From Patrick O'Sullivan

Thomas Duddy has kindly made available to the Irish-diaspora list his
Preface to his book...

A History of Irish Thought by Thomas Duddy
Paperback; 23.40 Euro / 20.50 USD / 18.50 UK; Routledge, 362 pages

Publisher contact points
www.routledge.com
http://www.routledge-ny.com/

I have pasted in the text of the Preface, below...

Please feel free to distribute further...

Our thanks to Tom Duddy...

P.O'S.



Preface to A History of Irish Thought pasted below.

Thomas Duddy
A HISTORY OF IRISH THOUGHT

PREFACE

'A history of Irish thought? But surely there isn't such a thing as Irish
thought - at least not in the sense in which there is, say, English,
French, or German thought!' Since I began a few years ago to work on this
book and to tell people, perhaps unadvisedly, about the nature of my
undertaking, this is the kind of objection that has most frequently come my
way. The assumption behind the objection is that Ireland, given the ebb and
flow of its colonial history, has not been in a position to sustain the
continuities of culture, institution, and civic life that are the
prerequisite for a national, ethnically-distinctive intellectual history.
Whenever I point out that there is a good deal less continuity in English,
French, or German thought than is generally assumed, I am quickly told that
there is nonetheless a distinctive clustering of concerns in each case, a
distinctive vocabulary, a distinctive ethos or style of thought, and that
these marks of distinction are most evident among the great or most
important thinkers. When I point out that most great thinkers are highly
individual in their thinking and that this fact should weigh against their
being easily 'nationalized', I am then told that even genius has roots,
that these roots are always grounded in culture, and that culture is always
in some sense national. It is usually conceded by these objectors that
Ireland has indeed produced a few fine individual thinkers but that these
have been isolated figures, that they do not constitute a national
tradition of thought, and that their influences were not particularly Irish
anyway. So, the objectors reiterate firmly, if with a touch of sympathy,
there really is no such thing as Irish thought, at least not in the sense
in which there is English, French, or German thought ....

The clue to the serious error in the objector's position lies in that
phrase 'at least not in the sense in which there is English, French, or
German thought'. Imperial history is taken as a standard for all national
history, as if nations that have been the target of invasion, conquest, and
colonization cannot have histories appropriate to themselves - histories
that tell a story of disruption, displacement, and discontinuity. The truth
is that the intellectual history of Ireland cannot be told if it is assumed
that it must first find itself a past replete with lengthy periods of
expansive power, a past created out of the resources of wealth and economic
independence, a past held securely in place by weighty continuities of
language and culture. But this requirement - the requirement that Ireland
find itself an imperial past in order to meet imperial standards of
identity and continuity - is a profoundly unjust one, a requirement that
adds new insult to old injury. There is, of course, such a thing as Irish
thought, but it cannot be characterized in imperially nationalistic terms,
or in any terms that presuppose privileged identities or privileged periods
of social and cultural evolution. Non-imperial or colonized nations will
have a different story to tell. Instead of a history of shared vocabularies
and shared frameworks continually exploited by like-minded individuals of
talent and genius, there will be a history of conflicting vocabularies and
shattered frameworks, sporadically and irregularly exploited by gifted
individuals. Influences on these individuals of talent and genius may come
from anywhere, and are most likely to come from the direction of powerfully
impressive neighbouring cultures. Instead of contributing to evolving
native traditions they are more likely to find themselves contributing to
traditions evolving elsewhere. Instead of finding patronage at home, these
individual thinkers are more likely to find patronage and stimulation in
exile. In a cultural and political environment of shifting allegiances and
shifting vectors of power and patronage, there will be constant uncertainty
about identity and provenance. Each thinker's most defining relationship
will not be with a relatively stable internal 'native' culture but with the
particular circumstances that obtain at a particular historical time. Irish
thinkers, if you like, are not going to be at home as much as thinkers from
imperial nations.

'But surely this could be put another way. Some of your Irish thinkers are
not as much at home in Ireland as you might like to think. Some of them are
only accidentally Irish. Many of them are people of Irish birth but English
blood - people like Molyneux, Berkeley, Swift. Are these really Irish
thinkers?' This represents the second kind of objection that I've most
frequently encountered, and it is prompted, like the first, by a blithely
imperial sense of history. The assumption in this case is that the
'accidental' is somehow less real than the supposedly more substantial
continuities of nature and race. But the histories of dependent, colonized
nations are for the most part histories of 'accidents' - accidental births
of history-making individuals, accidental implications of the outcomes of
war, accidental shifts in political allegiances, accidental catastrophes at
home and abroad. The more vulnerable a nation is to events occurring
abroad, the more prone it is to the momentous accidents of history. For
accidental, then, read historical. When Jonathan Swift protested that he
was an accidental Irishman, we should accept that this was in fact true.
But we should accept it only on condition that 'accidental' is taken to
mean something like 'historical' - historical in that deep and defining
sense in which we want to use the term here. Swift is accidentally Irish in
the sense that anyone born in Ireland is, in some sense, accidentally
Irish. In a country with a history of settlement, displacement, and
emigration, it is to some significant degree a matter of accident whether
even those with the longest Irish roots are born in Ireland or elsewhere.
To say that Swift is Irish in this context is to say that he is Irish, like
everyone else, by dint of history. We will find that Swift's historical
Irishness is confirmed and deepened by his own distinctive contribution to
Protestant or Hibernian patriotism, itself an 'accidental' but pivotal
development in modern Irish political thought.

Even an earlier thinker like Robert Boyle, who was far from being a
Hibernian patriot, is Irish by force of history and also, like many members
of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, Irish by privilege. This concept of
'Irishness by privilege' will be used from time to time throughout this
book, but it is particularly useful in confirming Boyle's Irishness.
Boyle's wealth, which enabled him to become a self-supporting scientist and
experimenter, came from the vast estate that his opportunistic father had
carved out of the Irish landscape. He therefore had a powerfully vested
interest in the land of Ireland, even if his orientation was towards
English life and culture. This conscious orientation is not very relevant.
What is far more relevant is Boyle's defining relationship with the
historical and material conditions that lay at the foundation of his
intellectual life. This relationship has Irish history inscribed all over
it. Consciousness and orientation aside, Boyle is for the best of reasons -
that is, material and historical reasons - indisputably an Irish thinker,
and no apology will be made for his inclusion here.

What is presented in this book, then, is the intellectual history of a
country with a particular kind of past - a past marked by periods of
invasion, plantation, and social upheaval alternating with periods of
assimilation, recovery, and reconfiguration. The intellectual history of
Ireland is the history of a country that finds itself hosting some
thinkers, while sending others into exile, a country that finds different
kinds of thinkers on its shores, either coming or going, all of them
touched by intellectual and cultural traditions that may have originated
anywhere but locally. The history of Irish thought has its own peculiarity
and uniqueness, but it is a peculiarity and uniqueness that must not be
analyzed in terms of blood and race, or even in terms of native genius, but
in terms of the contingencies of history and of the fruitful interactions
of accidental individuals with those contingencies. Such a history will be
characterized most of all by its inclusiveness - a degree of inclusiveness
that may indeed trouble those who are committed to narrowly exclusive
senses of ethnic or national identity. Historically, Irish cultural
nationalists have been pleased to accept Matthew Arnold's notion that the
Celts are distinguished by a sensuous nature and a determination to reject
'the despotism of fact'. These cultural nationalists have been inclined
therefore to sing the praises of Ireland's imaginative, especially its
literary, achievements at the expense of the country's contribution in
other areas of cultural activity. The Irish contribution to the history of
thought has been marginalized, partly because thought has been too narrowly
understood, partly because much of the best 'thinking' was done by
individuals whose Irishness was in question, and partly because an emphasis
on thought would be an effective refusal of that back-handed Arnoldian
compliment with its emphasis on imagination and sentiment rather than on
reason and intellect. It may also be the case that, during a period of
urgent nationalist reclamation and redefinition, both imagination and
sensibility lend themselves more easily to racial or ethnic
characterization than do reason and intellect. After all, intellect
travels, goes abroad, spreads its wings, tends to be unpredictable and
eclectic in its range of interests, and therefore less easy to
'nationalize' or domesticate than imagination or sensibility.

The period of reclamation and redefinition may not be past, but the time is
surely ripe for the development of modes of reclamation and redefinition
that are confident enough and generous enough to embrace Ireland's
neglected intellectual history. Apart from Richard Kearney's
ground-breaking anthology The Irish Mind (1985), no attempt has hitherto
been made to write a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Irish thought.
Of course, there have been fine publications on individual thinkers or
individual works, including the recent book by Philip McGuinness, Alan
Harrison, and Richard Kearney on John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious.
And there have been some excellent contributions on particular aspects or
areas of Irish thought, such as David Berman's work on eighteenth-century
Irish thinkers or John Wilson Foster's work on Irish scientific culture, of
which his recent Nature in Ireland (1997) is the most significant and most
visible product. The aim of A History of Irish Thought is to build on,
extend, and complement the work of Kearney, Berman, Foster, and others by
offering for the first time a synoptic, wide-ranging, inclusive survey of
the varieties of Irish thought, beginning with the thought of the anonymous
seventh-century monk, the Irish Augustine, concluding with the thought of
the contemporary Irish political philosopher, Philip Pettit, and taking
into account along the way the ideas of political economists and social
reformers as well as of moralists, metaphysicians, and satirists. A small
number of these thinkers have been assumed already into the 'Western'
intellectual canon, while many others are neglected minor thinkers who
engaged intelligently and earnestly with the controversies of their time
and who still merit respectful attention. I cannot claim, of course, to
have attempted an exhaustive study of all the minor thinkers of any period,
or of the thought of all the poets, scientists, or clerics who made some
contribution to intellectual history. I can only hope that the particular
assortment of minor and marginal thinkers who succeeded in interesting and
impressing me will also succeed in interesting and impressing others.

Traditionally, histories of thought have been histories of particular forms
or levels of thought - that is, fairly speculative, fairly worked-out,
fairly original, fairly accessible forms of thought. This is a generous
conception but it is not an unduly nebulous one, and it is the one that I
will work with throughout this book. It will enable me to cover the kinds
of ideas that we find in philosophy, theology, and science, in political
and cultural theory, in the best polemical and satirical writing (such as
the writing of Jonathan Swift), and in certain kinds of 'visionary' writing
(such as the prose essays of W.B. Yeats). The main difficulty arises with
highly technical, specialized writing, such as one finds in contemporary
scientific journals. That sort of material is simply not accessible to the
public and cannot be made accessible to a reader who has not had a lengthy
process of technical education. In any case, such material is often neither
very speculative nor very original - it is part of the technical
puzzle-solving activity of a professional group of academic workers, and as
such is no more communicable to a general readership than the technical
reports of engineers in some branch of industry. Very useful and necessary
work, to be sure, but having no more to do with the history of thought than
the records of decisions made by engineers. Material of such a technical
and specialized nature is not discussed here, but the more accessible - and
quite revolutionary - ideas of the early scientific thinker, Robert Boyle,
are discussed in Chapter Three, while the relatively plain-spoken,
conscientious responses of Irish thinkers to the theories of Charles Darwin
are discussed in Chapter Eight.

Thomas Duddy

___________________________
Thomas Duddy,
Dept of Philosophy,
NUI Galway,
Galway, Ireland.

Forwarded on behalf of

Rogers, James
JROGERS[at]stthomas.edu

Subject: the latest NHR


Autumn already, and lots of us are making plans to ship out to our various
regional ACIS conference - always a treat.

With autumn, too, comes another issue of New Hibernia Review. Those of you
who subscribe, or who dip into NHR through the Project Muse on-line service,
will find that behind the willfully naïve painting "The Country Dance" by
Seán Keating on its cover, volume 6:3 offers a diverse sampler of Irish
Studies scholarship.

Here follows a brief run-down of the autumn issue's contents:

First, Don Meade tracks the origins of a celebrated bit of Irish Americana,
"Kitty O'Neil's Champion Jig," a two-part melody that was collected in
tunebooks as early as 1867. In 1982, a recording by the County Donegal
fiddler Tommy Peoples reintroduced the tune to the modern repertoire, albeit
under a mistaken title.

Then, Gearóid Denvir surveys - with no small alarm - the mixed blessings of
mass tourism on Ireland's Gaeltacht regions. Denvir draws on the work of
such theorists of tourism, the blithe projections of tourism planners, his
own experiences as a resident of the Connemara Gaeltacht, and the insights
of poets to describe high psychic costs of pursuing, or being pursued by,
the (usually English-speaking) tourist dollar.

From the Moycullen Gaeltacht, Mary O'Malley then chimes in with a suite of
poems from her new from Carcanet Press, The Boning Hall. O'Malley writes
poems that dig deep, anchored in place, in personal loss, and in the
universal experiences of women.

A contemporary classic of Irish poetry, Seamus Heaney's 1975 Field Work
gets a bit of a shaking-down from George Cusack in the next article. Cusack
charges that Heaney's celebrated collection (which dates from the poet's
move from Belfast of the "Troubles" to a pastoral setting County Wicklow)
often moves beyond mere retreat and into something that looks disturbingly
like narcissisism.

Turning back to Revival Ireland, an article by Julie Henigan calls our
attention to the ways in which Synge's The Playboy of the Western World is
grounded in the Irish storytelling tradition -- and in particular, in the
genre of the tall tale that necessarily blurs the lines between truth and
reality.

Dr. Elizabeth Malcolm then presents a detailed study of the rural Irish
detective of the nineteenth century. The Royal Irish Constabulary's
detective force was given the daunting task of gathering evidence in the
Irish countryside, often with only grudging compliance from the local
authorities and, almost inevitably, in the midst of deeply suspicious
locals.

Next, Thomas Finan introduces the highly metrical verse by bardic poets of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by looking closely at a frequent
theme - the notion that rulers held their rank and power because they were
fulfilling an earlier prophecy ( sometimes a prophecy ascribed to no less an
authority than Saint Patrick).

Two very contemporary articles close out the autumn issue. In the first,
Paule Salerno-O'Shea deconstructs the evolving ideologies of management,
nationhood, and globalization that are imbedded in the logos of the Gateway
Computer corporation. The "cow spots" of Gateway, it turns out, have much
to say to (and about) the changing Irish workforce.

Finally, Dr. Ruth Barrington of the Irish Health Research Board takes note
of the status of science in contemporary Ireland. In a far-ranging article
she outlines challenges to today's Irish scientists that include balancing
basic research and applied R & D; the adaptation of research ethics; and the
ever-familiar worries of funding.

Listers who wish to contact New Hibernia Review for its guidelines for
contributors, or for subscription information should write to editor Thomas
Dillon Redshaw (tdredshaw[at]stthomas.edu)or managing editor Jim Rogers, at the
address below.

Jim Rogers
jrogers[at]stthomas.edu
New Hibernia Review
2115 Summit Ave #5008
St Paul MN 55105
www.stthomas.edu/irishstudies

From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
Subject: FYI Fellowship

Forwarded on behalf of
Kevin H. O'Rourke
Professor of Economics
Department of Economics and IIIS
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland

The new Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) at
Trinity College Dublin is seeking applications for a postdoctoral
fellowship in economic history. The successful applicant will have a PhD
in Economic History or Economics. Ideally, he/she should possess both
archival and quantitative skills. He/she will be responsible for
constructing new Irish GDP estimates, which will cover the island as a
whole, for the 19th and early 20th centuries. The researcher will have
authorship of any resulting publications. He/she will work closely with
a steering committee, comprising senior economists, economic historians
and statisticians, assembled under the auspices of the Historical
National Accounts Group for Ireland (HNAG). HNAG has held annual
meetings since 1995, under the chairmanship of Professor Kieran Kennedy
of the Economic and Social Research Institute. The successful candidate
will be hired for a period of 2 years, commencing in October 2002. For
further details, ! please contact Professor Kevin O'Rourke
(kevin.orourke[at]tcd.ie).



Kevin H. O'Rourke
Professor of Economics
Department of Economics and IIIS
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland

Email: kevin.orourke[at]tcd.ie
Homepage:
http://econserv2.bess.tcd.ie/korourke/homepage.htm
Tel. 353 1 608 3594
Fax. 353 1 677 2503

From Patrick O'Sullivan

In connection with another project I have been looking at the live and works
of Irish poet Brian Coffey...

I thought it worth sharing these useful web sites...

{http://indigo.ie/~tjac/Poets/Brian_Coffey/brian_coffey.htm}
leads to the text of the Missouri Sequence

and is part of
{http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_index.htm}
From The Notre Dame Review
The Poetry of Making it New in Dublin

Fred Beake: The Poetry of Brian Coffey
{http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx/lynx14.html}

The Brian Coffey papers are held at the University of Delaware
{http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/coffey/coffey01.htm}

P.O'S.

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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Patrick O'Sullivan

This item has only just been brought to our attention...

P.O'S.


October 18-20, 2002
HERITAGE LANGUAGES CONFERENCE
PRE-REGISTRATION DEADLINE 27 SEPTEMBER -- after Friday, registration
must be done on site, with an additional $25 charge.

To request a pre-registration brochure (with a poster that you can
display), visit:


To register and read more about the conference, visit:



This Second National Conference will seek to further the aims of the
Heritage Languages Initiative, a national effort to develop the
non-English language resources that exist in our communities. It will
bring together heritage language community and school leaders,
representatives from pre-K-12 schools and colleges and universities,
world-renowned researchers, and federal and state policymakers. The
goals of the Heritage Languages Initiative and this conference are to
continue to make manifest the personal, economic, and social benefits to
our nation of preserving and developing the languages spoken by those
living in this country; to build a national dialogue on this topic; and
to develop an action agenda for the next several years.

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

Social Science & Medicine

DOI: 10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00217-4
PII: S0277-9536(02)00217-4
Copyright © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Antiabortion positions and young women's life plans in contemporary Ireland

Laury Oaks,

Women's Studies Program, University of California, 4701 South Hall, Santa
Barbara, CA 93106, USA

Accepted 30 May 2002. Available online 1 October 2002.

Abstract
At a critical time when Ireland's abortion ban faces legal challenges and
the number of women obtaining abortions abroad each year continues to climb,
some antiabortion advocates have turned their attention toward the social
factors that influence women's abortion decision-making. Through an analysis
of articles carried in the Irish mainstream and Catholic presses, this
article examines how antiabortion advocates since the late 1990s have
promoted an "antiabortion, pro-motherhood" message in response to trends
that they identify as indicating that Irish reproduction has "gone awry".
Antiabortion activists have focused in particular on the life plans of
young, middle-class, career-oriented women, many of whom have benefited from
increased employment opportunities within Ireland. These women are more
likely than young women in past generations to postpone childbearing or opt
for abortion in the face of an unwanted pregnancy, and thus, symbolize for
antiabortion advocates the devaluation of a "traditional" Irish culture
centered on the privileging of motherhood and married family life. This
article examines antiabortion ideologies deployed around motherhood, work,
and childcare, and argues that antiabortion advocates' "pro-motherhood"
campaign fails to adequately respond to the changing realities of young,
middle-class Irish women's life opportunities and expectations.

Author Keywords: Abortion; Motherhood; Reproductive decision-making; Women's
workforce participation; Ireland


Article Outline
Introduction
Methodology
The rapid pace of change in a "New Ireland"
Transformations in Irish demographic patterns and criticism of young
women's life expectations
The complexities of women's abortion decision-making and the "death of the
self" concept
New approaches to the abortion "problem": antiabortion suggestions and
policy implications
Irish women's social responsibilities: motherhood, work, and childcare
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...



Labour Economics
Volume 9, Issue 5, November 2002, Pages 665-680


Earnings inequality, returns to education and immigration into Ireland

Alan Barrett, , John FitzGerald and Brian Nolan

The Economic and Social Research Institute, 4 Burlington Road, Dublin 4,
Ireland

Received 11 July 2000; revised 24 January 2002; accepted 11 April 2002.
Available online 21 September 2002.


Abstract
We examine what has happened to earnings inequality and the returns to
education in Ireland between 1987 and 1997. We find that while both
increased between 1987 and 1994, the increases slowed dramatically between
1994 and 1997. We look to immigration as being a contributing factor to this
pattern because a large group of skilled workers flowed into the Irish
labour market between 1994 and 1997. We develop a model of the Irish labour
market and use it to simulate the impact of an increase in skilled labour.
The simulation suggests that immigration did indeed reduce earnings
inequality. This result is an interesting corollary to work from the US that
shows the immigration of unskilled workers' increasing earnings inequality.

Author Keywords: Earnings inequality; Returns to education; Immigration;
Ireland

JEL classification codes: J31; J61


Article Outline
1. Introduction
2. The distribution of earnings in Ireland
3. The returns to education
4. Testing the immigration hypothesis
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Appendix A. Labour market model
Appendix B

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...


Journal of Adolescence
Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2002, Pages 441-451

DOI: 10.1006/jado.2002.0495
PII: S0140-1971(02)90495-1
Copyright © 2002 The Association for Professionals in Services for
Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Regular Article
The impact of political conflict on moral maturity: a cross-national
perspective

NEIL FERGUSONf1 and Ed. CAIRNS

Available online 19 September 2002.


Journal of Adolescence
Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2002, Pages 441-451


Abstract
This cross-national study of moral reasoning among adolescents in Northern
Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, addresses the problem of
possible moral truncation in Northern Ireland due to the political conflict.
The Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form (SRM-SF; Gibbs et al. (1992)
Moral Maturity: Measuring the Development of Sociomoral Reflection.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Erlbaum. was presented to a proportionate stratified
sample of 14¯15 year olds (n=613) from three locations including a small
town, large town and city in each country to control for urbanization. This
adolescent sample consisted of participants from both of Northern Ireland's
religious communities and was matched for age and sex. Analysis of the
results suggested that despite the violent atmosphere over the last 30
years, the Northern Irish adolescents were not developmentally delayed in
moral terms as previously feared (Fraser (1972) Special Education,61 , 6¯8;
Fields (1973). A Society on the Run: A Psychology of Northern Ireland.
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin; (1976) Northern Ireland: Society Under
Siege. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books; Lyons (1973) The
Northern Teacher, 19¯30) Copyright 2002 The Association for Professionals in
Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved.


f1 Reprint requests and correspondence should be addressed to Neil Ferguson,
Psychology Department, Liverpool Hope University College, Hope Park, L16 9JD
Hope Park, Liverpool, UK (E-mail: fergusn[at]hope.ac.uk).


This Document
Abstract

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

Actions
Cited By
Save as Citation Alert
Export Citation

Journal of Adolescence
Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2002, Pages 441-451

For information...

Forwarded on behalf of

From: david granville
editor[at]irishdemocrat.co.uk
Subject: Irish Democrat website update


New material has been placed on the website of the Irish Democrat :
http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk

News and analysis, including:
Bobbie Heatley on why six-county nationalists are right to be concered
about the implementation of the Good Friday agreement
David Granville on David Trimble giving in to the No-men and women of
the UUP
Features, including:
Peter Berresford Ellis on 'Mick' Mannock, Irish fighter pilot and
curious socialist
Short Strand: a mother's diary of a community under siege
Reviews, including:
Roy Johnston on Explaining Irish Democracy by Bill Kissane (UCD Press)
Moya St Leger on Momentum by Mo Mowlam (Hodder & Stoughton)
David Granville on Sinn Fein: a hundred turbulent years by Brian Feeney
(O'Brien)
Ruairi O Domhnaill on Loyalism & Labour in Belfast: the autobiography of
Robert McElborough (Cork UP)
Sally Richardson on Memoirs of an Irish Troubador by Liam Clancy
(Virgin)

From: "Richard Jensen"
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 01:05:00 -0400


PARADISE ALLEY
By Kevin Baker.
676 pp. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. $26.95.

NY TIMES October 6, 2002
'Paradise Alley': A Novel Reconstructs New York's Worst Riot

REVIEW By GEOFFREY C. WARD

Until September 2001, three summer days in 1863 were the most
frightening in the history of New York City. From Monday, July 13,
through Wednesday, July 17, mobs held much of Manhattan. The rioters
were working class, overwhelmingly Irish Catholic and filled with
smoldering resentments -- at the Yankee Protestants who exploited and
demeaned them, at the squalor in which they were forced to live, at
inflationary prices and lockouts and strikebreaking. But the final
spark was provided by the new National Conscription Act, which made
virtually all able-bodied men eligible for the draft but allowed the
well-to-do to escape service in the Union Army by paying a $300 fee.
As many of the Irish saw it, poor white workingmen like themselves
were being forced to fight for the freedom of blacks, who would then
come north and take their jobs. They burned federal property and
attacked Republican newspaper offices, looted stores and wrecked
private homes, killed policemen and soldiers who tried to stop them
and beat or butchered any African-American men, women or children who
happened to cross their path. A puzzled foreign visitor asked a
bystander why blacks were the special targets of their anger. 'Oh,
sir,' the man replied, 'they hate them here' because 'they are the
innocent cause of all these troubles.'

The New York draft riots remain the worst civil disturbance in
American history: according to the historian Adrian Cook, 119 people
are known to have been killed, mostly rioters or onlookers who got too
close when federal troops, brought back from the battlefield to
restore order, started shooting.

Those three chaotic days provide the backdrop for Kevin Baker's
extraordinary new novel, 'Paradise Alley.' Baker is simultaneously a
richly imaginative fiction writer steeped in historical fact and a
meticulous historian who cheerfully alters actual events whenever it
serves the intricate, many-sided stories he likes to spin. As the
chief historical researcher for Harold Evans, Baker ferreted out a lot
of the quirky details that helped fill Evans's best-selling 'American
Century' with so many unexpected pleasures. 'In the News,' Baker's
column in American Heritage magazine, offers readers a bimonthly dose
of historical context for current events, shrewdly distinguishing
those items for which the past really is prologue from those for which
a knowledge of history isn't much help. In his 1999 novel,
'Dreamland,' he managed both to paint a wholly plausible portrait of
immigrant New York around 1910 and to tell a gritty, exuberant tale
that blended historic personages (including Sigmund Freud) and a large
fictional cast, with two great conflagrations: the blaze that
destroyed the Dreamland Amusement Park at Coney Island and the
Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which helped to catalyze the American labor
movement. The result was irresistible.

'Paradise Alley' is just as successful -- and no less ambitious. In
'Dreamland,' the immigrant protagonists were Jewish and eastern
European. In 'Paradise Alley,' they are Roman Catholic and Irish.
But the misery of their surroundings remains the same: they live in
the notorious Fourth Ward, where feral pigs snuffle through gutters
heaped with filth, a single spigot serves three blocks and people live
more densely packed -- 290,000 to the square mile -- than in any other
neighborhood on earth. They battle against the same odds, too, and
struggle with the same vexing riddle: when does an immigrant become an
American?

Like a skilled ringmaster, Baker sets seven major characters in motion
on the morning of July 13. Most of them occupy derelict houses along
the short, fetid block off Cherry Street that gives the book its
title. The mob is still just background noise then. 'Something both
more and less,' a member of Baker's cast notes, 'than the daily
going to work, the bawdy, boisterous awakening of the City that she
liked to listen to every morning from her doorstep before joining it
herself.' But as the story sweeps along -- Baker is a master of
momentum -- the distant thunder grows closer and closer until its roar
drowns out everything else, a lethal threat to all the people he has
made us care about.

Ruth Dove is an Irish-born ragpicker: married to a runaway slave from
South Carolina named Billy Dove, she lives in fear of her former
lover, Johnny Dolan -- Dangerous Johnny Dolan -- a sometime
bare-knuckle boxer whom the horrors of the potato famine have turned
into a murderous sociopath. As the book begins, Ruth learns that after
a 14-year forced exile she helped arrange, he has returned to New York
bent on revenge. Deirdre Dolan O'Kane, the killer's older sister, is
as different from him as she can possibly make herself: a proud, pious
ex-domestic, intent on working her way out of poverty, she wants her
family to 'live like Americans,' and has transformed her husband,
Tom, from a member of a notorious riverfront gang called the Break
O'Day Boys into a sober and reliable wage earner. Now she is
frightened that by talking him into volunteering to serve in the
celebrated Irish Brigade, the Fighting 69th, she has sent him to his
death. Maddy Boyle is a teenage prostitute, kept by the book's only
important Protestant character, a self-confessed hack named Herbert
Willis Robinson. He works for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and is
a keen observer of everything except himself; his reluctance to take
his mistress into his home in the guarded sanctuary of Gramercy Park
leaves her vulnerable to the mob as it roars into Paradise Alley in
search of victims.

Without ever slowing his novel's pace or letting us lose sight of any
of his characters, the author takes the reader on a careering,
kaleidoscopic tour of their world. The timorous might think twice
before embarking. Baker's itinerary encompasses ravaged Ireland and
the carnage at Fredericksburg, as well as New York's lower depths. He
takes his readers to a bull-baiting pit, walks them past
slaughterhouses and through a Manhattan sewer filled with scuttling
rats. And we visit places most New Yorkers know nothing about: Seneca
Village, the black squatters' settlement that stood in the center of
what is now Central Park till 19th-century gentrification moved uptown
and wiped it out; a waterfront dive where, for a nickel, thirsty
patrons are welcome to as much rotgut whiskey as they can suck through
a rubber hose in 30 seconds; and a Bowery saloon that displays on its
bar a jar of pickled ears, bitten off misbehaving customers by the
female proprietor.

Baker's story is so rich in color and drama that here and there some
readers may find their credulity strained. But a random check of
several of the sources he obligingly provides shows that while he has
often changed names and altered locations to suit the story, many of
those scenes that seem least plausible turn out to be the most
faithful to the recorded facts: a canny black man did deflect a
murderous mob by putting on an impromptu minstrel show; when rioters
shouting 'Burn the niggers' nest!' set fire to the Colored Orphan
Asylum on Fifth Avenue, a block north of where the Public Library now
stands, it really was a heroic Irish boy who emerged from nowhere to
lead the 237 terrified children who lived there to safety in a
precinct house; and a family's hairsbreadth escape over the rooftops
of burning houses that at first seems to have been snipped from an
old-fashioned Saturday afternoon serial turns out to have happened
almost precisely as Baker describes it.

As a convincing portrayal of how things were in our city that terrible
summer and as a compelling fictional vision of how things might have
been, as well, 'Paradise Alley' is twice a triumph.
- ---
Geoffrey C. Ward, a biographer of Franklin Roosevelt, is currently at
work on 'A Disposition to Be Rich,' a book about his own
great-grandfather, the Wall Street swindler Ferdinand Ward.
from
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/books/review/06WARDLT.html?8bu
read ch 1
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/books/chapters/1006-1st-baker.html

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Margaret Drabble's review of Blake Morrison's book is now displayed on The
Guardian web site...

P.O'S.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,799749,00.html

All about my mother

Margaret Drabble on Things My Mother Never Told Me, Blake Morrison's moving
account of a strong and mysterious woman

Saturday September 28, 2002
The Guardian

Things My Mother Never Told Me
by Blake Morrison
356pp, Chatto & Windus, £16.99
Blake Morrison's family memoir, And When Did You Last See Your Father, was
highly and rightly praised for its startling frankness and disturbing
intimacies, and won the JR Ackerley prize for autobiography in 1993. Its
sequel, coming nearly a decade later, is even better. Things My Mother Never
Told Me is an older, sadder, wiser book, but it has lost none of the
narrative compulsion of the earlier work, and it has gained in perspective,
perhaps in compassion. This is a sombre and elegiac story, recounting the
search for an elusive, self-deprecating yet surprisingly tough woman. She
knew more than she let on. She did more than most women of her generation,
but did not boast about it. Her son's slow rediscovery of her was a
revelation to him, and he vividly communicates his sense of loss and, at
times, bewilderment...

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of

From: D.C. Rose
d.rose[at]gold.ac.uk
Subject: THE OSCHOLARS VOL.II NO.9 OCTOBER 2002


Dear Colleagues, chers et chères collègues, Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,
Geachte collega's en collegae, Cari colleghi e colleghe:

I fear that the lateness of the September issue has delayed the October
issue, though not by as much. I am pleased to say that this is now posted
at its website, still (at least for the time being)
http://homepages.gold.ac.uk

The password, as usual, is umney

I am relieved that THE OSCHOLARS is not a fortnightly!

The October issue also reflects the heightened coverage of early Shaw that
was discussed at the Shaw Summit on Niagara-on-the-Lake on 24th August. We
hope that readers will draw this to the attention of Shavian colleagues, as
future expansion is in hand.

While we do not have anything as exciting as the letter from Wilde to Cyril
Maude this month, we have a fairly full issue once more, as appropriate in
the month of Wilde's birthday.

On a personal note, my time in the Department of English at Goldsmiths
College is now over, and I am returning to Dublin. Irish colleagues will be
invited to a convivial gathering. I would like to thank all of you who have
written to me about this, and the kind inquiries after my health. This will
be the last issue despatched form the old address, but whether from London,
Dublin or cyberspace, THE OSCHOLARS goes on!

Sincerely,

David Rose

To all correspondents: please note that the e-address d.rose[at]gold.ac.uk and
its variant ens01dr[at]gold.ac.uk will cease to be valid on or soon after 30th
September 2002.

Correspondence concerning THE OSCHOLARS Journal of Wilde Studies should be
sent to me at oscholars[at]netscape.net; personal correspondence should be sent
to dasixd[at]netscape.net

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Ir-D members will have seen media coverage of the latest virus scare - the
virus has been called Bugbear. It tries to do the usual naughty things.
Especially note that it forges the FROM line of infected emails - so that
they can look as if they come from a known source.

Further information at...

http://www.mcafee.com/anti-virus/viruses/bugbear/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,804689,00.html

We have many indications that the computers of some of our friends and
colleagues are infected with this virus. Many infected emails are being
chopped down by our various defences - not least of which is the utter
dimness of 'Majordomo', the software which runs the Irish-Diaspora list.

Let me remind people again that the Irish-Diaspora list never accepts email
attachments and never distributes attachments. Irish-Diaspora list messages
have our cheap and cheerful identifier, Ir-D, at the beginning of the
Subject line.

P.O'S.


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

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Food for thought, number 1...

The following item appeared on the H-Ethnic list...

Delete 'Italian', insert 'Irish'?

And if not why not?

P.O'S.

Subject: Italian-Americans: On Stereotypes and Social Justice

Lecture Series, Hofstra U.

Subject: Italian American stereotypes
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 02:46:26 -0400

From: Stanislao Pugliese [mailto:Stanislao.Pugliese[at]Hofstra.edu]
HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY
Hempstead, NY
Italian-American Lecture Series

Fall 2002
Italian-Americans: On Stereotypes and Social Justice

October 10
"Italian-American Stereotypes in American Popular Culture"
Stanislao Pugliese
Associate Professor of History
Hofstra University

October 17
"Prisoners in Paradise: World War II Italian POWs in American Camps"
Camilla Calamandrei
Independant Filmmaker
New York, New York

November 21
"The Image of the Gangster in American Culture"
Fred Gardaphe
Professor of Italian American Studies
SUNY Stony Brook

December 5
"Internment of Italian Americans in World War II"
Peter Vellon
Assistant to the Executive Director for Historical Research
John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Queens College/CUNY

Thursday evenings at 8 p.m.
Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn
Library, First Floor, South Campus, Hofstra University

Admission is free.

Lecture Series Director:
Stanislao Pugliese
Associate Professor of History
Hofstra University

For more information please contact:
Hofstra Cultural Center
Tel: (516) 463-5669
Fax: (516) 463-4793
E-mail: hofculctr[at]hofstra.edu

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Food for thought, number 2...

This item also appeared on the H-ethnic list...

NOTE: IAWA = Italian American Writers' Association.

http://www.iawa.net/

And note the 'Steerage' project - many of us travelled in steerage...

P.O'S.


From: Robert Viscusi [mailto:RViscusi[at]brooklyn.cuny.edu]

Why IAWA? Episode Fifty-Two October 2002

The Dialogue of Viewer A and Viewer B

On September 25, with the cooperation of the Casa Italaiana
Zerilli-Marimò at New York University, IAWA conducted a discussion of
Regina Barreca's A Sitdown with the Sopranos. This conversation was very
satisfying to people who felt that it was about time Italian American
intellectuals started to talk in public about The Sopranos. The
conversation was less satisfying to others, who felt that the thing
worth examining was not the show itself but rather the effect that the
show is having on Italian Americans - on their image in the eyes of
others, on their ways of seeing themselves.

People who wanted to talk about the show itself and people who wanted to
talk about its effect only began on that evening to talk to one another.
The producers of The Sopranos are also taking part in this conversation.
Maria Laurino, author of Were You Always an Italian?, co-wrote (with
Michael Imperioli) this season's third episode (aired September 29).
The script places the gangsters in the position of Italian American
activists who protest the demotion of Christopher Columbus, which they
see as an attack on Italian pride. The script implies that supporters of
Italian pride are not much different from gangsters. This was a
broadside against those who protest The Sopranos.

It is clear that dialogue is only beginning. With its powerful
position, its wit, and its willingness to take on its critics within the
very texts of its scripts, The Sopranos continues to place itself at
the center of debate about the representation of Italian Americans in
the media. At this point, it seems worthwhile to work a little at
trying to improve the level of communication.

We can begin by observing that Viewer A can like something that Viewer B
thinks is awful De gustibus non disputandum est. There is no arguing
about taste. According to the Roman poet Horace, this is a basic
principle in discussing reactions to any work of art. Disregarding this
principle can produce some very unsatisfactory conversations, even
shouting matches.

A: The Sopranos reminds me of Shakespeare. Stereotyped characters come
to do surprising things. They have interior realities. This is
absorbing drama.

B: Oh please. How can you watch this filth?

A: It is, among other things, a brilliant comedy of manners. It presents
parents who grew up in the inner city but now live in the suburbs and
are raising upper middle class children. This is a situation many of
us can recognize from our own lives.

B: Bull. This is a show about the Mafia. All the brilliant comedy of
manners accomplishes is to make these stereotype figures seem like real
people. Studies have shown that Mafia images damage the educational
prospects of Italian American youth.

A: What is so special about Mafia films? Have you watched any other
Hollywood movies lately? Graphic violence and brutal sex are common
fare these days.

B: But these acts of violence, this brutal sex, and these foul-mouthed
conversations are all attributed to Italian Americans. As Italian
Americans we feel dishonored. Our children are damaged by these
negative stereotypes.

A: Where is your sense of humor? Have you watched South Park or Beavis
and Butthead? This is the way people talk these days.

B: This is not the way we talk in my house.

A: You mustn't have cable.

B: What does cable have to do with it?

A: Almost everything. The Sopranos move up from the inner city to the
posh suburbs. The viewer moves up from network TV to Premium Cable.
Watching this show is like becoming a part of the social phenomenon it
displays.

B: So you admit that watching the show makes you in some way an
accomplice to all the damage it does?

A: I never said that.

B: What does it mean if you, as an Italian American, support HBO? If you
buy DVDs of The Sopranos and The Godfather?

A: Mafia stories are the most powerful representations of Italian
America in popular culture today. How can we remain part of the American
conversation if we ignore them?

B: Maybe we could change the American conversation if we did that.

A: The Sopranos is dismantling the whole stereotype of the Italian
American gangster, Indeed, it is placing the even larger stereotype of
the Italian American family under the icy gaze of psychoanalysis. How is
that for changing the conversation?

It is hard to find a resting-point in this conversation. The fact is
that the astonishing success of Mafia films and series over the past
thirty years poses a continuing challenge to American - and not only
Italian American - viewers. This challenge is the subject of a
remarkable book that is this month's steerage selection. In a thoughtful
and valuable new study, Chris Messenger analyzes the complex and
profound relationship between American culture and the Mafia film.

steerage*

The Godfather and American Culture:
How the Corleones Became "Our Gang"

by Chris Messenger

State University of New York Press
Series in Italian American Culture
Edited by Fred Gardaph
$25.95 paperback ISBN 0-7914-5358

Messenger's book advances the conversation considerably. There will be a
discussion of it at the Calandra Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, 18th
floor, on Thursday, October 31, at 6:30 pm. For further information,
call 212-642-2042 or www.qc.edu/calandra

There will be a discussion with Chris Messenger at SUNY/Stony Brook on
the same day. Details not available at press time. Call 631-632-7440
for time and place.
Copyright © 2002 Robert Viscusi


*Steerage is a program of the Italian American Writers Association.
Those who read this essay are asked to buy the selected book, to read
and discuss it, and to ask their local, school, and college libraries
to buy it.

From Patrick O'Sullivan


Forwarded on behalf of
Chih-Chun Chen
chih-chun.chen[at]keble.oxford.ac.uk


THE PICTURE
OF
DORIAN GRAY

Oxford Playhouse
November 13th - 16th

By Oscar Wilde adapted by Peter Harness

?If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow
old! For that ? for that ? I would give everything! I would give my soul for
that!?

Wilde?s fascinating and terrifying novel comes alive in a brand new stage
adaptation. A young man has his portrait painted, making a wish that the
picture will grow old, but that he will stay young and beautiful forever.
The wish is granted, but it has dark, unforeseen
consequences.

As Dorian Gray substitutes hedonism for goodness, and art for morality, he
brings suffering and death on all around him. Meanwhile the picture, made
hideous by the marks of his own sin, is watching him.

www.doriangray.org.uk
This new adaptation makes use of physical theatre and intelligent staging to
convey the many facets and themes of the novel. With a script that includes
both reflection and narration, Wilde's great novel is effectively captured
in what promises to be a most exciting production.

About the adapter
Peter Harness has recently written a feature film, The Chocolate
Billionaire, for Film Four, as well as a twelve part sitcom, Cairo Road, for
Channel Five. He has also contributed material to numerous TV shows for
Talkback Productions and Channel Four. His first original play, Mongoose, is
to be premiered early next year in London. He has just returned to Oxford to
complete a D.Phil at Oriel College. Whilst here previously, he was very
active in student drama, appearing at the Playhouse as George in Who's
Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Sade in Marat/Sade (amongst other roles), as
well as being President of the Oxford Revue and director of the OUDS tour of
Japan..

Wednesday 13th November - Saturday 16th November
Evenings: 7:30 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 p.m.
Thursday and Saturday Matinee: 2:30 p.m.
Tickets prices: £6 - £12

Box Office: 01865 305 305
Book Online: www.oxfordplayhouse.com

From Patrick O'Sullivan

We have, in the past on Ir-D, discussed photography and Ireland...

The Irish, by Sean Sexton and Christine Kinealy, is published by Thames &
Hudson on October 21. Evidently this book is based on Sean Sexton's
collection of photographs. The Guardian had a review by Luke Dodd - more on
that below - the print version of which included a selection of the
photographs.

P.O'S.

Link to Guardian review...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,803604,00.html

After the famine

Luke Dodd
Saturday October 5, 2002
The Guardian

EXTRACT BEGINS>>>
The invention of photography coincided almost exactly with the defining
event in recent Irish history - the Great Famine of the 1840s. As a direct
result of the famine, the Irish population was reduced by half, from eight
million to four million, through death and emigration; vast emigrant
communities were established in Canada, Britain, the US and Australia; the
Catholic church emerged as a dominant political and cultural force; English
replaced Irish as the first language; the communal extended family
settlements (clachans), in which a majority of the population had lived,
disappeared, and the nuclear family emerged as the dominant unit of social
organisation; the landed gentry were bankrupted; dependence on the potato
diminished; and the centuries-old grievance against England was given a
powerful new impetus. In short, modern Ireland began to emerge.

The Irish, a handsome new book by Sean Sexton and Christine Kinealy,
provides a photo-history of the country between 1840 and 1940, the period in
which modern Ireland emerged. Sexton's archive of photographs, amassed over
the past three decades, is regarded as the finest private collection of its
type in the world.

Photographs, like any other documentary source, are an incomplete record.
Often, the image that has been fixed in time is more telling for what has
been left out than what has been included. The context is important - the
reason why the image was taken and, indeed, who took it. This is acutely so
in the case of photographs taken at a time when the art was still fledgling
and expensive. In Ireland, photography was, initially at least, the preserve
of the Anglo-Irish.
EXTRACT ENDS>>>

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
Subject: emigration-related photographs from beginning of 20th century

Dear list members

A colleague here in Cork has contacted me on behalf of a Spanish documentary
maker who is working in Ireland. He is looking for emigration-related
photographs from Ireland around the beginning of the 20th century. Most of
the images I am aware of (e.g. in Kerby Miller and Paul Wagner's _Out of
Ireland_) are from the American end. Any suggestions welcome! For
non-photographic representations I have already referred him to the
excellent _Art of European Migration_ hosted by the Centre for Migration
Studies in Omagh (http://aem.qub.ac.uk/index2.html)

Piaras Mac Einri

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: Re: Ir-D emigration photographs from beginning C20th


For Australia and New Zealand the main photographic account of the Irish is:

Patrick O'Farrell, 'Through Irish Eyes. Australia and New Zealand
Images of the Irish, 1788-1948', Melbourne, 1994

Other books by O'Farrell, such as 'The Irish in Australia' (1986,
1993, 2000) and 'Vanished Kingdoms' (1990), are also well illustrated
with photographs, as is Chris McConville's 'Croppies, Celts and
Catholics: the Irish in Australia', Melbourne, 1987.

Elizabeth Malcolm
Melbourne

>From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
>Subject: emigration-related photographs from beginning of 20th century
>
>Dear list members
>
>A colleague here in Cork has contacted me on behalf of a Spanish
documentary
>maker who is working in Ireland. He is looking for emigration-related
>photographs from Ireland around the beginning of the 20th century. Most of
>the images I am aware of (e.g. in Kerby Miller and Paul Wagner's _Out of
>Ireland_) are from the American end. Any suggestions welcome! For
>non-photographic representations I have already referred him to the
>excellent _Art of European Migration_ hosted by the Centre for Migration
>Studies in Omagh (http://aem.qub.ac.uk/index2.html)
>
>Piaras Mac Einri

Professor Elizabeth Malcolm Tel: +61-3-8344 3924
Chair of Irish Studies FAX: +61-3-8344 7894
Department of History Email: e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, 3010
AUSTRALIA

From Patrick O'Sullivan

RASCAL (Research And Special Collections Available Locally), Northern
Ireland...

Our attention has been drawn to this new web resource...

The first thought must be that acronyms are getting very silly - but I guess
this one is memorable...

P.O'S.

http://www.rascal.ac.uk/

FROM THE WEB SITE>>>
RASCAL is a new electronic gateway to research resources in Northern
Ireland. You can use this web-site to search and browse information about
the wide range of research and special collections held in libraries,
museums and archives across the region. The Directory consists of
comprehensive descriptions of collections available to researchers in the
Humanities and Social Sciences recording details of content, location,
format, and access. Links to institutions' on-line catalogues and other
digital resources are provided where appropriate.

RASCAL (Research And Special Collections Available Locally) is the result of
a two year mapping project based at Queen's University Belfast with funding
from the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) to create and develop a
new electronic portal to research and special collections in Northern
Ireland. Arising out of an identified need to improve access to collections
in the region, RASCAL represents a collaborative initiative to enhance
awareness among researchers as to what is available in Northern Ireland and
to make more efficient use of local resources.