Scholar explores early Jesuit media in Ireland
After nearly 40 years on the Clongowes teaching staff, Declan O’Keeffe recently graduated with a PhD from Technological University Dublin for his study of Irish Jesuit publications in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dr O’Keeffe completed his work under the supervision of Dr Eamon Maher, a lecturer at TU Dublin and the series editor of the Reimagining Ireland volumes published by Peter Lang Oxford.
The title of Dr O’Keeffe’s thesis is ‘Jesuit Publications, 1873-1918: A Mirror and a Spotlight’. It incorporates articles and chapters published in a number of journals and books over the preceding years, as well as some new content. In the thesis, he sets out to address two questions: “Did Jesuit publications and their editors influence, reflect on and anticipate a changing Ireland during the decades covered in the thesis and, if so, in what way?”, and “Did they shine a light on an evolving society or actively shape it?” Through his examination of such early Jesuit publications as The Irish Monthly, The Lyceum, The Messenger, and Studies, he explores the manner in which these journals and their editors strove to be “in tune with the Zeitgeist of the period”.
As some of the material in the PhD was first published in Studies, it was apt that three editors of that publication were present at the graduation ceremony in the TU Dublin Tallaght campus. These were two former editors, Fergus O’Donoghue SJ and Bruce Bradley SJ, and the current editor, Dermot Roantree (see photo).
What makes Dr O’Keeffe’s achievement particularly remarkable is the fact that not long after he applied to TU Dublin he suffered two life-threatening strokes as well as heart failure while he was walking part of the Camino de Santiago in the north of Spain. Recovery was slow, and he is still left with the ill effects of these medical emergencies, making even simple tasks such as reading and typing a great deal more difficult. As she introduced Dr O’Keeffe at the graduation ceremony, the President of TU Dublin, Dr Deirdre Lillis, recounted this extraordinary story of courage and resilience. It was met with resounding applause.
Dr O’Keeffe continues to be the College Historian at Clongowes Wood College, which is where the seeds of his doctoral studies began to form. In 2009 he was awarded a Masters (UCD) for his work on Matthew Russell SJ, who founded the literary magazine The Irish Monthly in 1873. From there, Dr O’Keeffe became interested in other early Jesuit publications, which led to the publication of a number of articles and book chapters on related subjects. These became the basis of his doctoral work.