Daniel Gahan, history professor at the University of Evansville, will speak about the making of a modern Ireland Feb. 7 at UMSL.

1798 was a heroic and tragic year in Irish history. An uprising against British rule lasted from May to September that year.

The degree to which 1798 gave shape to the entire Irish separatist movement of the next two centuries and the extent to which it constituted a fundamental turning-point in the social, cultural and political history of the country will be the focus of a lecture by Daniel Gahan, history professor at the University of Evansville in Indiana.

Gahan will discuss “A Whole Countryside on the March: The Rebellion of 1798 and the Making of Modern Ireland” at 12:30 p.m. Feb. 7 in 331 Social Sciences & Business at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

Gahan is an award-winning scholar and teacher. His scholarly work has focused primarily on the Rebellion of 1798 and secondarily on Irish agrarian history, including the history of Irish rural communities in the United States in the 19th century.

He joined the history department of the University of Evansville in 1986, where he has taught courses on various aspects of European and American history in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The event is sponsored by the Smurfit-Stone Endowed Professorship in Irish Studies at UMSL and International Studies and Programs at UMSL.