John Zumbrunnen has wide-ranging interests in the history of political thought, democratic theory, and American political thought. Much of his published scholarship has been on ancient Greek political thought and its relevance for thinking about democracy today. He is also an UW Educational Innovation Senior Fellow, working in particular on issues surrounding online teaching and learning. A recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the Phi Beta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award and the Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award, Zumbrunnen leads a short term summer study abroad program in Dublin and Belfast (“UW Rebels and Revolutions in Ireland”) and is working with partners to develop a study away program in Puerto Rico (“Ecological Restoration as Civic Engagement”).
The book choice for this semester is Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. This book discusses the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past–Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
This event is by invitation only. If you are a K-12 teacher living in the Madison area and interested in joining, please contact Nancy Heingartner at nheingartner@wisc.edu (mailto:nheingartner@wisc.edu).