Holy Cross Professor Gives Free Speech at Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

From Quinnipiac University: Edward O’Donnell, associate professor of history at the College of the Holy Cross, will present the lecture, “Pictures vs. Words? Public History, Tolerance and the Challenge of Jacob Riis,” at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 26, at Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University, 3011 Whitney Ave. This event is free but registration is limited. Register at www.ighm.org.

Born in Denmark in May 1849, Riis immigrated to the United States in 1870. After a series of odd jobs, he became a police reporter, a job he enhanced with his photographic skills. Led by his interest in New York City's tenement life and the harsh conditions the residents endured, he used his camera as a tool to bring about change. With his 1890 book, “How the Other Half Lives,” Riis put those living conditions on display in a package that couldn’t be ignored, and his career as a social reformer was launched.

“Through his pioneering use of photography and muckraking prose, most especially in ‘How the Other Half Lives,’ Jacob Riis earned fame as a humanitarian in the classic Progressive Era mold,” O’Donnell said. “Yet in recent years, some revisionist scholars have denounced Riis as an unreconstructed racist who merely posed as a benevolent reformer. Riis' words and photos provide the public historian with an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the complex questions of assimilation and Americanization, labor exploitation, cultural diversity, social control and middle-class fear that lie at the heart of the American immigration narrative.”

O’Donnell, who is a professional historian, author, speaker, teacher and podcaster, earned his Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including: “Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age America,” “Visions of America: A History of the United States” and “1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History.”

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University is home to the world's largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the Irish Famine. The museum preserves, builds and presents its art collection to stimulate reflection, inspire imagination and advance awareness of Ireland’s Great Hunger and its long aftermath on both sides of the Atlantic.

The collection focuses on the famine years from 1845-52, when blight destroyed virtually all of Ireland's potato crops for consecutive years. The crop destruction, coupled with British governmental indifference to the plight of the Irish, who at the time were part of the United Kingdom, resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million Irish men, women and children and the emigration of more than 2 million to nations around the world. This tragedy occurred even though exports of food and livestock from Ireland continued and, in some cases, actually increased during the years of the Great Hunger.

Photo courtesy of Quinnipiac University