The Great Hunger: The Irish Diaspora of the 19th Century
Sun, Mar 02
|Staten Island
The Voices of Diaspora Program is a yearlong initiative, launching in late 2024 and concluding in May 2025. This program will explore five cultural heritages that have experienced diaspora, both past and present.
Time & Location
Mar 02, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Staten Island, Building D, 1000 Richmond Ter #8, Staten Island, NY 10301, USA
About the event
The Great Hunger: The Irish Diaspora of the 19th Century
The scholarly consensus is that about one million died of famine-related causes between 1846 and 1851, making the Great Hunger exceptional in relative terms. it was Europe’s greatest natural disaster of the nineteenth century. Most deaths were due to diseases like typhus rather than starvation per se, although diseases like dysentery and scurvy are related to lack of food.
Dr. Stack will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato and why that had such devastating consequences for some of the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, as well as testimonies from eyewitnesses. American charity in Ireland and the mass migration, including life on board the so-called coffin ships, will also be covered.
Elizabeth Stack, PhD, is the Executive Director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. Prior to moving to NYC, Dr. Stack was the executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, NY for six years before she took up the mantle at the Society. Before moving to Albany, she taught Irish and Irish American History and was Associate Director at Fordham University’s Institute of Irish Studies. She completed her PhD at Fordham, writing about Irish and German immigrants in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, as they grappled with the immigration restriction movements of that time. She has a master’s degree in Anglo Irish relations in the 20th Century from University College Dublin in Ireland, and she taught high school English literature and history for several years in Ireland and the United Arab Emirates before completing her PhD. She is a frequent guest on podcasts and radio shows about Irish America.
This event will take place outside of our facility at the Snug Harbour - Noble Maritime Collection, located at 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building D, Staten Island, NY 10301-1114.
The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is able to offer today’s program through the support of the New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative Discretionary Grants provided by City Council Member Joseph Borelli and City Council Member David Carr.
