Dr. Oliver Hennessey received his B.A. in English Language and Literature from Merton College, University of Oxford. He holds a Master’s in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College, Dublin, and a Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature from The University of Alabama. He has taught at Xavier University of Louisiana since 2008, and currently serves as Department Head. His teaching interests include the history of the English language, Shakespeare, Postcolonial Anglophone writing, and contemporary speculative fiction. Dr. Hennessey’s book, Yeats, Shakespeare, and Irish Cultural Nationalism, was published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2013. He has published in journals such as English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, The Yeats-Eliot Review, The South Central Review, The Yeats Journal of Korea, and Intertexts. He has been invited to speak internationally, at the National Library of Ireland (2016), and at the annual conference of the Yeats Society of Korea, in Seoul (2018). His recent writing focuses on the occult nationalism of Ireland’s most celebrated poet, W. B. Yeats.

Research Interests:
British & Irish Studies
Shakespeare & Early Modern Drama
W. B Yeats, the Irish Literary Revival & Irish Modernism
Modern Irish Poetry
Literary Nationalism

Office Hours:
Fall ‘22 - MWF 1:00-2:00; TR 12:15-1:45