A native of the Bogside in Derry, Seamus Deane is currently the Keough Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Under his stewardship, the Department of Irish Studies at Notre Dame has vastly expanded its library holdings and now reaches the graduate level.

Deane was previously Professor of Modern English and American Literature at University College, Dublin and has been a visiting professor at Berkeley and Reed College. Deane also joined with Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel, his old schoolmates from St. Columb’s in Derry, to found the Field Day Theater, a community-based theater company. Their collaboration has also led to the creation of the Field Day Publishing Company, a Derry-based cooperative of writers and scholars.

A widely acclaimed literary scholar and intellectual, Deane is the editor of The Field Day Anthology, a three-volume compendium of Irish writing from the sixth century to the present. The Anthology laid the groundwork for a re-evaluation of the place of writing in Irish history in an attempt to reclaim the writing long-appropriated by the English national literary canon. Deane’s critical works on Irish literature include some 70 journal essays and his larger works, Celtic Revivals (1985) and A Short History of Irish Literature (1986). He has also published several collections of poetry; the first, Gradual Wars (1972), won the AE Memorial Award.

His recent novel Reading in the Dark (1996), a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in Deny in the 40s and 50s, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Deane received his BA and MA from Queen’s university, Belfast where he studied English literature. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from Cambridge.