From: jmcgurk[at]tinet.ie
Subject: Re: Ir-D 'Anglo Irish'

From John McGurk, Many historians of the xvi and xvii cents.tend to use
Old English for those settlers of the pre-Reformation era, the first
settlers of the Anglo-Norman and Cymru Norman 12th cent.invasion and New
English for those listed in your query and Anglo-Irish for their 18th
century descendants,the ascendancy landlords and government officials.
But these are simplified categories because of inter-marriages with the
Gaelic native Irish, and hibernicization of original settlers and much else!
I don't think you will get a water-tight definition.
Best regards
John McGurk
>

- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 07:30
Subject: Ir-D 'Anglo Irish'


>
> From: "Jill Blee"
> Subject: Anglo Irish
>
> Dear Paddy,
>
> There's a bit of a discussion going on in Ballarat at the moment as to =
> who are the Anglo Irish. One of my colleagues is researching goldrush =
> lawyers most of whom were Irish, and the term Anglo Irish keeps cropping =
> up. I had always assumed it applied to those people whose ancestors =
> gained land and prestige in Ireland following Elizabethan, Cromwellian =
> and Williamite clearances. Does anyone out there have a better =
> definition?
>
> Jill Blee
>

Forwarded for information...

Subject: International Woman's Day 8 March


Dublin Writers' Workshop Update - http://www.dublinwriters.org

Dear all

Just to let any Dublin-based members know about a poetry reading taking
place for International Woman's Day, 8th March, at 7.30pm in St. Anne's
Church, Dawson Street, Dublin 2.

The reading is being organised by Poetry Ireland / Eigse Eireann, in
association with WERRC and UNIFEM. The readers are Mary Dorcey, Biddy
Jenkinson, Medbh McGuckian, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
and Nessa O'Mahony
Admission IEP4/IEP3.
Further information and tickets: (01) 6714632

From: "Michael McManus"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 5

Paddy,

I rather take your position on this one. I see David Fitzpatrick's piece as
intellectually refreshing in an academic area which tends to become
academically sterile at times. My recent thoughts, which for me at least,
align with the debate we are in here, come from something I am currently
writing:

"It is as if the academic needle has become stuck in the relational groove
of some comparative theoretical models and cannot get out of the rut. An
exemplification is evidenced in the segregation/assimilation model which
characterizes much of the Irish in Britain studies literature. This is an
analytical inadequate model (MacRaild, 1998:209) and in order to get out of
its repetitive rut a call for a more adequate analysis of historical data
has already been made (Hickman 1999:236-237). Hickman is surely correct when
she argues that Irish historical study researchers tend to be inherent
empiricists and that this does nothing to lift the repetitive needle and
move the debate on to richer channels. Daly, (1997) commenting on famine
studies, takes a similar stance pointing out that, 'Several of the
contributions consist of little more than a selection of information culled
from the minutes of boards of guardians, with little attention being given
to a wider context'.

Part of this 'rut' problem concerns concepts central to much of the work of
writers such as Hickman; the 'status quo' and 'hegemony' - in this context,
the status quo of Irish commentators and the academic hegemony they exist
within. It is, therefore, revealing that Hickman's critique of the
segregation/assimilation model (Hickman, ibid.), while being commended for
its intellectual value, is seen as a revolutionarily text and termed
'iconoclastic' by the very 'status quo' academics she critically points the
finger at (Swift and Gilley, 1999:10). Swift and Gilley's comments, while
offering clear supporting evidence for Hickman's claims of an academic
impasse, also contain within them an approval and, thus, a seed of hope. The
need for an alternative analysis of the social data produced during years of
Irish studies research, may have at last, therefore, been given a nod and a
wink of approval by the 'status quo' themselves. "

I feel your comment that this sterile approach, 'is generally the reaction I
have had from people who have contacted me off-list', supports the notion
that a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
'politically grooved' .Without meaning to miss the importance of the whole
Irish studies area (my obsession in fact), are these intellectual
conservatives perhaps taking it all too seriously? The fact that many are
happy to stay in the comfortable groove can only mean to me academic
sterility. David Fitzpatrick's article is meant to reinvigorate and possibly
get us out of the rut. What an academic he is!

Mick.

- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 07:30
Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 5


>
> >From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> I think I should report that
> "Anthony McNicholas"
>
> summed up 'the mood of the meeting'... when he said, in an earlier Ir-D
> message...
>
> 'I was reluctant to offer my thoughts on David Fitzpatrick's piece, just
as
> I
> was when I heard him deliver it at UNL. It is self-consciously intended to
> goad people into outraged opposition and nobody wants to behave like one
of
> Pavlov's dogs.'
>
> That is generally the reaction I have had from people who have contacted
me
> off-list.
>
> I think David's books are wonderful - Oceans of Consolation is a great
book.
> See the reviews on our web site.
> Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
> There is the oddity that the book has attracted very little interest in
> North America - but, then, it mostly deals with the Irish going to
> Australia.
>
> (Except for Chapter 12. About the Doorley sisters in Bolton, Lancashire.
> Which I have just turned into a play, 'Dear Maria', my Irish working class
> Three Sisters...)
>
> David's piece for the BAIS Newsletter - which he kindly shared with the
Ir-d
> list - seemed to me a long list of reasons FOR studying the Irish
Diaspora.
> If we have got it wrong the ways in which we are wrong are fascinating in
> themselves. His final reason for studying the Irish Diaspora, the
> extraordinary effects of emigration on Ireland, is a very powerful one -
and
> I would agree that most probably we have not really got our heads round
that
> theme. But the study of the Irish Diaspora is not interesting ONLY
because
> of its effects on Ireland. In fact, I wondered if we did not have here a
> manifestation of that tension between Home and Diaspora that is such a
> feature of all Diaspora studies.
>
> P.O'S.
>
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

[Some time ago, in a notice to the Irish-Diaspora list, I recommended Chris
Morash's review of John Harrington's book, The Irish Play on the New York
Stage - as offering what was, in effect, an Irish Diaspora Studies approach
to the study of the theatre. I said I would see if we could find a way to
distribute the full text of the review via the Ir-D list. A number of
tedious technical problems then intervened, but, at last, we are now able to
distribute the book review, pasted in below.

This book review is shared with the Irish-Diaspora list with the permission
of and through the courtesy of its author, Chris Morash...

P.O'S.]


From
Bullan, An Irish Studies Journal, Volume IV. Number 2, Winter 1999/Spring
2000, pp162-164

STAGE RIGHT

by Chris Morash

John P. Harrington, The Irish Play on the New York Stage 1874-1966
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press 1997), pp. 176, £26.55

John P. Harrington's The Irish Play on the New York Stage is one of those
books which opens up vistas of inquiry, awakening the reader to the way in
which a particular field of study has been skewed in one direction or
another. Bedazzled, perhaps, by the sustained achievement of Irish
playwrights in this century, from J.M. Synge through Samuel Beckett, Brian
Friel, and Frank McGuinness, to newcomers like Conor McPherson, scholars
have over-stocked library shelves with books and essays on Irish drama as a
literary form. By contrast, Irish theatre history - performance, design,
theatre architecture, audience reactions, finance of productions, etc. - has
been all but neglected or, if written about at all (with a few honourable
exceptions), relegated to the realm of the theatrical anecdote or the
actor's memoir. This is a strange and unfortunate state of affairs, for if
anyone thing unites Irish playwrights this century, it has been a sense of
writing for an audience - and that audience has not been sitting at home
with a book. It has been a theatre audience.

For this reason alone, The Irish Play on the New York Stage is a welcome
contribution to Irish studies (even as it subtly interrogates the notion of
'Irish studies'). Each of the book's seven chapters chronicle the receptions
accorded to the New York productions of a series of Irish plays: Dion
Boucicault's The Shaughran, G.B. Shaw's John Bull's Other Island, Synge's
Playboy of the Western World, James Joyce's Exiles, Sean O'Casey's Within
the Gates, Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and Friel's Philadelphia, Here I
Come! It is one of the great virtues of Harrington's book that he is not
forced to scramble for ever more fashionable or obscure theoretical models
to make this familiar material look fresh. He may be working here with
staples of an Irish canon, but because he is discussing a particular theatre
performance rather than the dramatic script, he is in effect discussing a
performance-as-text, which has never before been given a detailed scholarly
consideration. Hence, Harrington finds himself in the enviable position of
writing about major plays for the first time, as it were. To his credit,
Harrington pounces on the advantages of his situation, and produces a book
so refreshingly jargon-free, lucid, and engaging that it deserves a
readership beyond academia.

Having said this, The Irish Play on the New York Stage prompts a series of
thoughts which require a more explicit theoretical engagement than the book
itself can provide. 'My intention', Harrington announces somewhat modestly,
'is not to argue another theory of reception, or even to labour a slight
adjustment of existing ones, but to set a record of exemplary transactions
between art and society'(4). Throughout The Irish Play on the New York
Stage, there is a clear sense that the meaning of a play is not intrinsic to
the dramatic script, but is a communal creation, in which the playwright's
words are only one (and not necessarily the most important) part of a matrix
which includes not only actors, directors, and scenographers, but also a
more complex social dimension, crystallising around audience expectations
generated by publicity, the theatre in which a performance is staged, other
plays in performances at the time, and so on. Harrington may not labour
these points as theory, but they are nonetheless the framework upon which he
builds his argument, and as this argument gathers momentum, certain
theoretical issues begin to take shape.

As anyone who has ever put together an anthology, a literary history, or
even an Irish literature course knows, trying to find a definition of 'an
Irish text' and 'an Irish writer' which will satisfy every case is just
about impossible. Is The Im- portance of Being Earnest an Irish play simply
because Oscar Wilde was born in Ireland? Was Shaw an Irish writer when he
wrote John Bull's Other Island, but English when he wrote Major Barbara? Is
John Montague disqualified as an Irish poet because he was born in Brooklyn?
Usually we end up making pragmatic choices which can not be justified in
theory, but which more or less work in practice (usually involving the plea
'I couldn't really leave him/her out, could I?'). The reason such choices
can rarely be justified is this: a dominant theory of what constitutes a
national literature is founded upon the premise that there must be some
correspondence between an author's place of birth, and the form and/or
content of her work. If there is no such correspondence, then the study of a
national literature is simply the fortuitous linking of writers who share a
biographical detail which may or may not be relevant to their work. There
are, of course, ways around this. The usual strategy in the Irish instance
is to look at varying approaches to something we might call 'the national'
(as in the case of Christopher Murray's recent survey of twentieth- century
Irish drama, subtitled Mirror Up to Nation). This works up to a point, even
if it does have the effect of marginalising writers with little or no
interest in national identity (and thus returning us to our original
problem).

Harrington's The Irish Play on the New York Stage reorients the whole nature
of the question by moving from the producer to the receiver, a shift he
makes possible by replacing both the hopelessly metaphysical notion of an
'ideal reader', and the abstract concept of 'a readership' (upon which most
conventional studies of Irish drama rely), with the more concrete issue of
'an audience'. Once it is possible to establish who constituted the audience
for a particular production, it then becomes possible to put some shape upon
what Hans Robert Jauss has called an 'horizon of expectation'. In an
influential essay in Screen a few years ago, Steven Neale argued strongly
that rather than trying to define cinematic genres purely in terms of their
formal properties, we need to consider both the generic expectations an
audience brings to a given text, and the means by which these expectations
have been formulated. The latter inevitably means moving beyond the text -
or even the formal properties of the genre - to look at such things as
adjacent genres, advertising, and the composition of the audience.

Although Harrington avoids this level of theoretical speculation, by keeping
his eye fixedly on what could (or could not) be received as 'an Irish play'
in the shifting sets of social circumstances in New York between 1874 and
1966, he makes a detailed and convincing case for the argument that what
made a play 'Irish' had about as much to do with an audience's socially and
commercially generated 'horizon of expectations' as with the writer's place
of birth or the nature of the play itself (and hence my earlier aside, to
the effect that this book quietly questions the whole project of 'Irish
studies', by hinting that the 'Irish' element of a work is a function of
malleable perception, not a timeless formal property). 'It is not even
useful to speak about a single "it"', Harrington concludes, 'as a
fundamental element of theater '(164). In this regard, Harrington's work
seems to take its bearings from the best New Historicist writing, such as
that of Stephen Greenblatt or Louis Montrose on Renaissance play-going (a
form of critical writing which has also carried on an oblique dialogue with
rezeption-aesthetik). Just as the New Historicists alerted us to the
short-comings of textually-based Shakespeare studies (whatever their degree
of theoretical sophistication) more than a decade ago, Harrington's The
Irish Play on the New York Stage puts the text-centered study of Irish plays
on its notice - not before its time.

Chris Morash
(c) Chris Morash 2000

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Anthony McNicholas"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 6

Mick

At the risk of talking about Paddy as if he were not in the room, I don't
know if you do agree with him. My interpretation of Paddy's comments on
Fitzpatrick's piece is that he (Paddy) is an admirer of his work, as anyone
who had read Oceans.would be, but that on this occasion, because he had
chosen to be provocative above all else, the reasons he gave for NOT
studying the Irish Diaspora were in fact, as Paddy said, justifications FOR,
and that this might be an indication that this piece was not characterised
by the intellectual rigour we would normally associate with Fitzpatrick's
work.

My own rather glib comments on his performance at the UNL conference were
coloured by the fact that I thought he was being glib. To assert that you
can't study the Irish abroad because they don't exist, is not serious, nor
is the replacement of Irish as a unit of study with "the Diaspora from the
British Isles, or the Ulster Diaspora." It isn't that those people who were
less than impressed with Fitzpatrick's presentation, the "intellectual
conservatives" were "perhaps taking it all too seriously", quite the
reverse, we got the joke-we were being teased-you don't appear to have. It
wasn't a case of him throwing a cat among the pigeons, so much as a pigeon
among the cats-most of whom, refused to take the bait and left the cheeky
creature alone.

I found a couple of curiosities in your message. I did not for instance know
that "a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
'politically grooved" and I am not sure what it means. Is this some kind of
euphemism for 'thick ' and 'nationalist'? I think we should be told. The
seeming equation between the use of empirical evidence and intellectual
sterility also had me puzzled. As a student of media history with an
interest in the Irish diaspora I see it as normal practice (as well as a
pleasure) to go back to primary sources. I have been writing about the 1860s
and there is STUFF everywhere, scattered about the place, that no one has
ever looked at, or has been ignored for years, but is STUFF, interesting,
important STUFF. It's not sterile. If we allow yourselves, on the other
hand,
to become too detached from material reality in whatever form, the
historical record or just daily life, we can end up in the total sterility
of someone like Baudrillard when he asserted that the Gulf War which killed
tens of thousands of people did not exist outside of the media coverage of
it. Me an empiricist? Proud of it!
Anthony McNicholas

- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 7:30 AM
Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 6


>
> From: "Michael McManus"
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 5
>
> Paddy,
>
> I rather take your position on this one. I see David Fitzpatrick's piece
as
> intellectually refreshing in an academic area which tends to become
> academically sterile at times. My recent thoughts, which for me at least,
> align with the debate we are in here, come from something I am currently
> writing:
>
> "It is as if the academic needle has become stuck in the relational groove
> of some comparative theoretical models and cannot get out of the rut. An
> exemplification is evidenced in the segregation/assimilation model which
> characterizes much of the Irish in Britain studies literature. This is an
> analytical inadequate model (MacRaild, 1998:209) and in order to get out
of
> its repetitive rut a call for a more adequate analysis of historical data
> has already been made (Hickman 1999:236-237). Hickman is surely correct
when
> she argues that Irish historical study researchers tend to be inherent
> empiricists and that this does nothing to lift the repetitive needle and
> move the debate on to richer channels. Daly, (1997) commenting on famine
> studies, takes a similar stance pointing out that, 'Several of the
> contributions consist of little more than a selection of information
culled
> from the minutes of boards of guardians, with little attention being given
> to a wider context'.
>
> Part of this 'rut' problem concerns concepts central to much of the work
of
> writers such as Hickman; the 'status quo' and 'hegemony' - in this
context,
> the status quo of Irish commentators and the academic hegemony they exist
> within. It is, therefore, revealing that Hickman's critique of the
> segregation/assimilation model (Hickman, ibid.), while being commended for
> its intellectual value, is seen as a revolutionarily text and termed
> 'iconoclastic' by the very 'status quo' academics she critically points
the
> finger at (Swift and Gilley, 1999:10). Swift and Gilley's comments, while
> offering clear supporting evidence for Hickman's claims of an academic
> impasse, also contain within them an approval and, thus, a seed of hope.
The
> need for an alternative analysis of the social data produced during years
of
> Irish studies research, may have at last, therefore, been given a nod and
a
> wink of approval by the 'status quo' themselves. "
>
> I feel your comment that this sterile approach, 'is generally the reaction
I
> have had from people who have contacted me off-list', supports the notion
> that a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
> 'politically grooved' .Without meaning to miss the importance of the whole
> Irish studies area (my obsession in fact), are these intellectual
> conservatives perhaps taking it all too seriously? The fact that many are
> happy to stay in the comfortable groove can only mean to me academic
> sterility. David Fitzpatrick's article is meant to reinvigorate and
possibly
> get us out of the rut. What an academic he is!
>
> Mick.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 07:30
> Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 5
>
>
> >
> > >From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
> >
> > I think I should report that
> > "Anthony McNicholas"
> >
> > summed up 'the mood of the meeting'... when he said, in an earlier Ir-D
> > message...
> >
> > 'I was reluctant to offer my thoughts on David Fitzpatrick's piece, just
> as
> > I
> > was when I heard him deliver it at UNL. It is self-consciously intended
to
> > goad people into outraged opposition and nobody wants to behave like one
> of
> > Pavlov's dogs.'
> >
> > That is generally the reaction I have had from people who have contacted
> me
> > off-list.
> >
> > I think David's books are wonderful - Oceans of Consolation is a great
> book.
> > See the reviews on our web site.
> > Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
> > There is the oddity that the book has attracted very little interest in
> > North America - but, then, it mostly deals with the Irish going to
> > Australia.
> >
> > (Except for Chapter 12. About the Doorley sisters in Bolton,
Lancashire.
> > Which I have just turned into a play, 'Dear Maria', my Irish working
class
> > Three Sisters...)
> >
> > David's piece for the BAIS Newsletter - which he kindly shared with the
> Ir-d
> > list - seemed to me a long list of reasons FOR studying the Irish
> Diaspora.
> > If we have got it wrong the ways in which we are wrong are fascinating
in
> > themselves. His final reason for studying the Irish Diaspora, the
> > extraordinary effects of emigration on Ireland, is a very powerful one -
> and
> > I would agree that most probably we have not really got our heads round
> that
> > theme. But the study of the Irish Diaspora is not interesting ONLY
> because
> > of its effects on Ireland. In fact, I wondered if we did not have here
a
> > manifestation of that tension between Home and Diaspora that is such a
> > feature of all Diaspora studies.
> >
> > P.O'S.
> >
> >
>
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

An occasional series which looks at people called Sullivan or O'Sullivan,
who have entered the history books, but perhaps in ways which bring little
or no credit to the family name...

No. 1
Detective O'Sullivan

http://www.informatik.uni-rostock.de/Kennedy/WCH/osullivan.html

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

We came across the following book review, which is certainly worth sharing
with the Ir-D list...

P.O'S.

English Historical Review
Print and Popular Culture in Ireland: 1750-1850.(Review)
Author/s: Elizabeth Malcolm
Issue: April, 1999

For an Irish historian it is something of a relief to read Niall O'Ciosain's
Print and Popular Culture in Ireland, 1750-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1997;
pp. ix + 249. 45 [pounds sterling]). In recent years there has been a
creeping colonization of Irish history -- and not just cultural and
intellectual history -- by literary critics, such as Seamus Deane, Terry
Eagleton, Declan Kiberd and W. J. McCormack. Not satisfied with analysing
the classics of the Irish canon, they have used such works to propound
wider-ranging interpretations of Irish politics, society, culture and
identity since the sixteenth century. Much of this work, however, has not
only been ahistorical, telescoping past and present in a cavalier fashion,
but also lazy and elitist, substituting the rather easier study of
particular individuals' ideas for the more demanding exploration of mass
culture. Dr O'Ciosain, on the other hand, presents an
extensively-researched, carefully-argued and very stimulating study of Irish
popular literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Drawing on chivalric romances, criminal biographies, popular history,
religious song, improving tracts and practical pamphlets, he shows how much
of this literature was concerned with social status: on the one hand, with
the aristocratic legitimacy and right to land of the class that became known
at the end of the eighteenth century as the Protestant Ascendancy and, on
the other, with the grievances of what Kevin Whelan has termed the Catholic
`underground gentry'. O'Ciosain builds on J. R. R. Adams's pioneering 1980S
work on Ulster popular culture, though his approach is far more
sophisticated and his conclusions have far wider implications. Indeed, in a
short notice, it is difficult to do justice to the richness of this book: to
its use of European methodology and interesting parallels with European
popular culture; to its fascinating account of the diffusion of popular
literature; to its study of the impact of the spread of education on
literacy; to its exploration of the complex relationship between oral and
literary culture; to its discussion of the interaction between the Irish and
English languages; and to its challenge to simplistic modernization
theories. This is a book that has new information and thought-provoking
interpretations on almost every page. It is a great pity therefore that a
work, which deserves a wide audience and will undoubtedly have a significant
impact on Irish social history, has been rather meanly produced and yet
boasts a very high price. One can only hope that a more sensibly-priced
paperback edition will appear in the near future.

ELIZABETH MALCOLM
University of Liverpool
[Now University of Melbourne, Australia]

COPYRIGHT 1999 Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education

From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Antarctic

From: Patrick Maume
Perhaps the current Antarctic exploration exhibition at the
National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (which I visited last month)
might be seen as having Irish diaspora implications? After all, one
of the major figures involved is Sir Ernest Shackleton (they have some
newly-released material owned by one of his patronesses), and they
have an actor dressed up as Tom Crean (a Kerryman who was on Scott's
last expedition & sailed with Shackleton in an open boat from Elephant
Island to SOuth Georgia to obtain help after Shackleton's 1914-16
expedition went wrong, then retired to Kerry & kept a pub called the
SOuth Pole; his biography has recently been published).
After seeing this I bought Roland Huntford's biography of
Shackleton, and was surprised at how often Shackleton was seen as
"Irish" by people with whom he came in contact. (He left Ireland at
the age of 10 - his father came from a small Kildare landed family but
saw how thigs were going & went to England to practice medicine in the
1880s. There was a recent correspondence in the IRISH TIMES after
Kevin Myers claimed that Irish failure to see Shackleton as "one of
our own" reflected nationalist bias; one correspondent pointed out
that Shackleton did not usually emphasise his Irishess in public
statements, except when he stood as an Unionist candidate for Dundee
in 1906.) Huntford does have a thing about "typically Irish"
qualities, but he does make a good case that Shackleton was seen as
slightly alien to contemporary British social categories because of
his perceived Irishness, & that this influenced his career. Several
of the other members of his expeditions came from Irish backgrounds
(not all "Anglo-Irish", either, insofar as this distinction has any
force; apart from Tom Crean, one of those who accompanied Shackleton
to SOuth Georgia was a seaman called Tim McCarthy, subsequently killed
on the Western Front).
There seems to be a minor Shackleton craze in America at present;
the business guru types who are always looking for examles to teach
man-management and teamwork, appear to be taking an interest in his
expeditions on these grounds, & I understand several books have been
published on the expedition in recent years.
Even Tim Pat Coogan did not find an Antarctic element in the Irish
diaspora, but there is no reason why we should not do so. I think
Shackleton's grave on Grytviken in SOuth Georgia is another monument
to the Irish diaspora.
Best wishes,
Patrick

Dear Jill,

Does the term 'Anglo-Irish' crop up in the original documents, or in
historians' comment?

The best starting point is most probably the chapter that Gordon Forth wrote
for me...

Gordon Forth, '"No petty people": the Anglo-Irish in colonial Australia',
in Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Irish in the New Communities, Volume 2 of
The Irish World Wide, Leicester UP, 1992, 1994. And see also my
Introduction to that volume.

Gordon places the term within Irish historiography, eg J. C. Beckett, and
discusses examples of this identity in action in C19th Australia. The
'Anglo-Irish' are also well discussed, and indexed, in Patrick O'Farrell,
The Irish in Australia, University of Notre Dame Press USA, University of
NSW Press, Australia. (Latest edition 2000, I think - the book seems to
have made it through two academic publishing houses without anyone noticing
that there is no year of publication given.)

But - for what it is worth - I have a feeling that this focus on the term
'Anglo-Irish', within Irish-Diaspora Studies, is almost exclusively an
AUSTRALIAN phenomenon. This does not mean that the Australian practice is
wrong, and has nothing to offer. But I have really no sense that the term
is problematised in quite the same way elsewhere.

I suspect - I say this in the Introduction to IWW2 - that a starting point
is some bad-tempered remarks by Patrick O'Farrell, in 'Writing the history
of Irish-Australia', in McDonagh & Mandle, eds, Ireland and Irish-Australia,
Croom Helm, 1986 - recalling critics who scoff at 'compulsory Erinism', and
noting that successful 'Irish' figures in Australia were in fact
Anglo-Irish. I had better go back and put 'scare quotes' around 'in fact'.
But basically the people used to demonstrate Irish success in Australia were
the people not deemed Irish enough back in Ireland.

There are now more studies of Irish emigrants of protestant background - eg
Jim Macauley for me in IWW5, Alasdair Galbraith in Lyndon Fraser, ed., on
New Zealand (see earlier Ir-D messages). Who also discuss the 'Anglo-Irish'
identity.

I suspect that you are finding yourself within an agenda created by two very
great historians, J. C. Beckett and Patrick O'Farrell. The first question
might be, Do you really want to be within that agenda?

Paddy

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England



- -----Original Message-----


From: "Jill Blee"
Subject: Anglo Irish

Dear Paddy,

There's a bit of a discussion going on in Ballarat at the moment as to =
who are the Anglo Irish. One of my colleagues is researching goldrush =
lawyers most of whom were Irish, and the term Anglo Irish keeps cropping =
up. I had always assumed it applied to those people whose ancestors =
gained land and prestige in Ireland following Elizabethan, Cromwellian =
and Williamite clearances. Does anyone out there have a better =
definition?

Jill Blee

From: oliver[at]doyle-marshall.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Detective O'Sullivan

Perhaps there's space for a very occasional series on the activities of
people named Patrick O'Sullivan.....

Maybe, Paddy, you do a bit of moonlighting as a parish priest? In December
2000, a "Father Patrick O'Sullivan" published a rather attractive little
parish history entitled _St Mary's Wednesbury, 1850-2000_. As such
publications can contain bits and pieces of interest beyond the local
community, anyone with an interest in the Irish in England's so-called
"Black Country" may find the 48 page booklet of use. To obtain a copy,
send UK£5 (plus postage) to:

Father Patrick O'Sullivan
The Presbytery
Church of St Mary's
St Mary's Road
Wednesbury
West Midlands, WS10 9DL

Make cheques payable in the name of Patrick O'Sullivan.....

Oliver Marshall

Centre for Brazilian Studies
University of Oxford

-------------------------

>From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
>An occasional series which looks at people called Sullivan or O'Sullivan,
>who have entered the history books, but perhaps in ways which bring little
>or no credit to the family name...
>
>No. 1
>Detective O'Sullivan
>
>http://www.informatik.uni-rostock.de/Kennedy/WCH/osullivan.html
>
>P.O'S.
>

From: Don MacRaild
Subject: Comment on Diaspora (1 or 8?)

Dear all,

I thought I might enter the fray seeing as my name was mentioned by Mick
McManus. I do indeed believe that the segregation/assimilationist model is
somewhat narrow and stereotyped; nor do I believe it goes all the way in
explaining the experiences of the Irish in Britain or anywhere else for that
matter. But I wouldn't want anyone to think that I was anything other than
an empiricist. I use theory when it helps me to model evidence, not the
the other way round, and I would never be attracted to the utility of a
purely
theoretical position. I would argue that if Mick's 'repetitive needle' is
to
be lifted from the cracked record, then more (not less) empirical research
is needed. In particular, I would argue the case for comparative history,
based upon solid proposition and sound comparable evidence.

But this is not to say that the answer lies in Diaspora. To be honest, I'm
still not sure. This is because I don't think we have even begun
to get through the preparatory political analysis that
is required for a term that for years was most associated with Ha Shoah
and the flight from Turkey of the Armenians, to be deployed in the Irish
case. While I accept that it has become common to equate the Irish
experience with other migrations (or Diaspora creations) where an
element of trauma becomes the norm, I am still struck by the normal-
ness of the idea of migration, and how for so many people--Irish, Scots,
Norwegians, Italians, Chinese, etc., etc.--the fundamental experiences
and the fundamental causes were so similar. Perhaps this is the
economic historian in me? I would add here that I can also sympathise
with David Fitzpatrick's point about other Diasporas: 45 per cent of
the Cornish-born were resident outside Cornwall in 1891, a figure five
per cent higher than for the Irish. I am not saying that the two are
of equal weight in the world; patently, such a claim would be
absurd. But comparison does make us think differently.

In recent times, the Diaspora has mainly been used as a descriptor, a
sort of collective noun, for migrating peoples. I myself have been
as guilty as the next person of using the term just because it's
interchangeable with global migration, or whatever. But Diaspora, if it
is to mean anything, means more than migration. It refers to the
ways in which common experiences were carved out in different places
in the world, and how host and incoming peoples interacted, and how
migrants transformed (as well as being transformed by) the new
cultures with which they made contact. Diaspora (the idea rather than
the experience) is both an antidote to, and a result of, globalisation:
Diaspora implies something global that connects Australian-Irish with
American-Irish, etc. But that something isn't a flattened, common
experience (a la globalisation); it isn't simply the way in which
people refer back to Ireland, the natal soil. It is a host of experiences
so bewildering comprehension can only come through solid
comparative work.

Whereas comparative history is a methodology underpinned by an
epistemology, I'm not sure that Diaspora is the same thing. That
doesn't mean that Diaspora has no meaning or utility; but it is
post-modern in the sense that it's like quicksliver through the fingers;
its relativism is apparent.

I hope this rambling isn't too off-putting.


Don MacRaild
Northumbria





> -----Original Message-----
> From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk [SMTP:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 6:30 AM
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 7
>
>
> From: "Anthony McNicholas"
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 6
>
> Mick
>
> At the risk of talking about Paddy as if he were not in the room, I don't
> know if you do agree with him. My interpretation of Paddy's comments on
> Fitzpatrick's piece is that he (Paddy) is an admirer of his work, as
> anyone
> who had read Oceans.would be, but that on this occasion, because he had
> chosen to be provocative above all else, the reasons he gave for NOT
> studying the Irish Diaspora were in fact, as Paddy said, justifications
> FOR,
> and that this might be an indication that this piece was not characterised
> by the intellectual rigour we would normally associate with Fitzpatrick's
> work.
>
> My own rather glib comments on his performance at the UNL conference were
> coloured by the fact that I thought he was being glib. To assert that you
> can't study the Irish abroad because they don't exist, is not serious, nor
> is the replacement of Irish as a unit of study with "the Diaspora from the
> British Isles, or the Ulster Diaspora." It isn't that those people who
> were
> less than impressed with Fitzpatrick's presentation, the "intellectual
> conservatives" were "perhaps taking it all too seriously", quite the
> reverse, we got the joke-we were being teased-you don't appear to have. It
> wasn't a case of him throwing a cat among the pigeons, so much as a pigeon
> among the cats-most of whom, refused to take the bait and left the cheeky
> creature alone.
>
> I found a couple of curiosities in your message. I did not for instance
> know
> that "a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
> 'politically grooved" and I am not sure what it means. Is this some kind
> of
> euphemism for 'thick ' and 'nationalist'? I think we should be told. The
> seeming equation between the use of empirical evidence and intellectual
> sterility also had me puzzled. As a student of media history with an
> interest in the Irish diaspora I see it as normal practice (as well as a
> pleasure) to go back to primary sources. I have been writing about the
> 1860s
> and there is STUFF everywhere, scattered about the place, that no one has
> ever looked at, or has been ignored for years, but is STUFF, interesting,
> important STUFF. It's not sterile. If we allow yourselves, on the other
> hand,
> to become too detached from material reality in whatever form, the
> historical record or just daily life, we can end up in the total sterility
> of someone like Baudrillard when he asserted that the Gulf War which
> killed
> tens of thousands of people did not exist outside of the media coverage of
> it. Me an empiricist? Proud of it!
> Anthony McNicholas
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2001 7:30 AM
> Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 6
>
>
> >
> > From: "Michael McManus"
> > Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 5
> >
> > Paddy,
> >
> > I rather take your position on this one. I see David Fitzpatrick's piece
> as
> > intellectually refreshing in an academic area which tends to become
> > academically sterile at times. My recent thoughts, which for me at
> least,
> > align with the debate we are in here, come from something I am currently
> > writing:
> >
> > "It is as if the academic needle has become stuck in the relational
> groove
> > of some comparative theoretical models and cannot get out of the rut. An
> > exemplification is evidenced in the segregation/assimilation model which
> > characterizes much of the Irish in Britain studies literature. This is
> an
> > analytical inadequate model (MacRaild, 1998:209) and in order to get out
> of
> > its repetitive rut a call for a more adequate analysis of historical
> data
> > has already been made (Hickman 1999:236-237). Hickman is surely correct
> when
> > she argues that Irish historical study researchers tend to be inherent
> > empiricists and that this does nothing to lift the repetitive needle and
> > move the debate on to richer channels. Daly, (1997) commenting on famine
> > studies, takes a similar stance pointing out that, 'Several of the
> > contributions consist of little more than a selection of information
> culled
> > from the minutes of boards of guardians, with little attention being
> given
> > to a wider context'.
> >
> > Part of this 'rut' problem concerns concepts central to much of the work
> of
> > writers such as Hickman; the 'status quo' and 'hegemony' - in this
> context,
> > the status quo of Irish commentators and the academic hegemony they
> exist
> > within. It is, therefore, revealing that Hickman's critique of the
> > segregation/assimilation model (Hickman, ibid.), while being commended
> for
> > its intellectual value, is seen as a revolutionarily text and termed
> > 'iconoclastic' by the very 'status quo' academics she critically points
> the
> > finger at (Swift and Gilley, 1999:10). Swift and Gilley's comments,
> while
> > offering clear supporting evidence for Hickman's claims of an academic
> > impasse, also contain within them an approval and, thus, a seed of hope.
> The
> > need for an alternative analysis of the social data produced during
> years
> of
> > Irish studies research, may have at last, therefore, been given a nod
> and
> a
> > wink of approval by the 'status quo' themselves. "
> >
> > I feel your comment that this sterile approach, 'is generally the
> reaction
> I
> > have had from people who have contacted me off-list', supports the
> notion
> > that a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
> > 'politically grooved' .Without meaning to miss the importance of the
> whole
> > Irish studies area (my obsession in fact), are these intellectual
> > conservatives perhaps taking it all too seriously? The fact that many
> are
> > happy to stay in the comfortable groove can only mean to me academic
> > sterility. David Fitzpatrick's article is meant to reinvigorate and
> possibly
> > get us out of the rut. What an academic he is!
> >
> > Mick.
> >
> >

Forwarded on behalf of...
savager[at]bc.edu
Robert Joseph Savage, Jr.
Subject: Framing Coexistence



Friends:

Our friends at Brandies University have been working on a film
program that we would like to share. You are invited to attend an
International Documentary Film Series presented by The Brandeis
Initiative in International Coexistence.

The program for Tuesday March 6 is listed below. Please call
781-736-5001. Given the snow this may be postponed.

March 6, 2001-- Schwartz Auditorium
Belfast My Love, Directed by Lawrence Pitkethly, American premiere.
Presented in conjunction with the Irish Studies Program, UMASS,
Boston.

Panelists:
* Lawrence Pitkethly, Writer and Filmmaker
* Thomas O'Grady, Director of Irish Studies, University of
Massachusetts, Boston
* Kathleen O'Toole, Member of Patten Commission on Policing in
Northern Ireland
* Sarah-Bess Dworin 101, Ethics and Coexistence Student Fellow,
Brandeis University

----------------------
Robert J. Savage
Associate Director
Irish Studies
Boston College
savager[at]bc.edu
(617) 552-3966

web site: www.bc.edu/irish

From: "Michael McManus"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 7

Anthony,

I have read Fitzpatrick's piece once again and still find it academically
refreshing, not academically mischievous or insulting. Perhaps I am a bit
naïve when it comes to 'academic mischief'. I must be honest and say that I
do not understand what it's purpose would be - why such an acclaimed
writer, 'self-consciously intended to goad people into outraged opposition'.
Perhaps someone will let me know. I would like to get the joke like everyone
else! If 'goading' was the intention, nevertheless, I still forgive 'the
cheeky creature'. Naively perhaps, for me read your, 'goad people into
outraged opposition' as, 'intent to academically reinvigorate by making us
think'. Isn't that what the social sciences are all about? That's what I was
told anyway. What's more, it's working. What may be disappointing, however,
is that most of the discussion to date seems to taken place, 'off line'
rather than inviting response.

I most certainly was not suggesting that empiricism equals sterility. I
would be shooting myself in the foot if I did. Like Hickman, however, I can
see it being used a lot in Irish historical studies without much theoretical
basis at all or, attaching theoretical analyses which are not very
sophisticated when they are used. The theoretical framework which Hickman
uses in her, 'Religion, Class and Identity' for instance, provides a more
sophisticated interpretation of the empirical data than the old Instrumental
Marxist, Political Economy model' does. Not that I am myopically fixed on
her analysis either. In its high level of abstraction, she too overstates
the functional relationship of the state to capital. Of course, it is this
kind of deep Gramscian analysis of the State which Hickman wants historians
of Ireland to contemplate and incorporate into their writing. I think it
would improve things. But while this theoretical analysis is a valuable
contribution to Irish studies it, nevertheless, leads us into the trap of
economic reductionism. In this instance, Hickman's over-egging of political
economy reduces the state and religion to a structural necessity, operating
exclusively to the advantage of capital - it's political economy again
folks. If you want to have a reference recent nearly, 'non-theoretically
committed,' 'empirically rich', work, then Professor Frank Neal is an
example I can give you. I love reading his work though and I recognize my
inexperience against his! No one would disagree that his work is extremely
important and valuable.

Of course, nor am I suggesting that all Irish Diaspora writers are 'thick'
and 'nationalistic'. Would I say that about anybody, let alone myself? But
if there is any doubt out there; I'm not thick and I have no hang-ups on
nationality and no crisis of national identity - I'm English, but very proud
to have had Irish-born, emigrant, great grandparents.

I may have misinterpreted Paddy's position on this and apologies if I did. I
hope this helps to explain the way I see Fitzpatrick's piece. I have been a
career police officer, however, not a career academic, and accept I may
never catch up. Thanks for helping me.

Mick.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dss6mm/

- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 06:30
Subject: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 7


>
> From: "Anthony McNicholas"
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment on Fitzpatrick 6
>
> Mick
>
> At the risk of talking about Paddy as if he were not in the room, I don't
> know if you do agree with him. My interpretation of Paddy's comments on
> Fitzpatrick's piece is that he (Paddy) is an admirer of his work, as
anyone
> who had read Oceans.would be, but that on this occasion, because he had
> chosen to be provocative above all else, the reasons he gave for NOT
> studying the Irish Diaspora were in fact, as Paddy said, justifications
FOR,
> and that this might be an indication that this piece was not characterised
> by the intellectual rigour we would normally associate with Fitzpatrick's
> work.
>
> My own rather glib comments on his performance at the UNL conference were
> coloured by the fact that I thought he was being glib. To assert that you
> can't study the Irish abroad because they don't exist, is not serious, nor
> is the replacement of Irish as a unit of study with "the Diaspora from the
> British Isles, or the Ulster Diaspora." It isn't that those people who
were
> less than impressed with Fitzpatrick's presentation, the "intellectual
> conservatives" were "perhaps taking it all too seriously", quite the
> reverse, we got the joke-we were being teased-you don't appear to have. It
> wasn't a case of him throwing a cat among the pigeons, so much as a pigeon
> among the cats-most of whom, refused to take the bait and left the cheeky
> creature alone.
>
> I found a couple of curiosities in your message. I did not for instance
know
> that "a lot of Diaspora studies people tend to be 'non-theorist', and
> 'politically grooved" and I am not sure what it means. Is this some kind
of
> euphemism for 'thick ' and 'nationalist'? I think we should be told. The
> seeming equation between the use of empirical evidence and intellectual
> sterility also had me puzzled. As a student of media history with an
> interest in the Irish diaspora I see it as normal practice (as well as a
> pleasure) to go back to primary sources. I have been writing about the
1860s
> and there is STUFF everywhere, scattered about the place, that no one has
> ever looked at, or has been ignored for years, but is STUFF, interesting,
> important STUFF. It's not sterile. If we allow yourselves, on the other
> hand,
> to become too detached from material reality in whatever form, the
> historical record or just daily life, we can end up in the total sterility
> of someone like Baudrillard when he asserted that the Gulf War which
killed
> tens of thousands of people did not exist outside of the media coverage of
> it. Me an empiricist? Proud of it!
> Anthony McNicholas
>

Forwarded on behalf of
Tom O'Donoghue
todonogh[at]kroner.ecel.uwa.edu.au


Centre for Irish studies

Monograph Series, No. 1.
Murdoch University

Bilingual Education in Ireland, 1904-1922

Priced at $A15 including GST and postage
Available from:
Centre for Irish Studies
Murdoch University
Murdoch Western Australia 6150
Phone: 93602366
Details on web page at:
http://wwwsoc.murdoch.edu.au/cfis

With the great interest in bilingual education
these days, it is easy to forget that the area
has a rich and diverse history. Dr Tom
O'Donoghue's book is an important
contribution to a small but growing body of
information about past experiments in
different parts of the world. It provides a
comprehensive account of the Bilingual
Programme of Instruction introduced into
selected schools in Ireland during the first
two decades of the twentieth century. The
origins, nature and operation of the
Programme are explored in detail and its
varied success explained. The book is also a
contribution to the history of colonialism and
education, helping to modify some of the
more extreme claims regarding British
cultural imperialism in Ireland and the
historical decline of the Irish language. It will
be of great interest to bilingual educators in
many countries, encouraging them to look to
the past for pedagogical ideas and
experience and complementing empirical
research on contemporary experiments.

Tom O'Donoghue is an Associate
Professor in the Graduate School of
Education at The University of Western
Australia. He received his Ph.D. in
History of Education from the National
University of Ireland. In addition to
numerous articles published in
international journals on the history of
education and curriculum theory, he is
author of a number of books, including
The Catholic Church and the Secondary
School Curriculum in Ireland, 1922-62
(Peter Lang), Educational Restructuring:
International Perspectives (Kogan Page)
and Innovative School Principals and
Restructuring (Routledge). He is
currently Vice-President of the
Australian and New Zealand History of
Education Society.

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Richard Davis

Can anyone out there supply the email address of Young Ireland
historian Richard Davis; presumably he's still at the University of
Tasmania in Hobart?

Many thanks,

Kerby Miller.

From: "Michael McManus"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Comment...

Don,

I absolutely agree with you on the need for as much empiricism as possible.
The point I wanted to convey, through the use of some other respected
writers like yourself and my own more humble contemplative powers, was that
there is a tendency for 'some' writers to see either, 'nothing out there'
for a social theory to describe or explain; or when they do see something
the theoretical frameworks they use are open to much criticism - as theories
rightly are of course. Theories are always open to criticism - not even
David Fitzpatrick has the true answer to the meaning of life; social reality
is difficult to put your finger on. Surely it is both good empirical
research and good theory, in equal measures, which gets us closer to social
reality and subsequent claims of academic excellence. Theorizing in the
social sciences generally is in disarray too and this is partly marked by
the relative disconnection between theory and empirical research. What I
believe Dr. Hickman is saying is that this only provides us with half the
story and that Irish studies can be invigorated by using better theoretical
frameworks which enrich our understanding of the empirical data. So, as an
aspiring writer on the social reality of the Irish in Britain in the 1800's,
I need to look and listen to the empiricists and the theorists equally and
not drift too far to one side. Having already looked and listened to some
degree, I maintain my view that the writing can tend towards the empirical
at the expense of the theoretical. In my writing struggles, therefore, my
objective will be to try and introduce a balanced argument about the social
reality of the data I have found. In doing this I will also listen to the
Gulbenkian Commission on Restructuring the Social Sciences (1996). As that
commission found, it would help in all this debate if the social sciences
were more interdisciplinary and not as exclusive - thus my earlier reference
to a worry about hegemony and status quo in particular disciplines. I will
be seeking out a theoretical understanding which is inclusive of
sociologists, historians, geographers, and other disciplines - even the
natural sciences too - complexity and chaos theory holds some potential
here. As a good tutor, thanks for responding and letting me clear my head on
all that.

Mick

- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 01:30
Subject: Ir-D Comment...


>
> From: Don MacRaild
> Subject: Comment on Diaspora (1 or 8?)
>
> Dear all,
>
> I thought I might enter the fray seeing as my name was mentioned by Mick
> McManus. I do indeed believe that the segregation/assimilationist model is
> somewhat narrow and stereotyped; nor do I believe it goes all the way in
> explaining the experiences of the Irish in Britain or anywhere else for
that
> matter. But I wouldn't want anyone to think that I was anything other than
> an empiricist. I use theory when it helps me to model evidence, not the
> the other way round, and I would never be attracted to the utility of a
> purely
> theoretical position. I would argue that if Mick's 'repetitive needle' is
> to
> be lifted from the cracked record, then more (not less) empirical research
> is needed. In particular, I would argue the case for comparative history,
> based upon solid proposition and sound comparable evidence.
>
> But this is not to say that the answer lies in Diaspora. To be honest, I'm
> still not sure. This is because I don't think we have even begun
> to get through the preparatory political analysis that
> is required for a term that for years was most associated with Ha Shoah
> and the flight from Turkey of the Armenians, to be deployed in the Irish
> case. While I accept that it has become common to equate the Irish
> experience with other migrations (or Diaspora creations) where an
> element of trauma becomes the norm, I am still struck by the normal-
> ness of the idea of migration, and how for so many people--Irish, Scots,
> Norwegians, Italians, Chinese, etc., etc.--the fundamental experiences
> and the fundamental causes were so similar. Perhaps this is the
> economic historian in me? I would add here that I can also sympathise
> with David Fitzpatrick's point about other Diasporas: 45 per cent of
> the Cornish-born were resident outside Cornwall in 1891, a figure five
> per cent higher than for the Irish. I am not saying that the two are
> of equal weight in the world; patently, such a claim would be
> absurd. But comparison does make us think differently.
>
> In recent times, the Diaspora has mainly been used as a descriptor, a
> sort of collective noun, for migrating peoples. I myself have been
> as guilty as the next person of using the term just because it's
> interchangeable with global migration, or whatever. But Diaspora, if it
> is to mean anything, means more than migration. It refers to the
> ways in which common experiences were carved out in different places
> in the world, and how host and incoming peoples interacted, and how
> migrants transformed (as well as being transformed by) the new
> cultures with which they made contact. Diaspora (the idea rather than
> the experience) is both an antidote to, and a result of, globalisation:
> Diaspora implies something global that connects Australian-Irish with
> American-Irish, etc. But that something isn't a flattened, common
> experience (a la globalisation); it isn't simply the way in which
> people refer back to Ireland, the natal soil. It is a host of experiences
> so bewildering comprehension can only come through solid
> comparative work.
>
> Whereas comparative history is a methodology underpinned by an
> epistemology, I'm not sure that Diaspora is the same thing. That
> doesn't mean that Diaspora has no meaning or utility; but it is
> post-modern in the sense that it's like quicksliver through the fingers;
> its relativism is apparent.
>
> I hope this rambling isn't too off-putting.
>
>
> Don MacRaild
> Northumbria
>
>
>
>

Forwarded on behalf of...
Pierre Purseigle

Dear all,

I post this query on behalf of a new-born research group dedicated to
labour history.

Formed by an interdisciplinary group of European young scholars, our team
is looking for a young British or Irish historian of labour who might be
willing to join in our project to work on history of labour and related
topics such as macro-economic history, history of firms, of welfare, of
industrial relations, of working-class movements, etc.

Our team is meeting up in Paris at the end of the week and we will be
grateful to hear of any potential collaborator as soon as possible.

Query and answers should be addressed off-list to Francois Guedj,
guedj.francois[at]libertysurf.fr

Thanks for your help,

Yours sincerely,

Pierre


- ---
Pierre Purseigle
Universite Toulouse Le Mirail
Departement d'Histoire
CNRS ERS 2085 FRA.M.ESPA - MIREHC
5, allees Antonio Machado
31058 TOULOUSE Cedex 1 - FRANCE
Tel: +33 (0) 561 254 476
Mob:+33 (0) 620 619 102
E-mail: purseig[at]univ-tlse2.fr

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Kerby,

See...

http://hyperion.humsoc.utas.edu.au/history_classics/staff/davis_r.html

{Note that your own line breaks might fracture that long web address)

Email: Richard.Davis[at]utas.edu.au
Fax: 62 253844
Phone: 62 253339

P.O'S.

- -----Original Message-----
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Seeking Richard Davis


From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Richard Davis

Can anyone out there supply the email address of Young Ireland
historian Richard Davis; presumably he's still at the University of
Tasmania in Hobart?

Many thanks,

Kerby Miller.

Forwarded on behalf of...
"Joachim.Lerchenmueller"

CALL FOR PAPERS

'Germany and the Celtic Countries in History'

A conference to be held at the University of Ulster,
Magee College, Derry/Londonderry,
13-15 September 2001.

The conference aims to investigate historical
relations between Germany and all of the Celtic countries throughout
the ages. Papers may cover any aspect of this relationship, whether in
the mediaeval or modern era. Celtic missionary activity in southern
Germany; Celtic exiles in German- speaking Europe; Germany and
Brittany in WW2; German soldiers and Palatine refugees in Ireland;
Historical German writing on the Celtic countries; Historical writing
from the Celtic countries on Germany; The German study of the
Celts in history. The above are just some of the themes that
conference papers might address. Abstracts of not more than 200
words should be submitted by 30 March 2001 to the address
below. The advisory panel will select papers and announce the
programme in April 2001.

Advisory Board: Prof. T.G. Fraser (Ulster), Prof. Sabine Heinz
(Vienna), Dr. Gisela Holfter (Limerick), Prof. Séamus Mac
Mathúna (Ulster), Dr. Donal McLaughlin (Heriot Watt,
Edinburgh), Prof. Ailbhe Ó Corráin (Ulster).

CONTACT:

Dr Pol O'Dochartaigh
School of Languages and Literature
Faculty of Arts
University of Ulster
Coleraine
Co. Derry
BT52 1SA
N. Ireland

Tel: +44 (0)28 - 7032 4548
Fax: +44 (0)28 - 7032 4962
E-mail: p.odochartaigh[at]ulst.ac.uk
Web: http://www.ulst.ac.uk/faculty/humanities/lang+lit/modlangs/
germanceltic.html

submitted by -
Joachim Lerchenmueller Ph.D.

Lecturer in German Studies
Dept. of Languages & Cultural Studies
University of Limerick
Limerick, Ireland
Ph. 00353-61-20-2453 FAX 20-2556
Room B2-031
http://www.ul.ie/~lcs/irish-german.html

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Seeking Richard Davis 2

MANY THANKS.
KM


>From Patrick O'Sullivan
>
>Kerby,
>
>See...
>
>http://hyperion.humsoc.utas.edu.au/history_classics/staff/davis_r.html
>
>{Note that your own line breaks might fracture that long web address)
>
>Email: Richard.Davis[at]utas.edu.au
>Fax: 62 253844
>Phone: 62 253339
>
>P.O'S.
>