Screening Irish-America is a major work in Irish-American screen studies. Sourced largely from papers delivered at the conference of the same name at University College Dublin and Boston College in the US in 2007, the book contains contributions by leading scholars in the field. Essays range from early and silent cinema through to recent television shows such as Scrubs. Topics include John Ford, the Irish-American gangster, Irish-American stars and the representation of the Scots-Irish and religion. Drawing on theories of ethnicity, gender, class and diaspora studies, this is the first publication in this academic area.
Old-time politics, piety, and St. Patrick’s Day parades loom large when the Irish come to the American mind. None truly represents the complex legacy or contributions of the nation’s oldest ethnic group, who rank among the most highly educated and affluent Americans today. In Irish America, Maureen Dezell takes a new and invigorating look at Americans of Irish Catholic ancestry—who they are, and how they got that way. A welcome antidote to so many standard-issue, sentimental representations of the Irish in the United States, Irish America focuses on popular culture as well as politics; the Irish in the Midwest and West as well as the East; the “new Irish” immigrants; the complicated role of the Church today; and the unheralded heritage of Irish American women. Deftly weaving history, reporting, and the observations of more than 100 men and women of Irish descent on both sides of the Atlantic, Dezell presents an insightful and highly readable portrait of a people and a culture.
The "textures" of the Irish-American experience have been manifold, greatly influencing this country's economic, social, and cultural development over the past two centuries. Unlike that of many other European immigrants, the Irish journey to America was viewed largely as a one-way trip. They quickly adjusted to America, soon becoming citizens and active participants in politics. By the end of the 19th century, they dominated not only most American cities but also sports, especially baseball, and many were prominent in show business. In this entertaining study of one of America's most engaging and controversial groups, Lawrence McCaffrey reveals how the Irish adapted to urban life, progressing from unskilled working class to solid middle class. Denied power and influence in business and commerce, they achieved both through politics and the Catholic church. In addition to politicians and churchmen, McCaffrey discusses the roles of writers such as Finley Peter Dunne, James T. Farrell, Eugene O'Neill, J.F. Powers, Edwin O'Connor, William Kennedy, Elizabeth Cullinan, Tom Flanagan, Thomas Fleming, Jimmy Breslin, and John Gregory Dunne, as well as such film stars as Jimmy Cagney, Bing Crosby. Grace and Gene Kelly, and Spencer Tracy. McCaffrey completes the story with a look at the role of Irish nationalism in developing the personality of Irish America and in liberating Ireland from British colonialism. The result of some forty years of thinking and writing about Irish-American life, McCaffrey's Textures will appeal to scholars and general readers alike and may very well becomes the standard work on Irish America.
Explores the history of the Irish in America, offering an overview of Irish history, immigration to the United States, and the transition of the Irish from the working class to all levels of society.
Once seen as threats to mainstream society, Irish Americans have become an integral part of the American story. More than 40 million Americans claim Irish descent, and the culture and traditions of Ireland and Irish Americans have left an indelible mark on U.S. society. Timothy J. Meagher fuses an overview of Irish American history with an analysis of historians' debates, an annotated bibliography, a chronology of critical events, and a glossary discussing crucial individuals, organizations, and dates. He addresses a range of key issues in Irish American history from the first Irish settlements in the seventeenth century through the famine years in the nineteenth century to the volatility of 1960s America and beyond. The result is a definitive guide to understanding the complexities and paradoxes that have defined the Irish American experience. Throughout the work, Meagher invokes comparisons to Irish experiences in Canada, Britain, and Australia to challenge common perceptions of Irish American history. He examines the shifting patterns of Irish migration, discusses the role of the Catholic church in the Irish immigrant experience, and considers the Irish American influence in U.S. politics and modern urban popular culture. Meagher pays special attention to Irish American families and the roles of men and women, the emergence of the Irish as a "governing class" in American politics, the paradox of their combination of fervent American patriotism and passionate Irish nationalism, and their complex and sometimes tragic relations with African and Asian Americans.
Follows the Irish from their first arrival in the American colonies through the bleak days of the potato famine, the decades of ethnic prejudice and nativist discrimination, the rise of Irish political power, and on to the historic moment when John F. Kennedy was elected to the highest office in the land.
Few writers on the Irish in America have looked beyond the nineteenth-century ethnic enclaves of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago, or have asked how the notion of an Irish-American ethnic identity in contemporary America can be reconciled with five, six, or seven generations of intermarriage and assimilation over the last century and a half. This study, based on interviews with 500 people of Irish ancestry in Albany, New York, aims to discover in what senses and in what degrees the present-day descendants of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants possess distinctive social practices and ways of seeing the world, and raises questions about the social conditions in which ideas of Irishness have been created and re-created.
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.
In this stunning work chronicling the author’s exploration of his own past—and the lives of many hundreds of thousands of nameless immigrants who struggled alongside his own ancestors—Peter Quinn paints a brilliant new portrait of the Irish-American men and women whose evolving culture and values continue to play such a central role in all of our identities as Americans. In Quinn’s hands, the Irish stereotype of “Paddy” gives way to an image of “Jimmy”—an archetypal Irish-American. From Irish immigration to modern politics, Quinn vibrantly weaves together the story of a remarkable people and their immeasurable contribution to American history and culture.
