Irish Identities Revisited in Mary O'Donnell's "Empire"

Atatürk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 2020

This article aims to examine the juxtaposition of individual stories and collective history in J.G. Farrell's Troubles to present a nuanced reading of identity politics in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. Farrell's the Lost Man Booker Prize recipient novel portrays one of the most tumultuous periods of Irish history (1919-1922) focusing on the daily lives of characters rather than the major political actors of the time. The novel, thus, prioritizes the stories and tribulations of ordinary people in a highly polarized society that incessantly urge individuals to define their alliances. This article contends that the novel's representation of the period emphasizes the historical trauma as experienced by the characters rather than presenting a nostalgic glorification of the British or the Irish.

Radical History Review 143, 2022

This special issue of Radical History Review showcases new approaches to the Irish historical experience, embracing new global histories of capitalism, empire, colonialism, race, and gender.

Virginia Woolf in Context, ed. Bryony Randall and Jane Goldman. Cambridge University Press, 2012: 206-18.

This paper compares 'When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland – Unfinished History' by Marianne Elliott and 'Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race' by Bruce Nelson in order to demonstrate home modern Irish historians write about Irish identity. Both of these authors attempt to understand the complex idea of Irish identity through different structures while similarly approaching the topic from outside the conventions of the established Irish historiographies.

Links & Letters, 2006

Wasafiri, 2010

Irish Political Studies, 2024

In his essay "Subjugation," James Joyce writes, "Rights when violated, institutions set at nought, privileges disregarded, all these, not as shibboleths and war-cries, but as deep-seated thorough realities, will happily always call forth, not in foolish romantic madness nor for passionate destruction, but with unyielding firmness of resistance, the energies and sympathies of men to protect them and defend them." 1 In this and many other of his early writings, Joyce evaluates Ireland's relationship to neighboring island Britain as a member of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often criticizing the presumed aggressive hubris of Britain in its economic and political domination over Ireland, but also lamenting the static and paralyzed nature of the Irish in their attempt to assert themselves as a nation-state independent from British and Catholic cultural hegemony over the country. While he does not spare Ireland from a stinging criticism of its inability to resist oppression and to define and rule itself, he exposes the actual experience of paralysis in the face of foreign rule, allowing the Irish experience of subjugation to be known to the rest of the world. What Joyce's fiction exposes most clearly is the traumatic and paralyzing nature of Irish life, as his characters come to startling and disturbing realizations of their lack of agency, of the impossibility of controlling one's own fate or destiny under foreign rule.

Journal of Contemporary History, 2010

Maggie O’Sullivan’s persistent interest in investigating voicelessness and marginalisation in her poetry is informed by the diasporic history and cultural legacies of her Irish heritage. Drawing on Brian McHale’s notion of ‘archaeological poetry’ and especially his remarks concerning recent ‘material poetry’, I examine O’Sullivan’s ‘excavation’ of this history via the material dimensions of the poetic page. I trace her engagement with Irish history in her poem that bread should be, and its echoes in another of her works A Natural History in 3 incomplete Parts. Focusing on her use of the visual aspects of the printed page and their connections to the oral/aural and to performance, I propose that her poems physically enact a sense of traumatic history as embodied, and passed down corporeally. I argue that the material page is a primary means by which O’Sullivan engages with the problem of giving form and shape to inarticulate, suppressed and negatively-defined presences.

2011

Irish History Review

A review of Alice Stopford Green, ‘Epilogue 1815-1914’ to J.R. Green, A Short History of the English People (Macmillan, 1916); David Cannadine, Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (Allen Lane, 2017); Helen Kingstone, Victorian Narratives of the Recent Past: Memory, History, Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

In this project I trace Irish ethnic identity formation in the United States and the creation of the Irish-American narrative throughout the twentieth century as reflected in Irish-American life-writing-autobiographical or at least semi-autobiographical fiction and memoir-from just after World War II to the early 2000s. All of the works included in this study examine in some way the question of what it means to be Irish in America. The authors in this study collectively show how an Irish identity was given up in America and eventually pieced back together again. Some of the original elements remained, but others were forgotten, misunderstood, or invented. The Irish-American narrative tells of a rise from poverty and oppression to American comfort and respectability. There is pride in this rise, but there is also loss. I argue that ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank Ryan Trimm for his guidance through this project. His suggestions for theoretical readings provide the underpinnings for much of the work I do related to postcolonialism, nation, home, and memory. I am thankful, too, that Naomi Mandel agreed to join my committee. She added the much-needed perspective of ethnic identity formation in the United States, as well as transgenerational trauma. Detailed feedback on my chapters from both Ryan and Naomi has led to a more focused and well-supported argument. To Scott Molloy for his expertise on Edward McSorley's Our Own Kind, and the position of the Irish in America in the twentieth century, I also owe my gratitude. Finally, I could not have started this project without Eve Sterne's reading list on Irish-American history. Thanks as well go to Michelle Caraccia for helping me navigate the dissertation process at URI. My education on Irish Studies has happened outside the bounds of any one university. I am forever grateful to Phil O'Leary, a mentor since my undergraduate days at Boston College, for still responding to my e-mails after all of these years, and for sharing his wisdom, humor, and vast knowledge. I came into this project with an idea on the symbolic nature of Irish-American identity at the end of the twentieth century, and the seemingly contradictory idea that Irish Americans still consider Ireland home. Both of those ideas came from Michael Patrick MacDonald's memoirs of growing up in South Boston, so I am thankful for his writing and correspondence. Those ideas flourished in the presence of my colleagues in the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), many of whom have become friends. Parts of all of these chapters were previewed and refined at ACIS conferences. Thanks go to Jim Rogers v for his mentorship, and his suggestion that I look at Elizabeth Cullinan's work.

ELH, 1992