Irish Americans
Irish Americans

Author: William E. Watson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-11-25

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 1610694678

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Virtually every aspect of American culture has been influenced by Irish immigrants and their descendants. This encyclopedia tells the full story of the Irish-American experience, covering immigration, assimilation, and achievement. The Irish have had a significant impact on America across three centuries, helping to shape politics, law, labor, war, literature, journalism, entertainment, business, sports, and science. This encyclopedia explores why the Irish came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive Irish-American identity was formed. Well-known Irish Americans are profiled, but the work also captures the essence of everyday life for Irish-Americans as they have assimilated, established communities, and interacted with other ethnic groups. The approximately 200 entries in this comprehensive, one-stop reference are organized into four themes: the context of Irish-American emigration; political and economic life; cultural and religious life; and literature, the arts, and popular culture. Each section offers a historical overview of the subject matter, and the work is enriched by a selection of primary documents.

Irish Customs and Rituals
Irish Customs and Rituals

Author: Marion McGarry

Publisher: Orpen Press

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 178605096X

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Do you know what a Brideóg is? What could you cure if you licked a lizard nine times? Why is Whit Sunday the unluckiest day of the year? From the author of The Irish Cottage comes a new book, exploring old Irish customs and beliefs. Chapters focus on the quarter-day festivities that marked the commencement of each season: ‘Spring: Imbolc’; ‘Summer: Bealtaine’; ‘Autumn: Lughnasa’ and ‘Winter: Samhain’, and also major life events – ‘Births, Marriages and Death Customs’ – and general beliefs in ‘Spirituality and Well-Being’ and ‘The Supernatural’. Focusing on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Irish Customs and Rituals discusses a time during which many of the practices and beliefs in question went into decline. Many of these customs were rooted in residual pre-Christian beliefs that ran parallel to, and in spite of, conventional religion practised in the country. Some customs were so deep-rooted that despite continued disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church they remain with us today. It is wonderful to see so many traditions still with us, as many are worthwhile remembering, commemorating, or even reviving today. Irish Customs and Rituals will appeal to all those with an interest in Irish history, folklore, culture and social history. Marion McGarry is the author of The Irish Cottage: History, Culture and Design (2017). She has a PhD in Architectural History and an MA in History of Art and Design and is currently a lecturer at Galway–Mayo Institute of Technology. She frequently writes articles about Irish social history and customs.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture

Author: Joe Cleary

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-01-20

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 113982693X

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This Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the historical, social and stylistic complexities of modern Irish culture. Readers will be introduced to Irish culture in its widest sense and helped to find their way through the cultural and theoretical debates that inform our understanding of modern Ireland. The volume combines cultural breadth and historical depth, supported by a chronology of Irish history and arts. A wide selection of essays on a rich variety of Irish cultural forms and practices are complemented by a series of in-depth analyses of key themes in Irish cultural politics. The range of topics covered will enable a comprehensive understanding of Irish culture, while the authors gathered here - all acknowledged experts in their fields - provide stimulating essays that together amount to an invaluable guide to the shaping of modern Ireland.

Irish Culture and the People
Irish Culture and the People

Author: Seamus O'Malley

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0192858416

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This book argues that populism has been a shaping force in Irish literary culture. Populist moments and movements have compelled authors to reject established forms and invent new ones. Sometimes, as in the middle period of W.B. Yeats's work, populism forces a writer into impossible stances, spurring ever greater rhetorical and poetic creativity. At other times, as in the critiques of Anna Parnell or Myles na gCopaleen, authors penetrate the rhetoric fog of populist discourse and expose the hollowness of its claims. Yet in both politics and culture, populism can be a generative force. Daniel O'Connell, and later the Land League, utilized populist discourse to advance Irish political freedom and expand rights. The most powerful works of Lady Gregory and Ernie O'Malley are their portraits of The People that borrows from the populist vocabulary. While we must be critical of populist discourse, we dismiss it at our loss. This study synthesizes existing scholarship on populism to explore how Irish texts have evoked The People--a crucial rhetorical move for populist discourse--and how some writers have critiqued, adopted, and adapted the languages of Irish populisms.

Story of Ireland
Story of Ireland

Author: Neil Hegarty

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 1448140390

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The history of Ireland has traditionally focused on the localized struggles of religious conflict, territoriality and the fight for Home Rule. But from the early Catholic missions into Europe to the embrace of the euro, the real story of Ireland has played out on the larger international stage. Story of Ireland presents this new take on Irish history, challenging the narrative that has been told for generations and drawing fresh conclusions about the way the Irish have lived. Revisiting the major turning points in Irish history, Neil Hegarty re-examines the accepted stories, challenging long-held myths and looking not only at the dynamics of what happened in Ireland, but also at the role of events abroad. How did Europe's 16th century religious wars inform the incredible violence inflicted on the Irish by the Elizabethans? What was the impact of the French and American revolutions on the Irish nationalist movement? What were the consequences of Ireland's policy of neutrality during the Second World War? Story of Ireland sets out to answer these questions and more, rejecting the introspection that has often characterized Irish history. Accompanying a landmark series coproduced by the BBC and RTE, and with an introduction by series presenter, Fergal Keane, Story of Ireland is an epic account of Ireland's history for an entire new generation.

Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture
Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture

Author: Dr Diane Sabenacio Nititham

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1472425111

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Using an interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework this book examines the cultural, material, and symbolic articulations of Irish migration relationships from the medieval period through to the contemporary post-Celtic Tiger era. With attention to people’s different uses of social space, relationships with and memories of the landscape, as well as their symbolic expressions of diasporic identity, Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture examines the different forms of diaspora over time and contributes to contemporary debates on home, foreignness, globalization and consumption. By examining various movements of people into and out of Ireland, the book explores how expressions of cultural capital and symbolic power have changed over time in the Irish collective imagination, shedding light on the ways in which Ireland is represented and Irish culture consumed and materialized overseas. Arranged around the themes of home and location, identity and material culture, and global culture and consumption, this collection brings together the work of scholars from the UK, Ireland, Europe, the US and Canada, to explore the ways in which the processes of movement affect the people’s negotiation and contestation of concepts of identity, the local and the global. As such, it will appeal to scholars working in fields such as sociology, politics, cultural studies, history and archaeology, with interests in migration, gender studies, diasporic identities, heritage and material culture.

Irish/ness Is All Around Us
Irish/ness Is All Around Us

Author: Olaf Zenker

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0857459147

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Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.

Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland
Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland

Author: Sparky Booker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1108588697

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Irish inhabitants of the 'four obedient shires' - a term commonly used to describe the region at the heart of the English colony in the later Middle Ages - were significantly anglicised, taking on English names, dress, and even legal status. However, the processes of cultural exchange went both ways. This study examines the nature of interactions between English and Irish neighbours in the four shires, taking into account the complex tensions between assimilation and the preservation of distinct ethnic identities and exploring how the common colonial rhetoric of the Irish as an 'enemy' coexisted with the daily reality of alliance, intermarriage, and accommodation. Placing Ireland in a broad context, Sparky Booker addresses the strategies the colonial community used to deal with the difficulties posed by extensive assimilation, and the lasting changes this made to understandings of what it meant to be 'English' or 'Irish' in the face of such challenges.

Politics, Culture, and the Irish American Press
Politics, Culture, and the Irish American Press

Author: Debra Reddin van Tuyll

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2021-02-03

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0815655045

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From the Revolutionary War forward, Irish immigrants have contributed significantly to the construction of the American Republic. Scholars have documented their experiences and explored their social, political, and cultural lives in countless books. Offering a fresh perspective, this volume traces the rich history of the Irish American diaspora press, uncovering the ways in which a lively print culture forged significant cultural, political, and even economic bonds between the Irish living in America and the Irish living in Ireland. As the only mass medium prior to the advent of radio, newspapers served to foster a sense of identity and a means of acculturation for those seeking to establish themselves in the land of opportunity. Irish American newspapers provided information about what was happening back home in Ireland as well as news about the events that were occurring within the local migrant community. They framed national events through Irish American eyes and explained the significance of what was happening to newly arrived immigrants who were unfamiliar with American history or culture. They also played a central role in the social life of Irish migrants and provided the comfort that came from knowing that, though they may have been far from home, they were not alone. Taking a long view through the prism of individual newspapers, editors, and journalists, the authors in this volume examine the emergence of the Irish American diaspora press and its profound contribution to the lives of Irish Americans over the course of the last two centuries.