout his professional work as an academic, community relations officer, television producer and priest, Campbell has worked to help communities tell that story, and believes that community engagement is an essential first step in creating living, vibrant and sustainable landscapes and spaces.
Campbell earned his bachelor’s degree at the National University of Ireland, his M.Sc. degree at Queen’s University Belfast and both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Ulster, where he has taught a range of history and research courses. He is the recipient of numerous research grants, most recently those awarded by Northern Ireland’s Department of Culture, Arts and Learning, the Heritage Council and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Heritage Lottery Fund.
During his tenure as Basler Chair, Campbell will teach two courses: “Scots Irish in Appalachia” and “Northern Ireland: Negotiating Peace, Heritage and Identity.”
“Scots Irish in Appalachia” will examine the cultural connections between Appalachia and two of its major cultural ancestors, Scotland and Ulster — the Scots Irish and their legacy in time and place. The course is a journey through the natural, built and cultural landscapes of Appalachia, Scotland and Ulster that formed these people, and an exploration through interdisciplinary lenses of history, colonization, mapping, anthropology, land-use, emigration, religion, diaspora, identity and material and immaterial culture.
“Northern Ireland: Negotiating Peace, Heritage and Identity” will investigate the contested place that is Northern Ireland, in all its facets. It aims to provide students with a critical introduction to the history of Ulster from prehistory to the present day while never losing sight of developments and connections in the whole island of Ireland, Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. The course will draw on key cross-cutting themes in geography, sociology, politics, heritage and the emerging discipline of peace studies.
Campbell will also present four interdisciplinary public lectures: “A Sense of Place: Ecology, Community and the Human Spirit” on Thursday, Feb. 1; “Map-making, Landscape and Memory: A Comparative Measuring of America and Ireland” on Thursday, March 1; “Nature and Culture in Ireland: The Last Wolf to the First Eagle” on Tuesday, April 3; and “An Ireland Post-Brexit: Between Europe and America” on Tuesday, April 24. All of these free public lectures will be held at 7 p.m. in 127 Ball Hall.
For more information, contact Jane MacMorran, director of Appalachian, Scottish and Irish Studies at ETSU, at macmorra@etsu.edu. For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at 423-439-8346.