Speakers to look at wealth, poverty, upward mobility

The phenomenon of chain immigration from Ireland is one subject up for discussion at a one-day symposium at New York University on Saturday, April 21.

The third annual "Who Do We Think We Are?" at Glucksman Ireland House will focus on the theme of "Economics Family-Style."

Prof. Maureen Murphy of Hofstra University will speak about how Irish women, including nuns, financed family members' transatlantic passage; in the same session, Prof. Janet Nolan of Loyola University in Chicago will talk about mother-to-daughter upward mobility.

Bestselling novelist Mary Higgins Clark will give a keynote address on her family's experience and its influence on her life and writing.

Professors Breandán Mac Suibhne and Prof. Kerby Miller will be the speakers in a session entitled "Wealth, Poverty, and Emigration."

Prof. Miriam Nyhan and Prof. Linda Dowling Almeida, co-directors of Glucksman Ireland House NYU's Oral History of Irish America Project, will address the session called "Sharing Communities: Family Life Across the Atlantic."

Irish Consul General Noel Kilkenny, Bruce Morrison, the former congressman from Connecticut, and Judith McGuire, the president of Glucksman Ireland House Advisory Board, will also address the event.