Subject: Re: Ir-D Alcohol and Temperance 4
From: Eileen A Sullivan

Elizabeth,

I saw a notice in Paddy's Irish-Diaspora list for an Encyclopedia entry on
Father
Mathew. You noted later that you are writing that entry. So, you saved
me time in researching his bio. I will wait for you...

Augustine's FOOTPRINTS OF FATHER MATHEW Dublin, 1947 is the main source
along with your work for my Carleton bio. There are enough facts to back
up Carleton's ART MAGUIRE, THE BROKEN PLEDGE. 1845.

Any news in getting WILLIAM CARLETON'S poetry entrys in Australian
journals? The search here has produced nothing.

Eileen

Dr. Eileen A. Sullivan, Director
The Irish Educational Association, Inc. Tel # (352) 332
3690
6412 NW 128th Street E-Mail :
eolas1[at]juno.com
Gainesville, FL 32653

From: "Stephen Handsley"
Subject: Social history

From: Stephen Handsley
S.Handsley[at]warwick.ac.uk

As part of my research into Anglo-Irish Catholic death and mourning =
rituals in the UK city of Derby, I am having difficulty sourcing and =
securing relevant information about the communities' social history. I =
have tried the local studies library which did not throw up anything of =
major significance. Similarly, I have contacted the local catholic =
priests' from whom I am awaiting a reply. Could anyone offer further =
suggestions? =20

Best wishes


Stephen


Stephen Handsley
Dept. of Sociology
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
e-mail: S.Handsley[at]warwick.ac.uk
or shandsley[at]globalnet.co.uk

From: "Michael McManus"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Azure, a harp or, stringed argent 2

Paddy,

The Irish heraldry question made me think about Sean Murphy's web pages,
which are worth seeing if you haven't already done so. The McCarthy Mor hoax
is especially interesting. I think it is representative of the contemporary
rush for family history information and the commercial benefits for those
who sell it. As such, the selling of Irish genealogy is an excellent
sociological subject area to study.

Go to:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/irhismys/index.htm

http://homepage.tinet.ie/~seanjmurphy/irhismys/maccarthy.htm

Mick.
- ----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 7:00 AM
Subject: Ir-D Azure, a harp or, stringed argent 2


>
> >From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> This is the reply I have received from
> Fergus Gillespie
> Deputy Chief Herald of Ireland
>
>
> P.O'S.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> To: 'Patrick O'Sullivan'
> Subject: RE: Azure, a harp or, stringed argent
>
>
> Dear Mr O'Sullivan,
>
> The figure sometimes seen on the pillar of the harp is Nike = Victory.
>
> For heraldic purposes any recognisable harp is a harp, so the arms of
> Ireland may have Nike, lovely or otherwise, or not.
>
> The harp with which you are most familiar as the emblem of the State is
> based on the Brian Boru harp (so called) which is in Trinity College.
This
> representation of the harp is one of those reserved to the use of the
State
> by international agreement. As to how it should be represented: you are
> aware of the tinctures but for State purposes it has a minimum of eleven
> strings, vertically disposed.
>
> Although the arms of Ireland are registered in this Office the use of the
> harp (separated from its shield) within Ireland is controlled by the
> Department of Trade and Industry as it is the Trademarks Act which (if I
> remember correctly) forbids 'the use of the harp or anything resembling
the
> harp'.
>
> The earliest known recording of the harp as pertaining to le roi d'Irlande
> appears in the Armorial Wijnbergen, a document in the French language of
> about 1275 now in Holland, in which it is blazoned: Azure a harp or. In
its
> present form it dates from the reign of Henry VIII who used it to replace
> the previously used Azure three ancient crowns or.
>
> Has it ever been studied? Well, above you have, I think, most of what is
to
> be known.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Fergus Gillespie
> Deputy Chief Herald of Ireland
>
>
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Further information at
British Association for Romantic Studies
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/english/bars/intro.htm

Might interest...

P.O'S.


- ------ Forwarded Message
> The 1830s: An International Conference
>
> Friday 13-Sunday 15 September 2002
> European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford, Greater
> Manchester, UK
>
> Keynote Speakers:
> Professor Isobel Armstrong
> Dr Gregory Dart
> Professor Cora Kaplan
> Dr Jacqueline M Labbe
> Professor Brian Maidment
>
>
> The 1830s have traditionally been seen as a 'gap', or a period of
> transition, in literary history, perhaps due to their perceived paucity of
> canonical 'great works'. But the 1830s was the decade of the New Poor
Law,
> the Great Reform Act, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and
> Victoria's accession. It saw the deaths of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Walter
> Scott, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon; it saw the first
> publications of Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett, Thackeray, and Robert
Browning.
> As critical assumptions and methodologies have shifted, the literature and
> culture of the 1830s have become central rather than marginal to academic
> debate.
>
> This conference invites papers on all aspects of 1830s literature and
> culture. Papers addressing specific topics in the literary, cultural and
> political activities of the 1830s will be welcomed, as will more general
> papers investigating the concepts of 'Romanticism' and 'Victorianism', or
> exploring the ways in which the decade's cultural production affects
> concepts of period, discipline and canon.
>
> Please send abstracts of papers (maximum 300 words) in Word format by 28
> February 2002 to Juliet John or Alice Jenkins
> .
>
> Further information is available from Wendy Dodgson
> , Conference Administrator, European Studies
> Research Institute, University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester M5
> 4WT, UK.
> Dr Alice Jenkins
> Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ,
> UK
> tel. 0141 330 5296 Fax. 0141 330 4601

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Might interest...

- ------ Forwarded Message
>
>
> CALL FOR PAPERS FOR SHARP 2002
>
> 10-13 July 2002 University of London
>
> The tenth annual conference of the Society for the History of
> Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) will be held in London
> between 10th and 13th July 2002. The lead institution is the Institute
> of English Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London
> (www.sas.ac.uk/ies) ; the British Library (www.bl.uk/) and the Wellcome
> Library (www.wellcome.ac.uk/library) are co-organisers.
>
> Sessions will take place in Senate House (the administrative and
> academic centre of the federal University of London in which the
> prestigious University of London Library is housed), and in the British
> Library and in the Wellcome Library. Apart from the usual panel and
> plenary sessions there will be opportunities to visit archives,
> libraries and others sites of interest in and around London (including
> the publishers' archives at the University of Reading).
>
> In the SHARP tradition, we welcome proposals for individual papers and
> entire sessions dealing with the creation, diffusion, or reception of
> the written or printed word or image in any historical period or place.
> We also seek to draw on the particular interests and strengths of the
> institutions organising the conference. To this end there are two
> specific themes on which we would particularly welcome submissions. The
> first is the history of the medical book; the second is digitization as
> it impinges on book history.
>
> Each panel will usually last one-and-a-half hours and will consist of
> three papers. Each paper should last a maximum of twenty minutes, thus
> allowing ten minutes discussion of each paper. Proposals for individual
> papers should be the equivalent of one page maximum (i.e. 450 words),
> giving the paper title, a short abstract and brief biographical
> identification. Session proposals should include a cover sheet
> explaining the theme and goals and separate sheets for each paper.
>
> A small number of travel grants will be available to trainee scholars
> (those currently writing PhD theses) and to independent scholars (those
> who are not members of institutions which would normally be expected to
> support travel to an academic conference). If you wish to be considered
> for such a grant you should indicate this at the end of your proposal.
> Please note that we always receive more applications for grants than we
> have grants to give.
>
> The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 31 October 2001. Proposals
> should be sent by email, if possible, to:
>
> ies[at]sas.ac.uk
>
> Those who do not have access to email should send a hard copy of the
> proposal to:
>
> SHARP 2002, Room 308, IES, School of Advanced Study, Senate House, Malet
> Street, London WC1E 7HU, UK.
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Might interest...

- ------ Forwarded Message
>
> Call for Papers: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers 1830-1880 (journal)
>
> The editors of this special issue of the journal, `Women's Writing',
> invite original articles on women's popular writing of the Nineteenth
> Century, between c1830 and 1880. We hope to attract essays (3,000-10,000
> words) on lesser-known works by writers such as Mary Braddon, Margaret
> Oliphant and Ellen Wood, as well as critical readings of texts by more
> neglected figures. Possible authors might also include (but are not by any
> means limited to) Rhoda Broughton, Charlotte Yonge, Eliza Cook, Charlotte
> Riddell, Caroline Clive and Adelaide Proctor. Possible topics for papers
> include: writings in a range of popular genres and forms (domestic
> realism, sensation fiction, religious fiction, romances, the short story,
> the ghost story, detective fiction), as well as poetry and non-fictional
> writings. Papers might also focus on some of the following: readership,
> magazines, professionalism, the literary marketplace, cultural
> commentaries on literature and femininity.
>
> Inquiries and completed manuscripts (3 copies) should be submitted to the
> guest editors at one of the addresses below by 31st August 2002:
> Detailed `notes for contributors' can be found on the inside back cover of
> each issue.
>
> Dr Emma Liggins
> Dept of English
> Edge Hill
> St Helen's Road
> Ormskirk
> Lancashire
> L39 4QP
> Email: ligginse[at]edgehill.ac.uk
>
> Dr Andrew Maunder
> Faculty of Humanities
> University of Hertfordshite
> Wall Hall
> Aldenham
> Watford WD2 8AT
> Hertfordshire
> Email: a.c.maunder[at]herts.ac.uk
>
> Dr Andrew Maunder
> Literature Group
> Faculty of Humanities
> University of Hertfordshire
> Wall Hall
> Aldenham
> Watford
> Herts WD2 8AT
>
> Tel: 01707 285641
> Email: a.c.maunder[at]herts.ac.uk
>
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of...
Tracey Holsgrove, The Institute of Irish Studies, The University of
Liverpool, 1 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7WY
T.P.E.Holsgrove[at]liverpool.ac.uk

For further information see

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/woireland/

Please circulate widely...

P.O'S.

The Women on Ireland Research Network
CALL FOR PAPERS

Re:Searching Irish Women:
cultural, geographical, historical, literary and social experiences


Confirmed speakers: Ronit Lentin, Maria Luddy,
Gerardine Meaney and Bronwen Walter

The Women on Ireland Research Network invites abstracts (of not more than
200 words) for its forthcoming conference to be held at the University of
Liverpool, 15-17 March 2002. The Women on Ireland Research Network is a
network of women academics working on all aspects of Irish life and culture,
from disciplines as varied as sociology, geography, art history, law,
cultural studies, literature and history. We foster scholarship in all
aspects of Irish studies and provide a friendly, relaxed forum for debate
and collaboration in all aspects of research.

We welcome papers on a range of themes including


· Identities · Oral histories

· Migration · Sexualities

· Religion · the Peace Process

· Politics · Women?s writing

· Methodologies · Visual representation

· Contemporary Ireland · Health issues

· Travellers · Community projects


In addition to individual abstracts we also welcome offers for organised
sessions (three matched abstracts) on a relevant theme. Abstracts should be
sent to arrive no later than Friday 30 November 2001 to Rhiannon Talbot,
School of Law, 21-24 Windsor Terrace, University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RJ

Further information and booking forms available from Tracey Holsgrove, The
Institute of Irish Studies, The University of Liverpool, 1 Abercromby
Square, Liverpool, L69 7WY.

See our website www.ncl.ac.uk/woireland for more information

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

We have talked about Tom Crean before...

And it's all in our DIRDA database...

Our attention has been drawn to the following item...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,574875,00.html

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Ir-D members willbe aware of the work of Louise Ryan, now based at the Irish
Studies Centre, University of North London in 2000. Louise has published
widely on the Irish Suffrage Movement - Women's History Review (1995), Irish
Political Studies (1994), Women's Studies International Forum (1996), - she
has also published work on Irish Republican Women - Gender and History
(1999) and Feminist Review (2000). She has just published a co-edited book
(with A. Gallagher and C. Lubelska) Re-presenting the Past: Women and
History published by Pearsons, 2001. She is working on a new co-edited book
(with Margaret Ward) on Irish women and nationalism to be published by Irish
Academic Press. Her book Gender, Identity and the Irish Press, 1922-1937:
Embodying the Nation will be published by Mellen Press in 2002. Louise is
currently researching Irish women's immigration to Britain in the 1930s. As
well as analysing a range of Irish and British documentary sources this work
also involves interviewing women who left Ireland in the 1930s.

And a first article has just been published...

Full information, below...

P.O'S.

Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography
Volume 8 Number 3
Issue Sep 2001

Title: Irish Female Emigration in the 1930s: transgressing space and culture
Author(s): Louise Ryan
Source: Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography
Volume: 8 Number: 3 Page: 271 -- 282
DOI: 10.1080/09663690120067348
Publisher: Carfax Publishing, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Reference Links: 4

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/0966369X.html

Louise Ryan

Abstract:

Irish female emigration in the 1930s ? transgressing space and culture.

Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, the
continuing levels of emigration from Ireland came as a disappointment to
many who believed that British colonialism had caused and perpetuated the
emigration problem. Within this context there was a need to explain
emigration in ways that deflected blame away from the new state authorities.
Many historians have commented upon the attempts to redefine emigration in
the post-colonial period (Akenson, 1993, Lee, 1990, Miller, 1990). In this
paper, I contribute to a gendered analysis of these shifting constructions
of emigration. Drawing upon Irish newspapers of the period, I suggest that
the figure of the ?emigrant girl? was central to post-colonial discourses on
emigration. During the 1930s the emigration of thousands of young, Irish
women to English cities such as London sparked widespread comment and
criticism. The Irish press and the Catholic hierarchy in particular,
perhaps in an effort to deter such emigrants, propagated an image of these
vulnerable young women lost and alone in the big, bad cities of England. I
use the work of Massey (1998) and Parsons (2000) to analyse the ways in
which the ?emigrant girl? embodied specific representations of place,
culture and gendered identity. The ?emigrant girl? embodied an Irishness
marked by religion, culture and landscape. Through her transgression of
physical, cultural and religious spaces she encountered loneliness, danger
and the risk of de-nationalisation.

- --
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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0709 236 9050
Fax International +44 709 236 9050

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

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

It is worth mentioning that Paul O'Leary did a chapter for me in

Patrick O?Sullivan, ed., Religion and Identity
Volume 5 of The Irish World Wide

From the cradle to the grave: popular Catholicism among the Irish in Wales
Paul O?Leary

Further information at http://www.irishdiaspora.net

There is also a brief section in Paul's book...

Immigration and Integration
The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922
Paul O'Leary
(ISBN 0-7083-1584-4)

University of Wales Press, Cardiff
http://www.uwp.co.uk/

These do give a feeling for possible sources and issues...

The Ir-D list has discussed some of the issues over the years - check the
DIRDA database, for words like 'death' or 'wake' or 'wakes'. Not forgetting
'Marx Brothers'...

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/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0709 236 9050
Fax International +44 709 236 9050

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

From: "noel gilzean"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Social history: death and mourning

>From Noel Gilzean
rosslare51[at]hotmail.com
n.a.gilzean[at]hud.ac.uk
University of Huddersfield UK
http://www.hud.ac.uk/hip
The first thing I would say is good luck. The chances are you may have to do
it yourself. I have been investigating the Irish community in Huddersfield,
I was lucky in that the local library had some of the minute books of the
Irish league clubs. In my case the earlier ones were most informative. They
tend to deal with the day to day business of the club as a business so
require a good deal of study. The local newspapers may have some information
but usually from my experience 19th rather than 20th century. With the
churches it might be worth looking for parish newletters, and anniversary
publications of the building of various churches etc. I don't know whether
Derby fits into the northern districts as regards church administration but
the local diocesean archives can be very useful. Leeds has the records for
the Northern district pre catholic emancipation. You could try the GAA if
there is a local branch. History departments of local catholic schools. It
is probable that most social geography theses on 19th century Derby will
have something on the Irish. I am sure other people on the list can give you
references to published sources.
Noel


From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Reply-To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Social history: death and mourning
Date: Sat 13 Oct 2001 06:00:00 +0000

From: "Stephen Handsley"
Subject: Social history

From: Stephen Handsley
S.Handsley[at]warwick.ac.uk

As part of my research into Anglo-Irish Catholic death and mourning =
rituals in the UK city of Derby, I am having difficulty sourcing and =
securing relevant information about the communities' social history. I =
have tried the local studies library which did not throw up anything of =
major significance. Similarly, I have contacted the local catholic =
priests' from whom I am awaiting a reply. Could anyone offer further =
suggestions? =20

Best wishes


Stephen


Stephen Handsley
Dept. of Sociology
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
e-mail: S.Handsley[at]warwick.ac.uk
or shandsley[at]globalnet.co.uk





_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

From: DanCas1[at]aol.com
Subject: WHAT PADDY SAID: Workshops on IRISH AMERICAN CULTURE

10/16/01
For Immediate Release:
For information please call:
415-437-3402, ext. 427

THE IRISH STUDIES PROGRAM
AN LEANN EIREANNACH
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA

WHAT PADDY SAID
A Two Workshop Introduction To Irish American Culture
with BOB CALLAHAN

Part One,
NOVEMBER 17TH, 11-2,
NEW COLLEGE THEATER,
777 VALENCIA STREET, SF, $20.

Part Two,
DECEMBER 8TH, 11-2,
766 VALENCIA STREET, SF, $20.00
(sliding scale for seniors and students)

IRISH AMERICAN CULTURE TO TAKE CENTER STAGE IN
FORTHCOMING NEW COLLEGE IRISH
STUDIES WORKSHOPS

The Irish Studies Program at New College of California is proud to announce
that Bay Area author and editor Bob Callahan will be hosting two special
workshops on Irish American Culture on Saturday, November 17th and then on
Saturday,=A0 December 7th, 2001 at New College.

"The Irish American contribution to the current Irish revival is often
overlooked," Callahan recently stated "and yet Michael Flatley is from
Chicago, the McCourt Brothers found their writing voices in the City of New
York, and many of the finest Irish musicians of our time now live, and work,
in the USA. "Yet it is in the field of Irish American Literature," Callahan
continues,"where, I believe, we have seen many of the most wonderful
accomplishments Indeed you have to go all the way back to the age of Scott
Fitzgerald and James Farrell to find anything remotely as fine as the
current
generation of writers led by William Kennedy, Maureen Howard, Cormac
McCarthy, and Alice McDermott. "And, of course, those names are only the top
of a rapidly growing list...

During the course of these workshops -- in addition to proving commentary
and
context -- Callahan, and a few=A0 of his friends and colleagues, will be
reading excerpts from the fictions of Kennedy & Company, as well as from
non-fiction writers such as Thomas Lynch and Michael Patrick McDonald,
poets Marianne Moore and Eileen Myles, newspaper writers Jimmy Breslin and
James McNulty, playwrights=A0 Eugene O Neill and Harrigan & Hart. There will
even be a slide show introduction to the very finest Irish American
cartoonists, from Walt Kelly to George McManus, during the course of these
two gatherings.

The first of two three hour workshops will begin at 11:00 AM, on November
17th, and take place at the New College Theater on 777 Valencia in San
Francisco.

The second will begin at 11:00 AM, on December 7th, and take place in Room
11B at 766 Valencia. The fee for each workshop is $20.00.

All our friends in the greater Bay Area Irish community are cordially
invite=
d=20
to attend. Bob Callahan is editor of the Big Book of American Irish Culture,
and the founder of the late and sadly lamented Callahan's Irish Quarterly.
His column on Irish politics and culture currently appears in the Irish
Herald. For more information concerning this program, contact :

-- THE IRISH STUDIES PROGRAM, NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA : 415-437-3402,
ext. 427.

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE

From: DanCas1[at]aol.com
Subject: In Search of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington- Irish Feminism Lives On
(free lecture)

UNMANAGEABLE REVOLUTIONARY
THE LIFE OF HANNA SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON

*

A LECTURE BY=20
MICHELINE SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON

OCTOBER 18TH, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA,=20
766 Valencia St., San Francisco
Admission: Free


SPONSORED BY:
THE IRISH STUDIES PROGRAM/AN LEANN EIREANNACH
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA
THE SAN FRANCISCO IRISH ARTS FOUNDATION
THE UNITED IRISH SOCIETIES OF SAN FRANCISCO


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW COLLEGE IRISH STUDIES PROGRAM
FREE PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

Irish Feminism Lives On: In Search of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington


Inspired by generations of feminist activists, "Hanna's House" house shall
be a place for women to bring about radical change for equality and justice


On October 18th at 7:00 p.m. , Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, the
granddaughter of a famous Irish women rights advocate and suffragette,
will speak at New College of California. Dr Sheehy Skeffington (Ph.D) is the
granddaughter of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, an Irish feminist and nationalist
whose imprisonment and hunger strike activities led to=C2=A0 Irish women
getting
the vote in 1918, two years ahead of American women. Hanna Sheehy
Skeffington
was a major figure in Irish women=E2=80=99s history. Her husband, Frank
Sheehy
Skeffington, also a suffragist and nationalist, was the first person to be
executed during the Easter Uprising of 1916, even though he was a pacifist
and non-combatant.

Following her husband's murder, wishing to communicate the Irish crisis to
the US, Hanna escaped under a false passport to America (she'd been denied a
passport by British authorities in Dublin Castle) in December of 1916 with
her six-year-old son Owen. Her first talk, in January 1917, was to a packed
Carnegie Hall in New York, and for the next 18 months she toured some 21
states, speaking at some 250 venues until June 1918.

Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington (NUI, Galway) has received a private
endowment to begin turning the Sheehy Skeffington home in Terenure, Dublin
into a residential and education centre for women to promote women's
equality through research and education. The $30,000 grant will be used to
conduct a feasibility study to determine the scope of the activities and
house renovation. The "Hanna's House" Committee envisions a project
housing some 12-15 women, being set up as an independent trust dedicated to
women's emancipation.

Dr Sheehy Skeffington is on tour of some 16 US cities, partly reprising her
grandmother's route in America and speaking about Hanna's activities and
raising support for Hanna's House.

+

A LECTURE BY=20
MICHELINE SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON

OCTOBER 18TH, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA,=20
766 Valencia St., San Francisco

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

DRAFT BOOK REVIEW
NOT for further Circulation

A word of explanation... I have had a lot of ill-health over the past year,
and have had to curtail or delay non-essential work - which would include
book reviews, I am afraid.

I am now catching up...

Some time back the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies asked me to review
Morash, Writing the Irish Famine.

In fairness, there had been long delays beforehand - the book had been lying
around in the office in Canada because no one there wanted to review it.
Shame, O Canada, shame. I was asked, said yes, but - see above - health...

Michael Kenneally, now editor of CJIS, has now said that CJIS would still
like my Morash review - but perhaps written in a way that notices the
passing of the years.

Which is what I have tried to do...

Further information on CJIS
http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/cais/cjis/

Michael Kenneally has now kindly agreed that this Draft book review should
be circulated to the Irish-Diaspora list. For information and comment.

P.O'S.


DRAFT BOOK REVIEW
NOT for further Circulation

Christopher Morash
Writing the Irish Famine
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995
ISBN 0 19 818279 1

?It is an appalling picture, that which springs up to memory?, writes Canon
Sheehan of the Irish Famine in his 1905 Glenanaar. ?Gaunt spectres move here
and there, looking at one another out of hollow eyes of despair and gloom.
Ghosts walk the land.?

Patrick Sheehan was born in 1852. What of the Irish Famine could spring to
his memory? The simple answer must be that Sheehan is remembering other
literary representations of the Famine.

I first contacted Christopher Morash about that theme, literary
representations of the Irish Famine, in the early 1990s when I was planning
The Meaning of the Famine, what became the problematic last volume, Volume
6, of my series The Irish World Wide. Morash kindly sent me a copy of
Writing the Irish Famine in typescript, and he wrote for my series a chapter
based on it. My opening paragraph, above, is taken from that chapter ? a
chapter which I have long thought should act as an introduction to the
methods and the thought of the full-length volume. I felt then that a
problem had been identified, and, with the publication of Writing the Irish
Famine in 1995, had been solved. But perhaps it is time to think again
about this scholarly gift that Morash has given us ? for what Morash
demands, or expects, is a readership that understands the problem, and which
is willing to work at understanding his solutions.

It is a truism within the study of Irish literature that Ireland?s great
writers ? the writers within the agreed ?canon' ? all but ignore the Irish
Famine. The disguised demons in Yeats? play The Countess Cathleen speak the
language of ?political economy?, turned into verse. One harangue by the
Citizen in James Joyce?s Ulysses is, like Patrick Sheehan?s memory, a
conflation of earlier Famine texts: ?Even the grand Turk sent us his
piastres?? (A reference I was able to clarify for The Meaning of the Famine
by asking Christine Kinealy to write a chapter on charity and philanthropy).
But, really, you are hunting for instances. In Writing the Irish Famine a
very fine scholar demonstrates ways of reading, understanding and valuing
what is called ?minor literature? ? and he gives generous acknowledgement to
David Lloyd,
Nationalism and Minor Literature, 1987.

The book applies the resources and methods of the newer literary criticism
to a genuine problem within Irish historiography and the study of Irish
literature - the strange patterns, underlying assumptions, underlying
theologies ('progress', 'national sin'), within writing about the Irish
Famine. The works that Morash helps us to read do include literary texts by
writers, familiar and unfamiliar, such as Carleton, Trollope, Mangan, John
Mitchel, Aubrey de Vere and Samuel Ferguson ? but he goes further and
reveals how such texts interact with histories, sermons, and of course
economic treatises, with an important chapter on Malthus.

The book is a difficult ?litcrit? read - but it is an exciting read. In
sum...
when Barthes talks about an intertextual archive which is ?anonymous,
untraceable, and nevertheless already read? (p. 5 of Writing the Irish
Famine)...
when Greenblatt acknowledges ?the desire to speak with the dead? (p. 7)...
when Ricoeur speaks of ?the interweaving of history and fiction? (p. 12)...
when Foucault talks about ?the great confinement? (p. 65)...
when Ricoeur says that victimisation ?reveals the scandal of every theodicy
of history? (p. 141)
when Benjamin talks about ?even the dead?not being safe (p. 153)...
when Jonathan Culler quotes George Eliot on ?the present causes of past
effects? (p. 166)...
when Benjamin talks about remembrance salvaging the future from ?homogenous,
empty time? (p. 180)...
when de Man on Epitaphs suggests that by ?making the dead speak... the
living are struck dumb? (p. 182)...
when Todorov talks about genres being ?revelatory? of ideology (p. 185)...
when Lyotard speaks of an aesthetic ?which denies itself the solace of good
forms? (p. 186) ?
and so on, and so forth?
...they might well be talking about ?writing the Irish Famine?. In other
words, Morash clarifies themes and problems within current literary
criticism by using that criticism?s techniques to clarify themes within our
problematic literary and historiographic legacy.

The book's last full chapter, just before a short ?Conclusion: Claiming the
Dead?, is Chapter 7, ?William Carleton and the End of Writing?. And I find
it interesting that the book should end with Carleton, and - because of what
has gone before and through the book's methods - an interesting and careful
reading of Carleton: ?the troubled space occupied by Carleton's writing in
nineteenth century Ireland...? (p. 155). So, Morash is able to explore
Carleton and the idea of progress, Carleton and ?authentic? Country Life,
ownership of the peasantry ?endowed by the Famine with an almost talismanic
importance? (p. 157) - and explain the narrative collapse that is The
Squanders of Castle Squander.

The ?Conclusion? begins (p. 180)... ?William Carleton's ?Far Gurtha? can
stand as an icon for the whole body of nineteenth-century Famine literature,
the haunting projection of the absent Famine dead...? And near the end, says
(p. 187) ?Castle Squander can be read as an unwitting, unwilling postmodern
text, beyond the comfort of formal closure in its struggle to present the
unpresentable...? Throughout the world, throughout the Irish Diaspora,
there were, from the anniversary year, 1995, onwards, efforts made to erect
monuments to the dead of the Irish Famine, projects which had perhaps to do
with bringing into the present the absent Famine dead ? I can think of
examples in Grosse Ile, Boston, Liverpool. We can respect those monuments,
and respect those efforts ? but we can also wish that some of that effort
had gone into a reading of Writing the Irish Famine.

Patrick O'Sullivan
September 2001

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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
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Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


We have noticed before on the Irish-Diaspora list the debates in Scotland
following composer James Macmillan's 1999 Edinburgh Festival lecture -
debates given a focus and a context in the book...

Scotland's Shame?
Edited By T.M. Devine
ISBN: 1-84018-330-6
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing

Information at
http://www.bookviewireland.ie/results.asp?P_Key=136

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Crisis/2001-01/haldane.html

And here we see Willy Maley floating the suggestion, also made on the Ir-D
list, that some Scottish anti-Catholic prejudice is a version of anti-Irish
prejudice...
http://www.talfanzine.com/issue27/279.htm

I now hear on the grapevine that Glasgow City Council is putting out
'Invitations to Tender' to selected scholars and organisations - in other
words, a restricted invitation - on a Research Project into evaluating
attitudes towards sectarianism in Glasgow...

The closing date for tenders is November 2 2001.

The research brief, as I understand it, is somewhat vague, it will be quite
difficult to construct a research projet that gets at the issues - and the
money offered is not good. Some of the selected organisations have said
they will not be bothering to apply. The whole project, of course, runs
counter to the ways in which things are viewed and researched in England,
though the whole issue of religious prejudice and discrimination is once
again on the agenda. We will be following events with interest.

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

From: WallsAMP[at]aol.com
Subject: Re: Ir-D Sectarianism in Scotland



And Patrick, if anyone wants to know about the related story of how religion
(incl Catholic) and Irish categories finally got into the Scottish Census,
you can get my version in..

Radical Statistics Issue 78 Census Special Autumn 2001
Patricia Walls 'Religion, ethnicity and nation in the Census: Some thoughts
on the inclusion of Irish ethnicity and Catholic religion' pp 48-62

Paddy Walls

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

Republicanism in Modern Ireland Conference - NUI Maynooth, 11 May 2002.


Call for Papers


This one-day conference seeks papers on republicanism in Ireland, north and
south, since
1921.

All aspects of Irish republican politics will be considered, but proposals
relating to
broader themes of republican culture such as ideology, identity and
commemoration are also particularly welcome.

The aim of the conference is to highlight recent scholarship and explore new
perspectives in light of current reappraisals of the Irish republican
tradition since the
Good Friday Agreement.

Abstracts of one page length should be submitted to the organiser by 1
December 2000.

E-mail inquires can be directed to mcgarryf[at]iol.ie.


Organiser:

Dr. Fearghal McGarry,

Dept. of Modern History,

NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

DRAFT BOOK REVIEW
NOT for further distribution...

A version of this review will appear in Irish Studies Review...

For information and comment...

P.O'S.

DRAFT REVIEW

Richard White
Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family?s Past
Cork University Press, 1999
pp 273
ISBN 1 85918 232 1

Are you a polygamist? It is not the most obvious question to ask Sara
Walsh, a young Irish person of 16, late at night on November 18 1936, as she
awaits permission to land in the United States after a storm-tossed crossing
of the Atlantic. Six decades later the question still confuses, when the
historian Richard White discusses with his mother the moment when she first
set foot in America.

?What?s a polygamist?? She is making sure she understands this.
?Did you have more than one husband or did your husband have more than one
wife??
?I was a sixteen-year-old Irish girl,? she says.

The question about polygamy was a fossil, left over from an internal US
crisis, the fierce attacks by the federal government on the Mormons of
Utah ? the most fierce perhaps being the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act, which
broke Mormon economic power and dissolved The Perpetual Emigrating Company,
the instrument used by the Mormons to finance immigration of converts from
Europe. So, every migrant from Europe would be asked the test question
whether a polygamist? And, next to it, another fossil of another internal
US crisis ? whether an anarchist?

The Immigration and Naturalisation Service inspector who asked these
questions recorded the answers, and Richard White ? experienced archive
historian ? has located the document thus created. It is quite legible,
except for the inspector?s signature ? ?flattened out from endless
repetition?. But White locates a typewritten version of the name ? the
inspector was Francis J. Maypother. Mr. Maypother then moved on to ask the
new arrival if she was in possession of fifty dollars, and, if in possession
of less than fifty dollars, by how much. Sara Walsh did not have fifty
dollars ? she had never seen an American dollar. Her mother had given her a
pound when she had set out for America ? and Sara had been cheated out of
her pound in Cobh.

Richard White deduces that Mr. Maypother simply put down the answers that
would bring Sara through the process without bother. So, she was not a
polygamist, she was not an anarchist, and ? says the document ? she had
fifty dollars. She could enter the United States.

I had heard first of Richard White?s new book from my American colleagues,
who were enthusiastic to the point of gushing. It was partly a wish to see
what my colleagues had seen in the book that made me agree to read and
review it. The process of reading, and re-reading, the book took longer
than I had expected ? as I entered a period of illness, and (gloomy)
personal reflection. Like every other reviewer of the book I began to
consider my own family history, and family stories ? and to wonder how many
of our stories would find any kind of confirmation in the archival record.

This, in essence, is the task that Richard White gives himself in
Remembering Ahanagran ? to take the family stories, most of which come to
him from his mother, Sara (one of those steely, loving Irish women familiar
to us all) and play the stories out against the documentation, in a process
which he calls a ?conversation? between ?memory? and ?history?. This
distinction, between ?memory? and ?history? is never really formalised
within the book ? and I suppose that White assumes that the discussion and
debates will be familiar to the professional historians amongst his
readership, and of no interest to the rest of us. So, the rest of us will
simply have to go quietly behind teacher and read Halbwachs, Nora, Ricoeur,
Rüsen, and then place White?s quest within the debates that grind on within
the academic discipline of ?history?. These debates do surface regularly
within Diaspora Studies ? for very often the first impetus towards interest
comes from family history, and the puzzles of the self. And it could be
noted that two recent, welcome books within Irish Diaspora Studies, David
Fitzpatrick's Oceans of Consolation and Patrick O'Farrell's Vanishing
Kingdoms, drew on the methods and traditions of family history.

Paul Elovitz, the ?psychohistorian? has described the obstacles in the way
of his connecting his personal history with the discipline of history:
'...my graduate school teachers seemed to have little respect for genealogy,
family history and biography all of which were somehow denigrated as beneath
professional historians.' In Remembering Ahanagran Richard White eschews
?any interest in my own roots or, God forbid, my identity?? (p.272)

The stories that White tells are enthralling, whether they be the stories of
the family farm at Ahanagran, (in North Kerry), Ireland and migration that
come to him from his mother, or the stories of the Russian Ukraine and
Jewishness and migration that come to him from his father ? or his own
stories of the often serendipitous discovery of the documentation that will
lodge the stories in the timelines. In 1981, a visit to Sara?s school in
Ireland, the building abandoned and vandalised, finds in the litter a ledger
from 1925 and 1926 ? with her name, Sara Walsh, crudely ?Irishised? to
Sorcha Breatnach (p 103). There is another name change on p. 246, when
White?s paternal grandfather Schmel Belei becomes Americanised to Samuel
White. The stories of the two grandfather?s, Samuel White and Jack Walsh,
Sara?s absent father, are followed in absorbing detail ? they never met.
Richard White notes that it was Samuel White?s great fear that he would
return to the world of his childhood ? and it was Jack Walsh?s dream.
Linking the two men, of course, are the stories of their children, Sara and
Richard White?s father, Harry ? the improbable meeting in wartime America,
and one of those improbable love matches that bring us into existence.

The reader, and the reviewer, is tempted to drift with the stories, in a
reverie, playing out White?s stories against the stories in our own heads
a tendency which is encouraged by the lapidary, tessellated style in which
White has chosen to write. Some of the stories do chill the blood ? like
the ?choreographed? moment (p. 261) when Harry buys Sara a little gold
crucifix and insists she wears it for a meeting with his Jewish parents.
The Ireland presented in the stories, with a curious golden glow, seems on
reflection a grim place, full of petty tyrannies and hidden oppressions. In
1936, to get her immigrant identification card from the US consulate, Sara
was driven to Dublin, by the local ?big shot?, the neighbour who had a car
the man attempted to sexually assault her twice, once on the outward
journey, once on the return. She never told anyone ? until she had had her
own children, and her children were grown-up enough to ask and listen.

In his Epilogue Richard White, professional historian, describes an
assignment he gives to his American history students, with their ?American
innocence? ? they are to take a member of their own family and show how that
life intersected with a major development or trend in American history. The
flaw in the assignment, he discovers, is that ?Americans, including my own
family, are innocent of what I call history?? Innocent of history ? I am
not sure that I understand what this could mean. Are you a polygamist?

Patrick O?Sullivan
September 2001


- --
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/
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Personal Fax National 0709 236 9050
Fax International +44 709 236 9050

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

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Might interst the art historians...

Forwarded on behalf of...

Jon Mogul
Subject: The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Research
Fellowships

Jon Mogul
Interim Academic Programs Coordinator
The Wolfsonian-FIU
1001 Washington Ave.
Miami Beach, FL 33154
305-535-2613

****************************************************************************
*****************************************************************
The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Research Fellowships
Deadline for applications: December 31, 2001
The Wolfsonian-Florida International University promotes the examination of
modern material culture as an agent and reflection of social, political, and
technological change. The focus of the Wolfsonian collection is on North
American and European decorative, propaganda, and fine arts of the period
1885-1945. The United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands and the former Soviet Union are the countries most
comprehensively represented. Fellowships are granted on the basis of
outstanding accomplishment and are limited to those holding at least a
master?s degree; doctoral candidates are eligible to apply. Appointments
are generally for four weeks. The application deadline is December 31, for
residency during the 2002-2004 academic years. For more information, you may
visit our website or contact
Academic Programs Coordinator, The Wolfsonian-FIU, 1001 Washington Avenue,
Miami Beach, Florida 33139. Tel. 305/535-2613; fax 305/531-2133; e-mail
research[at]thewolf.fiu.edu.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

DRAFT BOOK REVIEW
NOT for further distribution...

I have now got my outstanding book reviews down to a finite number...

Here I have done 3 in one go. A version of this review will appear in Irish
Studies Review...

For information and comment...

P.O'S.

DRAFT REVIEW

The Irish in Britain: An Annotated Bibliography on Health and Related
Issues, compiled by Maire Gaffney, Mary Tilki, Brian Lovett, Karen Scanlon,
Sean Hutton, Greg Cahill, Peter Aspinwall, and David Kelleher, Federation of
Irish Societies, London, 2000.

Clare Barrington, Shades of Green: A Directory of the Irish in Britain,
Irish Studies Centre, University of North London/ Smurfit Media UK, London,
2000.

Seamus Metress and Donna Hardy-Johnston, The Irish in North America: A
Regional Bibliography, P. D. Meany Publishers, Toronto, 1999.


It is a sad person, you might think, who happily agrees to review books that
are simply lists ? and then happily sits down to read those lists, and make
lists of lists. Here we have two books that list books and articles (what
we call, in the trade, bibliographies), and another that simply lists the
names and addresses of organisations. And an oddly happy reviewer.

Anyone who has ever attempted the simplest research survey or bibliographic
guide will know how much work has gone into these volumes. Yes, things are
nowadays a little easier, with the creation of online or CD-based
catalogues, tables of contents or general bibliographies. But such
resources give us the material in an undigested, formless form. There is
really no substitute for an experienced guide, a Virgil in the Inferno, who
has done the work and done the thinking.

The Bibliography prepared by Maire Gaffney and her colleagues at the
Federation of Irish Societies, London, is a guide to research and
information on Irish people in Britain over the past 10 years, focussing on
health and related issues. In certain cases the Bibliography lists older
material, in areas where there has been little new research, or where the
original research was ground-breaking or influential ? or, we might add,
scandalous or controversial. The example that springs to mind is the
recently re-publication (2001) of the 1979 Scheper-Hughes volume, Saint
Scholars and Schizophrenics. The Bibliography covers material to the end of
1999.

This is an important and impressive piece of work ? it is very significant
that it is an annotated Bibliography. Each entry is accompanied by a
paragraph of comment, describing a piece of research and giving some
assessment of its worth. Unfortunately these paragraphs are not signed, so
that the reader is forced to make guesses about the identity of authors.

Gaffney and colleagues list 163 items, within a total of 17 categories:
Alcohol, Cancer, Community Surveys and Profiles, Criminal Justice,
Emigration, Employment, Ethnicity and Diversity in Health, Health in
Ireland, Housing, Identity, Mental Health, Older People, Racism, Smoking,
Suicide, Travellers, Women. These categories thus define the areas in which
research needs to be analysed, and reveal the areas of concern to the Irish
communities and to Irish organisations in Britain. The category ?Ethnicity
and Diversity in Health? in the list on p. 2, is given as ?Ethnicity and
Variations in Health? on p. 20.

The Introduction by Gaffney and colleagues identifies three major problems
which make it difficult to find research material about the Irish in
Britain:
1. there is simply a lack of research;
2. there is lack of data specifically on the Irish ? data on the Irish is
not collected separately and the Irish are usually included in a generalised
?white? population;
3. comparisons are not made between the Irish and the ?host? community and
between the Irish and other ethnic groups.

The databases used by the FIS Bibliography team were Medline, ASSIA,
Cinahil, Sociofile ? the authors, of course, also drawing on their own
knowledge, experience and academic work. My own recent work has fairly
exhaustively combed these and other databases. I have found only two
significant items to be missing from the FIS Bibliography: Paddy Hillyard,
Suspect Community (1993), is not listed ? we might expect to see it in
Section 4, Criminal Justice - and Mary Daly, Anywhere But Here (1990), is
not listed in Section 16, Travellers.

Hillyard?s book is vital, because it places within the formal research
record some account of our experiences of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts
since 1974, and thus an account of the ways in which the continuing
conflicts in Northern Ireland shape the discourses of the Irish in Britain,
and the experiences of Irish people in Britain. Researchers are perhaps
weary of writing the standard paragraph to that effect ? but it is a
paragraph that must still be written because it cannot be taken as read.

Mary Daly?s little book (86 pages) about Irish Travellers in Camden,
published in association with the Runnymede Trust, is a classic account of
the objective researcher becoming outraged by the crisis inflicted on the
community she is researching. Briefly, this local authority found its
homelessness budget facing an overspend of £11 million, then revealed to the
tabloid newspapers that it was (coincidentally, conveniently) spending
exactly that sum on homeless Irish Travellers, and began a quite illegal
practice of trying to ?repatriate? Irish Travellers to Ireland. Perhaps so
much of the day-to-day work of Irish welfare organisations in Britain
involves funding negotiations with local authorities that it is not politic
to remind those authorities of past excesses.

As a demonstration of the need for a research guide, our Virgil, we might
look at the section in the FIS Bibliography on the needs of our Irish
elders, the ?Older People? who are of concern to us all. The Bibliography
lists 9 items, and draws attention to a further 6 items which touch on
relevant issues. Of these 15 items only 2 can be said to have entered the
formal research record. The first is the 1985 book by Alison Norman, Triple
Jeopardy: Growing Old in a Second Homeland, published by the Centre for
Policy on Aging ? note the correct publisher (there is a minor error in the
FIS Bibliography). The book is now seen as somewhat dated, but was
?probably the first authoritative text to recognise the Irish [in Britain]
as a minority ethnic community.? The second is a 1994 article by Mary
Tilki, ?Ethnic Irish older people?, which appeared in the British Journal of
Nursing. All the other ?Older People? items are one-off pamphlets,
published by FIS, other charities, voluntary groups or local authorities.

If we look in the online database of the Centre for Policy on Aging ? that
is, in a place in which a user of research might expect to find some
guidance on the literature on the needs of Irish elders - a search with the
keyword ?Irish? finds there 20 items. However most of those 20 items deal
with the Irish in Ireland ? only 7 items deal with the needs and experiences
of Irish elders in Britain. In the pattern that will be familiar to users
of such databases, Alison Norman?s work, including her book Triple Jeopardy
is, of course, listed in the CPA database ? after all, they published it.
However, though (as we have seen) this book does deal with the needs of
Irish elders, it is not catalogued by the CPA using the keyword ?Irish?, and
so is not revealed by that keyword search. If it were not for the careful
work of Gaffney and colleagues it might be missed ?and its place in the
history and in this discourse lost.

The material presented in this Bibliography can be analysed in any number of
ways, and the fact that we can analyse it may be the main achievement of
Gaffney and her colleagues. We have a baseline. We can also see ? if we
look back to the three major problems identified by Gaffney and colleagues
that we have not really got past problem 1: there is simply very little
real research. This is not to criticise the brave pioneers in these
fields ? it is to note that we seem to have nothing but pioneers.

We note too that a very great proportion of the material listed in the FIS
Bibliography has not entered the formal research record, is insubstantial,
repetitive, hard to find: it is not really working as a cumulative research
record. (This is the problem in part addressed by Colm Power?s visionary
online Irish Community Archive at St. Mary?s University College, Strawberry
Hill). Much is ?published? by small organisations ? sometimes
well-established organisations like the Federation of Irish Societies, but
often local organisations, ad hoc organisations or committees considering a
specific issue in a specific locality. Then there are documents published
by academic establishments, unpublished dissertations, and conference
papers.

Clare Barrington?s Shades of Green is a guide to the some 500, broadly
defined and self-defining, Irish organisations in Britain ? a wonderful
resource. These 500 Irish organisations are for the most part involved in
social, cultural, artistic, sporting, political and economic activity ? but
their importance to the welfare and well-being of the Irish in Britain
should not be underestimated. Of special importance are the County
Associations ? which, oddly enough, given their significance within the
networks of the Irish Diaspora, have never been properly researched. The
information in Shades of Green can, again, be analysed in a number of ways.
I immediately put it alongside Geraldine Vesey?s similar Irish in Britain
Directory (1979, 1989) to make visible the patterns over time ? who has gone
and who is still with us. I also began mapping Barrington?s 500
organisations onto the census maps of the Irish in Britain ? in part to see
if we could identify conglomerations of Irish where there were NO
organisations.

But I will here continue here with the theme suggested by Gaffney and her
colleagues in the FIS Bibliography. I have suggested that all the 500
organisations listed by Barrington are involved in well-being, in some
fashion. But amongst the Irish organisations in Britain, we can identify 94
as being formally involved in welfare, in some way ? though sometimes only
in a very small way. However Shades of Green has allowed us to quickly
identify, analyse and map out those welfare organisations. The most
significant of the 94 welfare organisations are the 11 or so involved in the
Standardised Information System (SIS) developed by the Action Group for
Irish Youth and the Federation of Irish Societies. These are the very same
organisations that we can identify, from the FIS Bibliography, as
commissioners and publishers of research ? and maybe here is a hint here of
an explanation for some of the problems and patterns of the research. Is it
research, or is it a funding bid? The task for the scholarly community is
absolutely clear ? it is to use the baseline provided by Gaffney and her
colleagues. Key scholars should write short, well-researched essays in the
major research areas identified by the FIS Bibliography ? these essays would
address the shortcomings as well as the strengths of the research record,
placing the thinking within a methodologically sound frame and within wider
discourses. And these essays should be made freely available, ideally on a
widely publicised academic Web site.

Seamus Metress is a passionate and compassionate anthropologist with a
longterm interest in Irish history, based at the University of Toledo, USA -
Donna Hardy-Johnson is his colleague there. As I read their ?regional
bibliography? of The Irish in North America (and by now you will have
gathered that I really do read these things) I was struck first by a vague
memory and then by a naughty thought. The vague memory led me to a review
article by David Noel Doyle, in Irish Historical Studies, May 1983, which
considered an earlier 1981 bibliographic volume by Metress, The
Irish-American Experience. The naughty thought was to simply take entire
sentences from David Doyle?s critique of that earlier volume and paste them
in here as critiques of this latest volume: ?As it stands, only close
familiarity with the entire work would enable the researcher to locate
everything germane to his specific interest or period. When taken with the
absence of an index, this means for example that diligence and luck are
required to trace the titles on anything specific which cuts across the
categories?? In fact the kindly assistance of David Doyle is acknowledged
in this latest volume, so that you would expect some of those basic
structural criticisms to have been taken on board. But again there is no
index, and no obvious way of using the volume as a research resource.

The categories in the latest volume are the broad regions of the United
States and of Canada, with further sections on Biography, Fenianism and
Orangeism. Over the past months we have had occasion to test out this
?regional bibliography? a number of times, and have always found it wanting
or puzzling. So, working from top to bottom, Oregon to Texas? Oregon is
possibly of great interest to the scholar of migration, because of the
?joint occupancy? of the region by the USA and Britain in the late
eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century. Patrick
Blessing?s Bibliography suggests that the Oregon Historical Society in
Portland has some 25 feet of records surviving from that period, including
?reports, proposals, inquiries, and other documents relating to Irish
immigration?? By systematically reading the Metress/Hardy-Johnson section
on ?The Irish in the Far West? I found four entries on Oregon - it is not
that hard from other sources to get the number of items up to over 20. But
there is no way of understanding how the Metress/Hardy-Johnson chosen 4
relate to the easily found 20 ? and there is no feeling at all for the
overall picture and the potential.

We sometimes track a specific writer and theme, as a way of watching a
specialism develop or a work in progress come together. On the Irish of
Texas, we eagerly await the forthcoming book by Graham Davis. The Davis
essay that was published in Texas, in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, is
listed ? the essay that was published in England, here in Irish Studies
Review, is not. So, this ?regional bibliography? is a book for
serendipitous browsing ? or to be committed entire to memory. In other
words ? and this comment applies to all three books considered here ? why am
I considering books when I should be considering cumulative databases?

Patrick O?Sullivan
September 2001

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Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

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