From: Richardjjensen[at]aol.com
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 19:45:16 EST
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

in response to Matt Barlow--
have I read "everything"? well, no :)

I did look at far more records than Knobel or Ignatief...
the Cornell corpus has 40,000+ cites to the Irish in dozens of
19th century magazines. The Michigan corpus has maybe 10,000
in hundreds of 19c books. (I also searched online every issue
of NATION and every page of Congressional Globe before 1873)

Well below 1 per 1000 references were derogatory in
the ways specified by them. Say, 1 per 10,000

Zero referred to "black Irish"

--So to be more precise, the specified references to the Irish were
very rare in a vast corpus that anyone on this list can check.

--In the last month the NY Times is online, searchable, 1851-1923
at www.newspaperarchive.com
(All issues are online but the search engine thus far covers maybe 1/4 of
the
issues). Every day carried a page of want ads.
In a search that covered over 10,000 ads (probably more),
I found two ads with "No Irish Need Apply" (one for a live-in couple
upstate,
one for a boy to work in a Brooklyn shop). Conclusion: "No Irish
Need Apply" notices existed but was very rare. (Ishow that they
DID exist in Britain)

--The historians I criticize say these terms were commonly used
by many Americans. They offer no evidence of this whatsoever. They are
fabricating a myth-- a myth of hatred. They are stereotyping millions of
ordinary people as haters. Nasty business that--and bad history.

Richard Jensen

Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 12:06:12 -0800
From: Sam Thomas
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites


The course of this thread on "whiteness," which I have been following only
intermittently, does not appear to have reached a consensus on much, if
any, of the points discussed. So I have a few questions which may lead
somewhere or nowhere, but hopefully will contribute something to this
discussion:
First, could it be that not enough has been made of popular v.
academic or professional perceptions of race both during and after the
period we are discussing? This question is meant to be rhetorical in part,
but also as a lead in to a intriguing personal experience I had in the late
1950s: At a midwestern state university, I "rushed" a local fraternity,
the members of which made our initiation as difficult as possible. The
group of rushees included three Arab Americans (including me) and one, the
first, African American. We stuck it out and were reluctantly admitted to
membership---but reminded in no uncertain terms that we, yes we, were
extremely fortunate (as non-whites) to be admitted (I am, by the way, only
slightly olive-skinned). In retrospect, the intriguing side to this
experience was not only that we publicly (though not privately) let pass
the distinction laid on us, but that the ones who told us how privileged we
were to gain entrance were olive skinned Sicilian Americans (a group of
whom dominated the fraternity).

Second, wasn't the phrase "Black Irish" a originally a reference to the
descendents of shipwreck survivors and deserters of the Spanish Armada
(mid-17th century) who settled in Ireland?

Third, how do we explain the countless simian representations of the Irish
that ran rampant in the pages of Puck and Judge magazines, the two most
prominent humor and cartoon weeklies of the Gilded Age and early
Progressive Era? According to Roger Fischer in Them Damn Pictures (1996),
the ape-like features attributed to "shanty Irish" were a result of the
"wholesale expropriation of British stereotypes and caricatures," and meant
to give Paddy a menacing ("terrorist") appearance or simply a brutish
uncivilized look. In an American context, at least, ape-like features
often combined with those of a leprechaun in cartoon attacks on corrupt
Irish politicians and bosses.

Sam Thomas

S.J. Thomas, PhD, Professor, Michigan State University, Dept. of History,
301 MH, E. L. MI 48824]

> Zero referred to "black Irish"

I cannot speak to scholarly references nor can I speak of newspapers but I
can
say that in my family, as long as I can remember the term "black Irish" has
popped up on occasion.
In my family, and that of many people of Cherokee decent, "Black Irish" has
been
used to refer to being Indian (okay, Native American - neither term is close
to
being correct). According to my Grandmother, this was started at a time when
it
was dangerous for a person to be known as Cherokee, Creek, etc. but it was
acceptable to be termed "black Irish.

Shawn Koons
University of Toledo

Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:42:42 -0600
From: David Beriss
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

By focusing on whether or not people of Irish origin were represented in
a way that we recognize today as racial, I fear that we have narrowed
this discussion far too much. I have clearly shown in my earlier posts
that a biological understanding of racial difference was applied in
social science and popular culture to European immigrants in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Richard Jensen has made some very
important points regarding the political ideologies in play at the time,
showing that where we see race today, republicanism may have been a more
fundamental issue in the late 19th century. But I think he goes too far
in arguing that republicanism was not reducible to anything else (such
as race). For instance, he writes:

> In
> 1914 Blacks reacted the same way to "Birth of a Nation" wherein they were
> depicted as enemies
> of republicanism, and the KKK as the champion of American republican
values.)
> Deconstructing
> the rhetoric in terms of republican core values, I suggests, explains much
> more than these stilted
> attempts to fit it into race-gender-class.
>

Perhaps I misunderstand the history of the KKK and the ideas behind
"Birth of a Nation", but I would think that in this instance republican
values were in fact meant to stand for race. This leads to a more
fascinating question, one that allows us to get beyond the "was it race"
kind of question. How and why were ideas about race, about what it
meant to be an American, about what kind of country this was (or even
about gender and class, while we are at it), deployed in the periods in
question? After all, why would the white-supremacist KKK be represented
as a champion of republican values, unless there was something
illegitimate about its usual ideology? Why hide race and racism?

No one would dispute that racial ideologies were a fundamental part of
American culture late in the 19th and early in the 20th centuries. Nor
would anyone dispute that republicanism was also fundamental. Looking
at the meaning of and interplay between these (and maybe other
ideologies) might provide some insight into when and why particular
groups were racialized out (or into) the dominant groups.

David Beriss

--
Department of Anthropology
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA 70148

tel: (504) 280-6306
fax: (504) 280-1123
email: dberiss[at]uno.edu
http://www.uno.edu/~dberiss/

From: Georg Gresser georg.gresser[at]mail1.rrz.uni-koeln.de

Indeed - we can find the idea of suggesting, that synods
or councils are the predecessors of delegate convention
and places of paliamentary forms of discussion and
conclusion.

For this look at the following adress:
http://ahc.usc.urbe.it/ing/

ahc.usc.urbe.it/ger/collana.html and the whole archive of
the AHC = Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum

Dr. Georg Gresser
University of Cologne (Germany)
Dep. for Historical Studies
Section Medieval Studies

From: Lindwyer5[at]aol.com
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 21:07:19 EST
Subject: H-ETHNIC: Ethnic Americans as Whites

In support of the notion of race as a biological concept among academics in
the late 19th century, I remember discussing in a graduate school class
(some
years ago) a late 19th century experiment in physical anthropology conducted
at Harvard. Skulls from individuals representing several different races
were stuffed with beans to see which race had the largest cranial capacity
and hence the greatest degree of intellect. It appeared to be of little
surprise at the end of the experiment that the white race was demonstrated
to
have the largest cranial capacity-- and therefore highest intelligence. It
fit the social evolutionary perspective of the time. Race, morphology, and
functional characteristics were connected in this research, as earlier
postings asserted to be the case in academia during this time period.

In the original experiment, the beans were stuffed by hand. The experiment
was repeated in the late 20th century. The only difference between the two
was that a mechanical means of filling the skulls was employed in the
repetition. As a result, the original outcome was found to be biased. In
the later trial, the white race actually had the smallest cranial capacity.

What I've learned from the many postings in this thread is that the context
in which race is conceived may vary from academic to academic in a certain
period-- Franz Boaz vs. the theory that underlay this Harvard research, for
example. (Should hotly contested theories surprise us?) Racial concepts
were
no doubt equally contested and perhaps differently understood among
different
populations within society in any given period. It's not just academics who
disagree.

That different bodies of data tell us conflicting things about a subject
(help wanted ads vs simean cartoons in regard to the Irish, for example) is
simply an indication of the complexity of the issues involved. The oral
histories of those at the bottom of the labor market would perhaps add
richness to that complexity already provided by the data left behind in
legal, academic, and middle class textual documents. Documents all
presented
by various contributers to date.

Does exploring the varied conflicts around racial categories make an
historian into a revisionist who seeks to find "haters" in our past? It
seems a bit extreme to say so. Rather, by exploring the tensions among
populations in a given period as manifest in concepts of race, we come to a
better understanding of the social dynamic. It is hoped that we can learn
from those insights in order to craft more equitable and stable societies
under the conditions of globalization and mass migration that are in
progress
currently. What is "whiteness" and does it matter? To at least some Arab
Americans of Lebanese origin, the topic is not merely academic, as a post
today indicates.

Linda Dwyer
Lindwyer5[at]aol.com

Delivered-To: H-ETHNIC[at]H-NET.MSU.EDU
X-Originating-IP: [207.43.195.202]
From: "Jon Watt"
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 01:09:41 -0800

Jon Watt
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

A discussion of the Second Ku Klux Klan (the KKK in the 1920s) should be
prefaced with comments that will: 1. set it firmly its period and 2.
separate it from the Klans that came before and after it. Current debate
divides Klan history into a minimum of three and possibly as many as 5
different Klans - each with its own distinctives.

A number of treatments of the Second KKK have been written - from various
viewpoints. Nancy MacLean's "Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the
Second Ku Klux Klan" is one that must be considered when asking questions of
race versus republicanism of the period and the Klan. Basing her work on
existing records of the Athens, Georgia klavern (a college town and thus a
supposedly more liberal community than other Southern communities), MacLean
argues that the Second Klan was much more concerned about rooting the place
of the white middle class man in a sea of change in the home, in business
and in the socio-political and cultural world.

True enough, one cannot rule out the Making of a Nation and its impact and
purpose in control of African American citizens - but to assume that the
Second Klan was more about race than republican idealism would be an error.

MacLean makes one very interesting observation in her book that I have not
located in other Klan scholarship - that the Second Klan, while concerned
about the racial, religious and ethnic status quo and ending open
immigration to the United States, had a greater propensity to carry out
violence against "white Protestants" more than against those its rhetoric
aimed at.

A second book that seems to support some of MacLean's findings - based off a
midwestern state is Kathleen M. Blee's "Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender
in the 1920s".

In short, we must take care not to read understandings of the first and
third (and later) KKK into treatment of the Second Klan. We also must
recall that the Klan (in general) has targeted ethnics, religious outsiders
(i.e., non-Protestants) as well as African Americans.

Jon Watt

From: "Greil, Larry"
Subject: RE: H-ETHNIC: Ethnic Americans as Whites
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:16:58 -0500



The researcher Linda Dwyer describes is Samuel george Morton. The person
who redid his experimentwas Stephen Jay Gould. Gould's book, The Mismeasure
of Man(Norton, 1981) is an excellent account of scientific attempts to find
emperical justification for the belief in racial differences in
intelligence.

Larry Greil

Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 20:34:35 -0500
From: David Fahey

"The 1901 census lists the names, ages, addresses and mental health of
British residents, including the names of the infant Queen Mother, comedian
Charlie Chaplin, and author JRR Tolkien. Its publication after the standard
100 year moratorium marks the first attempt to allow internet access to
comprehensive census information.
The PRO has painstakingly digitised more than 1.5m pages listed for
residents of England and Wales."

Guardian, 2 January 2002

David M. Fahey, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA

Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 16:10:32 -0500
From: Mary Anne Trasciatti
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

As a rhetorician, I applaud Professor Jensen's insistence that historical
arguments be supported with textual examples and promise to support all of
my arguments thus.

As Professor Jensen notes, the ideology of republicanism is an important
element of debates over citizenship and legal rights. Jensen states: "The
American credo then comes out to something like "all true republicans
should be full-status citizens. People (groups/individuals) who are not
fully republican in their beliefs and values are second class." But despite
his willingness to sweep them under the table, issues of class and gender
percolate under the surface of this credo.

For example, in the early 20th century, Leon Marshall (University of
Chicago), Frederick Haskin (YMCA), Prescott Hall and other advocates of
laws to restrict immigration characterized recent arrivals as inferior
races because they were not fully republican in their beliefs and values.
As evidence for "insufficient republicanism" they cited motives for
migration. The following excerpt from a YMCA pamphlet written sometime
around 1910 by Haskin is illustrative:

"The real impelling motive of the immigrant who comes to AMerica is to
better his economic condition. Some say it is his love of liberty and
freedom or his desire to escape oppression at home. But liberty and freedom
were as much with us in 1909 when our immigration brought us only 751,000
souls as in 1907 when it brought us 1,285,000...."

In a similar vein, in an article he wrote for the Survey in 1911, Edward T.
Devine depicted foreign-born workers as greedy opportunists whose incessant
demand for longer workdays threatened to undercut industrial productivity
as well as the standard of living of American workers: "On the railways of
the Northwest the first object for which immigrants will strike is for the
privilege of working twelve hours out of ten, and the next is for the
privilege of working on Sunday."

The class dimensions of this rhetoric are clear: recent immigrants were
un-American not only because they did not manifest sufficient
republicanism, but also because they comprised an economically desperate
class of unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Issues of gender (e.g. the
focus on men's work, and the exclusion of women from the very essence of
American life as defined by this ideology - full participation in the
process of self-government) were implicit.

Perhaps a bit of digging under the surface of other texts will reveal
racial implications as well. I'd be surprised if it didn't.

Cordially,
Mary Anne Trasciatti

From: Harold Rennie

Has anyone else here read this article about Catholics in
U.S. suburbs and, if so, what are your comments?

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/110201/110201e.htm

Hal Rennie

From: Patrick Holt Pjholt[at]att.net

The article was interesting, although simplistic...I
would guess that Smith has more intricate arguments to
make and that the reporter made the gross simplifications
in the article. The first one that struck me is the
suggestion that the move to the suburbs was a move to a
more diverse culture...in my micro-experience, the
youngest child of a Bronx-Irish Catholic family that
moved 20 miles North in 1962 the inner city communities
from which Catholics moved were actually more diverse
than the suburbs to which my family, and many others
moved, those Ghettoes of the post-war period were never
really as homogeneous as many care to remember...you read
someone like Pete Hamill, or other Catholic authors and
there inner-city exposure to Judaism, Protestantism in
the city was far more intimate and regular than in the
suburbs.

On another note, in 2002, the case would seem to be the
polar opposite of Smith's argument, at least for NYC,
many young Catholics still in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens
are leaving diverse inner-city neighborhoods to move to
Ghetto suburbs that are far more homogeneous, not just by
religion, but also by ethnic group, than any neighborhood
back in the city.

Patrick Holt
Saint Basil College

Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 12:58:47 -0800
From: "Beppe Sabatini"

Cambridge University began to return two members in 1603. Over the years
these included Sir Isaac Newton, William Pitt (the younger), and Palmerston.

Oxford University also began to return two members in 1603. These were to
include Sir Robert Peel and Gladstone.

Dublin University began sending a member to the Irish Parliament beginning
in 1614; this continued in the Imperial Parliament after 1801. They gained a
second seat in the first Reform Act (1832), after some controversy.

In September 1831, and again over a year later, the Scottish Universities
petitioned Parliament to be granted some representation also, but failed. If
you can find it, reading such a petition will often give you information
about the perception and workings of the issue considered. (Norman Gash,
_Politics in the Age of Peel_, cites the second petition as Hansard's, xiv,
180 sqq.)

London University also sent one member from at least 1863-1880.

The constituencies for Oxford and Cambridge were its provost, fellows,
scholars, and all M.A.s. Dublin's electorate was similar, but the M.A.s
became qualified to vote only after the second seat was added. For any
further details (such as when the practice stopped), but you will have to
research further, and in fact I wouldn't mind reading the results if you
post them. Feel free to write me for further sources if you get stuck; I am
primarily working with the 1820s-1830s.

***********************************************************
Beppe Sabatini bsabatini[at]hotmail.com
Alumnus, University of California, Berkeley
Working on News by Boz, Charles Dickens's Newspaper Writing

>From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Thank you to all those who sent messages - to the Irish-Diaspora list and
direct to me - about the notion that we create DIDI, our Database of Irish
Diaspora Interests for Ir-D members.

And thank you to all the patient new members who wondered what on earth we
were talking about...

To sum up...

The Irish-Diaspora list tradition is that new members do NOT send messages
to the list introducing themselves. This was partly a consequence of the way
we grew up - from a small core who knew each other?s work.

But some members would like to know more about the membership, in order to
form scholarly alliances, and so on.

We discussed possible policies...

Policy A: go on as we have done. No DIDI, no Database of Irish Diaspora
Interests. People just chime into Ir-D discussions, when the mood takes
them.

Policy B: we establish DIDI, the Database of Irish Diaspora Interests. But
there is no requirement that people contribute information about themselves
to the database. We defend the right to lurk.

Under Policy B, we had two choices...

Policy B (1): the DIDI database should be PUBLIC, freely available on the
Web - in effect advertisements for ourselves and our work.

Policy B (2): the DIDI database should be PRIVATE, accessible only to
members of the Irish-Diaspora list. We would most probably keep the
database in our Restricted zone at irishdiaspora.net.

There were also some technical options... Technical Option i - a Copy and
Paste procedure, or Technical Option ii - an Email procedure, whereby Ir-D
members would send their note in as an email, which would then be
automatically placed in the DIDI database.

In the light of the feedback we have created a system which annoys nobody,
breaches no one's privacy, does not have to be used if a person does not
want to use it - but is there as a resource... A resource which might well
become a useful resource if people do use it...

We have gone for Policy B (2), Technical Option ii - the DIDI database is
PRIVATE, in our Restricted zone, and works through an automated email
procedure.

I am now writing the technical note that will explain how DIDI will work.
We have made it all very simple - but given the ingenuity of human error I
had better make my technical note right...

Paddy O'Sullivan

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net
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Personal Fax National 0709 236 9050
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Home Address
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From: Cymru66[at]aol.com
Subject: Re: Ir-D Reports from Britain

Dear Paddy,
This is not a reply to Michael Curran's query. That requires more thought
and perhaps may be addressed later. What I wanted to include under this
general heading of 'reports' is a very interesting development in my
hometown
in Cardiff. The Irish immigrant community there was the focus of a detailed
study I did in the 60's which was published under the title Urban Catholics.
I started to do follow-up research in the '80's and 90's some of which is
due
to appear in a book edited by Paul O'Leary and waiting to be published by
the
University of Liverpool Press.
My general conclusions have been that the 'Cardiff Irish' had all but
disappeared as an identifiable group, and I still don't see any major
sociological reason to change those conclusions radically.
However, I have just this week discovered that there is an association in
the city, recently formed ( by O'Sullivans, who else!) to preserve the
memories of those whose ancestors had lived in one of the secondary areas of
settlement in Cardiff but which was forever identified with 'the Irish'.
This
was 'Newtown'. a place many immigrants claimed to have come from, even if
they hadn't. Newtown was heavily immigrant Irish and had its own parish
church - St. Pauls, established in the late 1870's. The area was demolished,
in stages throughout the '60's and 70's and now consists only of 12 houses
surrounded by industrial development. Even St. Paul's has been demolished, a
very rare fate for a Catholic church.
The founders of the Newtown association wish to explore any remaining
source of identity which may be gained through the 'Diaspora.' They are a
dedicated and energetic group who will be holding a St. Patrick's day dinner
in Cardiff City Hall - a custom which was maintained annually until about 30
years ago. I shall be attending this dinner and at least one of their
meetings which will give me the opportunity to encourage them to use this
list and share their views and aspirations with us.
Best,
John.
John Hickey, Professor Emeritus, Dominican University, Illinois.

>From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Access to the RESTRICTED area of irishdiaspora.net is now restored

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

Click on Special Access, at the top of the screen.

Username irdmember
Password carnduff

That gets you into our RESTRICTED area.

Click on RESTRICTED, and you have access to two databases...

1. DIRDA - the Database of the Ir-D Archive...

Click on that and you are in the first page of the database/archive.

There are more than 3 full years of Ir-D messages, November 1998 onwards, in
a searchable database. Most recent first.

Log out by clicking on irishdiaspora.net at the top of the screen.

The database is currently restricted to Irish-Diaspora list members, and to
the
occasional bona fide scholar or researcher.

Scholars who have been using the GUEST log-in will have to contact me
directly - because that password has also changed.

You might - but most probably will not - notice that we have tidied up this
database, made it more internally coherent and a bit easier to use.

2. DIDI - the Database of Irish-Diaspora Interests...

Of which more later.

As ever we are grateful to Stephen Sobol, of SobolStones,
http://www.sobolstones.com
for his support and the development of these facilities.

Patrick O'Sullivan

- --
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: jackie dana
Subject: Fwd: New Irish and Irish American History Series

I've been asked to distribute the following announcement to interested
parties:


The University of Wisconsin Press

Announces

The Irish Literature and Culture Book Series

Michael Patrick Gillespie, General Editor

Advisory Board

Nicholas Fargnoli., Marjorie Howes, Maria Pramaggiore., Eamonn
Wall, Guinn Batten, David Hayman, Thomas Dillon Redshaw , James
Rogers, Elizabeth Cullingford, Adrian Frazier, Cheryl Herr, Charles
Fanning

The University of Wisconsin Press is pleased to announce the launch
of a new series that will publish books devoted to the examination of
contemporary Irish writing and society under the general editorship
of Michael Patrick Gillespie. This series complements another new
Wisconsin series, Irish and Irish American History, edited by James
Donnelly and Thomas Archdeacon

This Irish Literature and Culture Series will seek out the best
manuscripts and book proposals in the field. While it will draw upon
the strengths already evident in the existing Irish studies list at
the University of Wisconsinfilm, Gay/Lesbian Studies, the works of
James Joyce, plastic and performing arts, biographies/memoirs, and
Irish American authors the series will consider the widest range of
scholarship, writing, and research in this field with no prescriptive
or exclusionary guidelines. The series will
consider a wide range of manuscripts and book proposals including
works of scholarship and works for the general reader, anthologies,
thematic readers, monographs and works of synthesis, as well as
fiction and non fiction.

Please direct all inquiries to:


Professor Michael Patrick Gillespie, Louise Edna Goeden Professor of
English, Department of English, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
53201-1881, (414) 288-5630, e-mail: michael.gillespie[at]marquette.edu

or to:

Dr. Robert Mandel, Director, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1930
Monroe Street, Third Floor, Madison, WI 53711, (608) 263.1101,
e-mail: ramandel[at]facstaff.wisc.edu

From: Tony Smith Anthony.Smith[at]notes.udayton.edu

As the subject of the NCR article, I'm happy that it has
drawn interest on H-Catholic.

I appreciate the responses by both Patrick Holt and Bill
Powers. Their comments alone indicate something
important about the suburbs--they are not monolithic.
This may seem obvious, but it bears stating since suburbs
are so often construed in simplistic, reified terms as
homogeneous wastelands.

Many suburbs have been socially and racially homogeneous
thanks, in part, to policies that excluded people of
color. At the same time, for some Catholics suburbs could
be a place where they did experience people of different
faiths and backgrounds. As Bill Powers notes, public
schools could be places where Catholics interacted with
such people.

Even if it were the case that suburban experience lacked
the diversity or urban neighborhoods that shouldn't mean
that Catholic experience in the suburbs was and is
inconsequential. I hope we aren't at point where we say
that the authentic Catholic experience is an urban one.

I couldn't agree more with Patrick Holt that the urban
Catholic "ghetto" has become associated in the
imagination of some Catholics with homogeneity and that
this association could use some rethinking. Urban
Catholic communities were pretty complicated realities,
some more diverse than others. Indeed, I think the
ghetto image does not serve 20th-century urban
Catholicism very well.

But why relocate the concept of ghetto to the suburbs?

It's the very categories of urban/suburb and the often
unspoken assumptions of cosmopolitan/ghetto,
culture/wasteland associated with them that need
questioning in the history of American Catholicism in the
second half of the 20th century. This is not simply a
difficulty for American Catholic studies. My point in
the NCR piece was that the study of American
Catholicism has often reflected the implicit urban
culture/suburban wasteland narrative of American cultural
criticism with the result that a whole dimension of
American Catholicism of the past fifty years has largely
been passed over as insignificant. Therefore, I would
suggest the relevant question in American Catholic
studies is not, "What does Athens have to do with
Jerusalem?" but instead, "What does Italian Harlem have
to do with Levittown?"

Regarding 2002. Well, yes New York City is an intensely
diverse place. But let's not make New York City
normative for the entire U.S. As someone who grew up in
Maryland and Michigan, educated in Boston and Minneapolis
and now living on the cusp of the heartland that
stretches across America in Dayton, Ohio, I've
experienced the regionalism still informs American
Catholicism.

I'd be very interested in hearing from others
particularly those beyond the Northeastern corridor
regarding this issue.

Thanks.

Tony Smith
University of Dayton

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: fyi

ebay
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>From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of
"Gary Owens"

The 10th international conference of the Society for the Study of
Nineteenth-Century Ireland (SSNCI) will take place at All Hallows College,
Dublin, on 28-30 June 2002. Taking as its theme THE IRISH REVIVAL
REAPPRAISED,
the conference will feature presentations by Roy Foster, P.J. Mathews,
Fintan
Cullen, Alex Davis, David Gardiner, Brian Griffin, Christina Hunt Mahony,
Siobhan Kilfeather, and Lucy McDiarmid.

The Irish revival had its roots in the 1880s and flourished until the 1920s.
While not neglecting the great figures or key texts of the age, special
emphasis
will be placed during this conference on the social, economic and political
contexts, such as journalism, theatre and the arts, politics, education,
religion and business, which informed the intelligentsias of the period, and
contributed to the emergence of movements as diverse as the Gaelic League,
the
Anglo-Irish literary renaissance, the co-operative movement and Sinn Féin.

Registration forms can be obtained from a link on the Society?s webpage at
http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/socs/ssnci.html.

or from: Dr E.A. Taylor-FitzSimon, Dept. of English, All Hallows College,
Grace Park Rd, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland. Email: tayfitz[at]indigo.ie.