The Harvard Celtic Colloquium was established in 1980 by two graduate students in the Harvard University Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures as a forum in which graduate students could share their work and gain experience in professional academia. Since then, it has been organized annually by a team of students in the department, grown in size, and gained an international reputation which annually draws a diverse mix of scholars from around the world to present papers on all facets of Celtic Studies.

The Harvard Celtic Colloquium is the only conference in the field of Celtic Studies to be wholly organized and run by graduate students. Since its inception, established and internationally-renowned scholars in Celtic as well as graduate students, junior academics, and unaffiliated scholars have been drawn to this dynamic setting, presenting papers on ancient, medieval, and modern topics in the many disciplines relating to Celtic Studies; including literature, linguistics, art, archeology, government, economics, music, and history.

Papers given at the Colloquium may be submitted for review to the organizers of the conference, who become the editors for those papers selected for publication in the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium. Only papers presented at the annual conference are considered for publication.

Harvard University Press is proud to announce that we will distribute the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium. Two new issues are available this Fall: Volume 18/19 (1998 and 1999) and Volume 20/21 (2000 and 2001). Back issues are also available.

Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 20 includes “Retoiric and Composition in Geneamuin Chormaic,” by Hugh Fogarty; “Classical Ethnography and Celts: Can We Trust the Sources?” by Philip Freeman; “Prayers, Prizefights and Prostitution: The Medieval Irish Cemetery and Its Many Uses,” by Susan Leigh Fry; “Magical Realism and the Mabinogi: An Exercise in Methodology,” by Michael Linkletter; “Rebuke and Revision in the Early Irish Annals: The Death-Notices of Muirchertach mac Ercae [†534],” by Laurence Maney; “‘To a man for the King’: The Allegiance of Welsh Catholics during the First Civil War, 1642–46,” by Robert Matthews; “King and Druid,” by Arun Micheelsen; “‘Words, words, words’: Language about Language in France and Ireland,” by Grace Neville; “Ystoria Tri Brenin o Gwlen,” by Prydwyn Piper; and “Highland Motives in the Jacobite Rising of 1745–46: ‘Forcing Out,’ Traditional Documentation and Gaelic Poetry,” by James A. Stewart, Jr.

Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 21 includes “Gendering the Vita Prima: An Examination of St. Brigid’s Role as ‘Mary of the Gael,’” by Diane Peters Auslander; “Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica: A Mythology of Greek Expansion in Celtic Lands,” by Timothy P. Bridgman; “The Wealth of the Medieval Welsh Gentry: The Case of Gwilym ap Gruffydd of Penrhyn,” by A. D. Carr; “Celtic Languages in the 1910 U.S. Census,” by Jonathan Dembling; “Digging Deeper: Adventures in Medieval Irish Burial and the Case for Interdisciplinary Scholarship,” by Susan Leigh Fry; “Laoiseach Mac an Bhaird and the Politics of Close Reading,” by Sarah E. McKibben; “Prescient Birds and Prospective Kings: Further Comments on Irish Elements in the Eddic Poem Rígsþula,” by Amy Eichhorn Mulligan; “The Descent of the Gods: Creation, Cosmogony, and Divine Order in Lebor Gabála,” by Sharon Paice Macleod; “Babel Is Come Again: Linguistic Colonisation and the Bardic Response in Early Modern Ireland,” by Patricia Palmer; “‘In Defiance of the Gospel and by Authority of the Devil’: Criticism of Welsh Marriage Law by the English Ecclesiastical Establishment and Its Socio-Political Context,” by Laura Radiker; and “The Way We Were: Twentieth Century Brittany through the Eyes of Breton Language Memorialists,” by Lenora Timm.