Digital Commons Network^™

Rewrite The Past And Remember The Future: How Expatriates Built An Independent Ireland, Morgan Grabowski

English Honors Papers

This paper seeks to answer the question “How did Ireland create a unique identity after gaining independence from England?” In order to answer that question, I analyzed five different Irish authors who wrote in a timeframe spanning the first half of the twentieth century. These authors are W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Elizabeth Bowen, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. These authors, at one point or another, wrote texts which are considered Irish, while living abroad. Because of this, this paper focuses on their status as expatriates, and how that influenced their contributions to the Irish Literary Revival, which is the literary …

Gladstone And Kuyper: Ireland And Revolution, Africa And War, Keith C. Sewell

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Defining Gastrocriticism As A Critical Paradigm On The Example Of Irish Literature And Food Writing: A Vade Mecum, Anke Klitzing

Doctoral

The aim of this study is to map out the gastrocritical approach, using Irish literature and writing to test its premises, and to provide a vade mecum for its practical application, particularly for interdisciplinary scholars. The gastrocritical approach furnishes a “culinary lens” for reading food and foodways in imaginative texts, informed by work in the field of food studies and gastronomy. The approach was broadly characterised by Tobin in 2002, but only sparsely used since. The past fifteen years have seen an increasing self-awareness and reflexivity in the field of literary food studies. As the field matures, there have been …

Bloody Sunday: Death & Press, Joseph Gaffney

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project is a historical paper on Bloody Sunday, a day of violence in Dublin during the Irish War for Independence on November 21, 1920, analyzing primary and secondary sources centered on the subject to answer specific historiographical research questions. The primary objective of this research project is to understand the immediate social and political ramifications of Bloody Sunday in Ireland and England as reflected in the spread of information via the written press. The goal of the written analysis will be to answer a series of historical research questions. How were both the IRA’s killings and the subsequent reprisal …

Gothic Girlhood And Resistance: Confronting Ireland’S Neoliberal Containment Culture In Tana French’S The Secret Place, Mollie Kervick

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The Secret Place (2014) exposes a persistent Western cultural impulse to contain the emotions of teenage girls when they demonstrate control over their lives. In the Irish context, the dismissal of teenage girls is resonant of a containment culture in which controlling women’s bodies and minds has been essential to upholding heteropatriarchal ideals. Resistance to the novel’s unresolved supernatural elements by readers and critics and the lack of sustained academic scholarship also point to an unsettling complacency with the neoliberal impulse to contain female emotion and lived experience in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Clubbing Criminals: The Hirschfeld Centre And The Emergence Of Queer Club Culture In Dublin, Ann-Marie Hanlon

Irish Communication Review

Ireland in the 1970s and 80s was an extremely hostile place for the LGBT community: male homosexuality remained a criminal offence and social, legal and political oppression was the norm. This article documents the emergence of a nascent queer clubbing scene in Dublin in this period and investigates the historical intersection of partying and politics in a DIY translocal music scene defined by the sexual politics of the time. In particular, this research focuses on exploring the social and political importance of Ireland’s first purpose built queer club, Flikkers, which opened in the Hirschfeld Centre, Temple Bar on St. Patrick’s …

He Had Two Women To Die For, Ireland And The Missus”: Mothers As Abject And Sons As Scapegoats In Edna O’Brien’S House Of Splendid Isolation And In The Forest, Emily Nix

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis examines the protagonists in Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest and House of Splendid Isolation and applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Rene Girard’s theory of the scapegoat. In doing so, I attempt to give a richer understanding of O’Brien’s masculine and feminine characters and how their constructed identities are based on their cultural circumstances and positions in their societies. I use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the single women in these novels, Eily and Josie, who become metaphorical single mothers by the invasions of young men into their homes. Then, I apply Girard’s theory of the …

How Irish Food Criticism Reflected And Helped Shape A Changing Nation, 1988-2008, Diarmuid Cawley, Claire O' Mahony

Articles

The perception and practice of eating out are linked to larger socioeconomic patterns. Newspaper restaurant reviews provide evidence of these trends which can be traced along a specific timeline. The early 1980s in Ireland were a difficult time for restaurants due to high taxes on food, a national recession and a lack of positive restaurant reviews. The economic upturn in the following decade contributed to unprecedented developments in the restaurant industry. Dining out became a regular activity – fueled in part by restaurant criticism by Irish food journalists, which joined pre-existing theatre, music and book reviews as regular features in …

Hunger, Capitalism, And Modern Gothic Literature, Becky Tynan

Honors Program Theses and Projects

In Ireland, the Great Famine of the 1840s caused not only hunger and starvation, but also diseases, emigration, and a rupture in the social framework. Many social critics of the time argued that a lack of food came from an imbalance in society between those who could afford to eat and those who could not. Hunger was described as a disease because British colonial society depended on feeding citizens from its economic and political menu. Irish people under British landlords lacked the ability to own land outright and this supported an inequality in land ownership that in turn affected government …

Broken Mirrors: Iterations Of The Other In The Post-Colonial Novel, Kelly Bowers

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This thesis explores the post-colonial notion of the Other as an iteration of the broader cultural tendency to make meaning via binary opposition. The study of Wide Sargasso Sea, Infidels, and At Swim Two Boys reveals the connective thread of empire and subjugation that transcends time and place. Furthermore, I examine the various attempts of characters to resist this reality by creating an alternate space within the dominant culture. My interest lies in exploring the ways in which various markers of identity form the “self,” and consequently how characters attempt to gain agency and fully realize identity despite marginalization and …

What It Was & What I Know: Attempts At Family History, Katherine Reardon

Honors College

Family stories and family histories are contingent on how they are remembered. As these stories are passed down, the ways that they are remembered can change, with the truthful aspects of these stories disappearing over time. As a result, many family stories are not necessarily truthful, but this does not discount their value. The aim of this project is to explore these ideas while also answering the following question: to what extent are family stories bound by the ‘truth’? In order to answer this question, I have explored my own family stories that I know may not be true and …

The Táin, Luke Hart-Moynihan

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The Táin (Myth / Epic Fantasy, Feature) - In mythic iron-age Ireland, an exiled king allies with a proud queen to steal a magic bull and retake his former kingdom, but his semi-divine foster-son stands in their way. Based on the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge.

From The Dark Margins To The Spotlight: The Evolution Of Gastronomy And Food Studies In Ireland, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

Books/Book Chapters

For many years, food was seen as too quotidian and belonging to the domestic sphere, and therefore to women, which excluded it from any serious study or consideration in academia. This chapter tracks the evolution of gastronomy and food studies in Ireland. It charts the development of gastronomy as a cultural field, originally in France, to its emergence as an academic discipline with a particular Irish inflection. It details the progress that food history and culinary education have made in Ireland, suggesting that a new liberal / vocational model of culinary education, which commenced in 1999, has helped transform the …

Fledging, Eliza M. Watson

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Fledging is a fictionalized exploration on the complexities of female agency, identity, and relationships in the face of migration. Told through a series of connected short stories inspired by magical realism, memory, and Irish mythology, Fledging seeks to acknowledge the pain and beauty of grief, love, loss, and motherhood.

The Partition Of Ireland: Anglo-Irish Relations As Reflected In A Political Idea, Cian G. Mceneaney

Honors Program Theses and Projects

After years of postponement, and at the time of writing, Britain is set to leave the European Union on December 31, 2020, after complications mainly due to the new-age “Irish Question:'' how to handle the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the south?

Composing Irishness: Remembrances Of The Irish Past Through The Prism Of The Present In Music By Donnacha Dennehy (B. 1970) And Jennifer Walshe (B. 1974), Timothy Diovanni

Masters

Although modern remembrances in the fields of literature, theatre, poetry, and the visual arts have received considerable scholarly attention in Ireland since the publication of History and Memory in Modern Ireland in 2001, similar activities in an Irish art music context remain unexplored. This thesis addresses this lacuna in examining how the contemporary Irish composers Donnacha Dennehy (b. 1970) and Jennifer Walshe (b. 1974) have remembered, reimagined, and reinvented the past to communicate their positions on Irish history and modern Irish society, as well as to respond to recent historical and curatorial practices. Through a series of five works written …

The Poetry Of History: Irish National Imagination Through Mythology And Materiality, Ryan Fay

English Honors Theses

The thesis culminates in the twentieth century and yet it begins with the Ulster Cycle, a period of Irish mythological history that occurred around the first century common era. Indeed, since the time frame was before the arrival of the Gaels, Normans, or Christianity, the extent of this mythology’s relevance today is whatever extent it is conceptualized as “Irish.” As such, the first chapter locks onto an aspect that could feasibly transcend time and resonate with modern Irish society: gender. Of course, the epistemological dynamics of gender^[1] in the first-century common era are vastly different than the twentieth century …

Ulster, Georgia, And The Civil War: Stories Of Variation, William Loveless

Honors Theses

Ulster, Georgia, and The Civil War: Stories of Variation explores the lives of 13 men from Northern Ireland who immigrated to the American South and fought for the Confederacy. The author pursues the stories of each man’s life in order to have a more thorough understanding of what life looked like for Irish/Ulster immigrants in the South during the 19^th century. By looking at the lives of the men in Ulster, their first experiences in the United States, their experiences in the Civil War, and their lives following the war, the author identifies more variation than consistent trends.

Keeping Faith: A Qualitative Study On Religiosity Among Young Catholics In Ireland, Michael A. Clements

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Ireland is a country that is well-known for its Catholic heritage. Despite its global perception as a Catholic country, the Emerald Isle has experienced rapid secularization within the last 30 years, during which rates of Church attendance and Catholic self-identification have fallen dramatically. Likewise, the legalization of abortion, gay marriage, and divorce, concepts contrary to Catholic teaching, further reflect the island's departure from Catholic Orthodoxy. Should the Catholic religion have a future in Ireland, it will lie in the hands of its devout youth: a demographic with relatively little representation in the literature.

Using a hybrid interview and survey format, …

Dark Magic Part 1, Rachel Quaid

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Dark Magic is a novel that mixes old folklore with fantasy and a splash of modern day. This first part of the novel readies the readers to enter the world of the old Irish Aos Sì. Ophelia is a witch, living in the land of the fae. She signs up to help with a research study to better her chances at succeeding as a healer. Rhea is a member of the Tuatha de Danann, the fae folk who rule the land from their courts of old. She is sent by her caretaker to observe this study. Everyone knows witches and …

Cocktail Menus Ireland (1970s-2020) Version 1, James Murphy

Other resources

Cocktail Menus Ireland (1970s-2020) Version 1 highlights a small selection of cocktail menus from cocktail bars, public bars, hotel bars and Cocktail Clubs covering the period of 1970 up to 2020. These menus and their recipes help to identify the creativity, innovation and attention to detail in which the establishments highlighted here and their staff (cocktail bartenders, mixologists and management teams) poured into these menus. The menus also highlight the changing drinks fashions, how cocktail prices began to change, the variety of ingredients, the rise of the crafted approach towards ingredients sourcing and preparation. The impact of visual graphic illustrations, …

My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-cultural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the …

Ireland In The European Eye: At Home In The Heart Of Europe : Book Review: An Excellent Analysis Of Ireland’S Interactions With Its European Allies, Eamon Maher

Articles

This essay collection provides an excellent analysis of Ireland’s various interactions with its European allies, from the early medieval period up to the present moment. The essays cover things as diverse as history, religion, literature, tourism, politics, trade, journalism, architecture, music and film in 22 chapters by experts from various disciplines, who serve up an informative and welcome survey that emphasises the historical ties that bind the Emerald Isle to its largest neighbour and the Continent.

Keepers Of The Port: Visualising Place And Identity In A Dublin Dock Community, Moira Sweeney

Doctoral

This practice-based thesis responds to the absence of documentary film or photographic studies and scholarship that embrace the contrasting experiences of different dock working constituencies in the transforming early twenty-first century space of Dublin Port. It is a filmic investigation into how the experiences and memories of this community of workers in Dublin’s surviving port space shape their urban identity and sense of place, undertaken with regard to the sensuous, haptic qualities of documentary and ethnographic filmmaking. In the ever-shifting world of neoliberalism, its narratives – in relation to labour practices – prioritise faceless markets over the humanity of working …

Bernard Maclaverty: A Novelist With A Catholic Sensibiliy., Eamon Maher

Articles

Like many others I would imagine, my first introduction to the work of the Belfast writer Bernard MacLaverty (born in 1942) was through the successful film adaptations of his first novel, Lamb, with Liam Neeson in the main role, and the highly successful ‘Troubles’ film, Cal, based on the novel of the same name. Nominated for several prestigious literary awards, a member of Aosdána, author of numerous well-regarded novels and short story collections, MacLaverty is nevertheless largely neglected in terms of the critical attention he has attracted. The shining exceptions are the essay collection, About Bernard MacLaverty: New …

Volunteer Women: Militarized Femininity In The 1916 Easter Rising, Sasha Conaway

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Women were an integral part to the Easter Rising, yet until recently, their contributions have been forgotten. Those who have been remembered are often women who bucked conservative Irish society’s notions of femininity and chose to actively participate in combat, which has led to a skewed narrative that favors their contributions over the contributions of other women. Historians and scholars favor these narratives because they are empowering and act as clear foils to the heroic narratives of the male leaders in the Easter Rising. In reality, however, most of the women who joined Cumann na mBan or worked for the …

History, Security, And Peace: A Comparison Of Sectarian Conflicts In Northern Ireland And The Middle East, Ahmed I. Hamed, Noah Chamberlain Spicer

Student Symposium

“The Troubles,” a violent conflict that began in Northern Ireland in 1968 and lasted until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, saw high levels of violence and terrorism on both sides--Protestants and Catholics--of the socio-political conflict. While major issues of violence were addressed by the Good Friday Agreement, many key ontological issues remain very much alive and active, resulting in “peace walls” which separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Northern Ireland. The impediments to peace stem not just from these issues of violence, but also from the minimal attention paid to ontological security in peace negotiations: the security of oneself, …

Host City, Inishmore, Jordan Sandfer

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

A nomadic con artist, bent on inflating the price of his family land, deceives a small Irish town on the verge of bankruptcy into hosting an international sporting event.

The Survival Of Irish Gaelic In The Gaeltacht Of County Galway, 1880-1920, Eileen Hogan

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the 1850s in post-famine Ireland, the Irish-Gaelic language was neglected in favor of English which equipped speakers to be members of the United Kingdom. But, the agrarian society of the County Galway Gaeltacht (designated Irish-speaking region) remained a stronghold of the Irish language despite British imperialists. The Survival of Irish-Gaelic addresses the survival of the native language in the Galway Gaeltacht. While my work has identified several reasons for the survival in this one specific region, this thesis focuses upon interrelated explanations. First, the Catholic schools in the Gaeltacht continued to teach in Irish despite the attempts of the …

[Mis-]Managing Fisheries On The West Coast Of Ireland In The Nineteenth Century, John B. Roney

History Faculty Publications

This study focuses on the cultural heritage of artisan coastal fishing in the west of Ireland in the 19th century. The town and port of Dingle, County Kerry, offers an important case study on the progress of local development and changing British policies. While there was clearly an abundance of fish, the poverty and the lack of capital for improvements in ports, vessels, gear, education, and transportation, left the fishing industry underdeveloped until well after the 1890s. In addition, a growing rift developed between the traditional farmer-fishermen and the new middle-class capitalist companies. After several royal commissions examined the fishing …