Lecture from UConn professor Dr. Mary Burke on Grace Kelly: Princess Grace and the Making of Irish America

This lecture focuses on the publicly curated persona of Grace Kelly, which diminished the usual associations of her Irish Catholic famine-era roots. Her globally broadcast 1956 royal wedding at Monaco transformed the film star into the “Irish Princess.” This rise to the highest social echelon paved the way for “America’s royals,” the Kennedys, as well as broader Irish American assimilation.

Mary M. Burke, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast. A widely published scholar of Irish and Irish American identities and cultures, she is the author of the award-winning Race, Politics, and Irish-America: A Gothic History (Oxford UP, 2023), from which her talk will draw.