The Departure Of Irish Emigrants For America, Circa 1880; Courtesy of Dr. Stack

The Noble Maritime Collection welcomes Dr. Elizabeth Stack, Executive Director of the American Irish Historical Society, as part of the The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art's The Voices of Diaspora program series. The scholarly consensus is that approximately one million people died of Irish famine-related causes between 1846 and 1851. Dr. Stack will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato crops and why that had devastating consequences for some of the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, and recount testimonies from eyewitnesses. American charity in Ireland, the mass migration, and life on the so-called coffin ships as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean will also be covered.

Elizabeth Stack, PhD, is the Executive Director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. She was previously the executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, NY and before that she taught Irish and Irish American History and was an 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. She has a master’s degree in Anglo-Irish Relations in the 20th Century from University College Dublin in Ireland. From Listowel in County Kerry, Elizabeth sees a huge connection between her own experience as an immigrant, and the important mission of the Society to preserve and share Irish contributions to American history. Dr. Stack commented, “Major areas of interaction between Ireland and America have included diplomacy, economy, education, nationalism, tourism, culture, philanthropy, and the free flow of capital. However, immigration has given the most significant and lasting link. We explore all these topics in the Society.”

This event is FREE with museum admission.