Celtic Studies Commons^™

"Celts In The Valley", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The Tennessee Valley of North Alabama retains linguistic and cultural influences from the languages of its inhabitants. Scot Irish inhabitants of Celtic origin produced a dialect that McDonald claims as a "Celtic character" through tracing common regional expressions back to their roots in the original Gaelic.

“The Contributing Cultures Of Ancient Peoples At The Muscle Shoals”, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Writings

An article that addresses the ancient history of Muscle Shoals, Alabama with particular attention to the early cultures of influence, including indigenous tribes, such as the Cherokee and Chickasaws, and eventual European settlers of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic descent.

Effects Of Christian Colonization On Celtic Mythology From Ancient Ireland To Contemporary Paganism, Evelyn Hanna

Aurora

Christian colonization played a critical role in reshaping Celtic mythology, yet the extent to which these transformations continue to influence modern perceptions of Paganism remains underexamined. This study investigates how the transcription of originally oral Celtic traditions by Christian monks altered the preservation of myth through reinterpretation and ideological influence. Drawing on historical and mythological sources, it analyzes key examples, including the transformation of the goddess Brigid into Saint Brigid and the reclassification of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Aos Sí as folkloric or demonic figures. These cases demonstrate that the recording of myth was not a neutral process …

From Farewell To Fáilte: The Voices Of Iowa’S Irish Daughters, Katie Hermanson

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Irish women’s immigration to Iowa brought rich culture and lasting impacts, despite their contributions being silenced by history. Women left Ireland for economic opportunity and education abroad to support their impoverished families. Millions emigrated between 1830 and 1915, spreading across the world. The Irish women who came to the United States encountered discrimination and cultural stereotyping as they worked in domestic service, developed religious orders, taught school, owned businesses and raised families. Women bore the burden of supporting their families in Ireland by sending remittances home and communicating between countries. Their cultural identity as exiles dwelled in guilt for leaving …

Sir Gawain, The Travelling Sun Of Medieval Literature, Leah H. Dascoli

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines Sir Gawain’s roles in Medieval Arthurian literature from various geolinguistical regions in Europe. Starting in the twelfth century and extending to the late fifteenth century, there is a shift in literary legends that can be glimpsed through understanding what roles the authors of the Arthurian genre use for Sir Gawain.

By incorporating evidence within the text and supplementary evidence of historical context during which the stories were written and translated, this study seeks to create a discussion between the more obscure sources and more circulating sources in which Sir Gawain is a common factor. It argues that …

From Pagan Chieftains To Christian Kings: Shaping Medieval Nordic Political Culture, Carissa Chinnery

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

The Interaction Between The Dagda’S Harp And Celtic-Inspired Music, Sixie Chen, Jeanne Sumrall

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between one of the Irish mythological symbols---The Dagda’s Harp and Celtic-Inspired Music. In Irish mythology, the god Dagda is able to use his harp to cause grief, joy, and sleep to people. The Dagda and his kin escape with the harp in battle against the Fomorians, which gave birth to these three strains of music, which would be played throughout Ireland as well as to the seasons, which sprang from his songs.

The Stained & Bloody Cloths Of Ireland: A Material Culture View Of Irish Shame, Oppression, Morality And Repression., Catherine Harper Ph.D

Arts and Design

The Stained and Bloody Cloths of Ireland presents a textiles and material culture view of Irish shame, oppression, morality and repression.

Ireland – north and south – has sustained significant change in the last 100 years, since partial independence from Britain, accelerating at the end of the twentieth century with legalisation of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, the end – or at least reduction – of the ‘Troubles’ in the North, and freedom to choose abortion and reproductive autonomy.

In parallel to this, many instances of societal and ecclesiastical abuse, sexual repression, superstition and cruelty, have come to light through a …

‘An Intriguing But Ambiguous Privilege’: Adventures In Franco-Irish Relations Through The Prism Of The Diplomatic Meal, Elaine Mahon

Books/Book Chapters

This essay discusses the welcome banquet held in February 1945 in honour of the newly appointed French diplomatic envoy to Ireland, Jean Rivière, hosted by Éamon de Valera at Iveagh House, the headquarters of the Irish Department of External Affairs. The banquet took place at a moment when ‘an intriguing but ambiguous privilege’ had been granted by Charles de Gaulle’s Provisional Government to Ireland as the only country permitted to retain its diplomatic representative to France in the post-liberation period. Following the fall of the Vichy regime and the liberation of France in August 1944, de Gaulle’s government de- manded …

Championing Food Studies Within The Field Of Irish Studies: A Serendipitous Autoethnographic Journey, Mairtin Macconiomaire

Doctoral

Food permeates every aspect of life and society, from birth to death—from the new-born’s first suckle to the food traditions associated with Irish wakes and funerals. Essential for survival, it has historically proven academically elusive, hidden in plain sight. Entangled with the domestic and the feminine, it was traditionally regarded as too mundane and too quotidian for consideration. Depending on how you define it, Irish Studies has somewhere between 50 and 100 years of history as an academic discipline. Food Studies is a more recent academic phenomenon, which has been steadily growing internationally since last decade of the twentieth century. …

Saint Brigit And Her Habits: Exploring Queerness In Early Medieval Ireland, Jacqueline K. Stephenson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Saint Brigit's behavior and reception by society highlight an avenue by which women in the early medieval period could escape societal strictures, exercising agency over their bodies and their romantic choices, and carve out a distinct and unexpected place for themselves in a Christian patriarchal society. In Saint Brigit’s case, this is especially demonstrated by the breadth of her portrayed power as not just a nun but a saint, her extreme resistance to marriage, and her frequent comparisons to men. Indeed, her hagiography, written by Cogitosus in the seventh century, positioned her as one of the three principal and earliest …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

“Textual Discovery” is presented to pique interest in the obscure, yet unique works in Irish language, literature, and history that have been largely forgotten over time. Articles will cover different subject areas, authors, themes, and eras related to the depth and consequence of the Gaeilge experience in its varied forms. The inspiration comes from selections found within the affiliated Irish Rare Book and Special Collections Library at Seton Hall University, but on a deeper level this piece serves to honor works that can be found listed in bibliographical compilations and on the shelves of libraries across the world.

Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, And The Lives Of Irish Emigrant Women By Elaine Farrell And Leanne Mccormick, Penguin, 2023, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Coda: Storytelling As A Cultural Context In Vona Groarke’S Hereafter, Niamh Macgloin

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Storytelling As A Cultural Context For London-Irish Writing In Donall Macamhlaigh’S Schnitzer O’Shea, Jimmy Murphy’S Kings Of The Kilburn High Road And Enda Walsh’S The Walworth Farce, Niamh Macgloin

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The oral tradition of storytelling is culturally significant to Irish literature and important for immigrant communities as a way to connect with their home culture and share stories without the necessity of literacy. This essay considers the motif of storytelling and the importance of voicing the community in much London-Irish literature. In Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, a play within a play, the main character obsesses over retelling the story of their emigration from Ireland but corrupts its purity as he pushes his narrative of innocence too far, and the cycle of storytelling begins again. Similarly, in Murphy’s Kings of the …

A Gaelic South African Revival?: The Irish Republican Association Of South Africa, The Republic, And Irish South African Identity, Tom Mcgrath

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

In September 1920, at a meeting in Johannesburg, the Irish National Association of South Africa rebranded itself as the Irish Republican Association of South Africa. The IRASA was unique within the history of the Irish in South Africa. While it existed only until 1923, it was the largest Irish group in South African history, made evident by the establishment of its own journal, The Republic. The association was fundamentally devoted to nurturing an “Irish Afrikander” identity and culture within South Africa, primarily through the promotion of Irish works in its journal, from excerpts of Thomas Davis’ writings to a full …

Hereafter: The Telling Life Of Ellen O’Hara: An Interview With Vona Groarke, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

The Hidden History Of The Norseman And Celts, Amber Nicole Johnson

Whittier Scholars Program

When people hear the word Celts or Vikings there seems to be a common stigma or romanticization of them. This seems to stem from the early iron age and has shifted over to the 21st century with the production of movies and franchises. They are often depicted as being savage, barbaric, or warrior based (a term used to describe them) when there is a whole other side to these people. In the Spring of 2023, I took an independent study course that allowed me to examine the available archaeological and other evidence to understand the identities of the Germanic and …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

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.

Crime On The Periphery: Tana French’S Criminal Geography, Deirdre Flynn

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

This article will analyze how Tana French conceptualizes spatiality, focusing on her use of liminal spaces, edgelands and peripheries, as the settings for her crime scenes. Instead of more traditional Irish literary urban-rural binaries, French exploits the interface of both places, reflecting a contemporary post-industrial, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. In particular, in In the Woods (2007) the untamed woodland behind the housing estate in Knocknaree becomes an interfacial zone between the rural and urban, past and present. In The Likeness (2009), Whitethorn House sits at the edge of the village geographically, politically, and historically. In French’s first two novels peripheral spaces …

Tana French: An Interview With Brian Cliff, Brian Cliff

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Resurrecting Gaelic: Modernity And Heritage Language Revival In Scotland In A Comparative Perspective, Sean Coady

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Many people from across the world have little or no connection to their heritage languages. Whether this loss is caused by conquest, colonialization, or simply lack of parent-child transmission, many believe that they are missing an integral part of their cultural identity and want to reclaim the languages of their forebearers. There is wide debate about how, why, and if this linguistic reclamation and revitalization should happen because, in the face of modernity and language evolution, the best solutions are not always clear. What constitutes successful language revitalization in the modern world, and why does it happen? Gaelic in Scotland …

A “Medieval” Myth For A “Modern” Empire Britain Under The Shadow Of Arthur (1461–1612), Julian Gonzalez De Leon Heiblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the use of the Arthurian myth from the fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries, as a narrative that connected a set of political principles for the unification of Britain and its imperial expansion. Joining other competing political myths in the British archipelago, the political significance of the Arthurian myth has nevertheless been overlooked. On the one hand, the myth informed the transformations of kingship in England and Wales from the crowning of Edward IV to the early years of James’ English reign. It did so specifically within the process of institutionalizing a British crown which was intertwined with …

Brigid Of Kildare: The Saint Who Got A Facelift, Aimee Hunt

Student Research

On the outskirts of Papal authority, early medieval Ireland created its own Christian identity separate from other European nations closer to Rome. Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland, played important yet problematic roles in that identity. After her death, the church began to alter her history. Being a female bishop, performing the first recorded abortion, and having both men and women within her monastery, Brigid had trodden on the male-dominated system in a way that few women had. Deemed unacceptable but having already been sainted, the Catholic church gave Brigid a holy facelift.

The Shanachie, Volume 33, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

In this issue: Theater presents musical on career of ace softball pitcher Joan Joyce -- The railroad era and an Irish family -- Lyons family immigrated to Connecticut by way of Quebec -- Plumber with Leitrim roots linked to New Haven Fenians -- Collection of Irish railroad wife's writings preserved at UConn.

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Notes From A ‘World That Had Forgotten How To Give’: Edna O’Brien’S Stories Of Resilience, Mine Özyurt Kılıç

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

“Say It With Flowers”: Exile, Ecology, And Edna O’Brien, Annie Williams

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

“Edna O’Brien: An Interview With Maureen O’Connor”, Maureen O'Connor, Martha Carpentier, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.