From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Tempo Exterior, Vol III, no 5, Xuno-December 2002, is published and
successfully launched in Santiago, Galicia. And, I am told, well
received. This volume includes my article on the Development of Irish
Diaspora Studies.

Tempo Exterior is published by IGADI, and there is more information at
the web site... www.igadi.org
IGADI's practice is to to put Abstracts and extracts from the latest
Tempo Exterior on the web site - but I don't think this has happened
yet.

It puts my article in an interesting, mostly European context - Galicia
in a world of diasporas, the Portuguese in Canada, Latvian identity,
Taiwanese, etc. A post Iron Curtain world...

My thanks to all those who asked for copies of the article in English,
and my thanks for questions and comments...

Can I just quickly give here some answers to queries...?

The reference to Japan and to Michael Weiner, ed., Japan's Minorities:
The Illusion of Homogeneity, Routledge, London, 1997... The comparison
with Japan may be far-fetched - anyway, fetched from afar. But if we
think of the various minorities within Japan listed in Weiner's
collection as occupying possible roles or spaces within the host
community - the Koreans as immigrant workers, the Ryukyuans/Okinawans as
recently conquered and now 'no different', the Burakamin as other and
tainted, and so on - it is intriguing how very often the Irish in
Britain occupy those roles/spaces within British society. Maybe also
add Irish Travellers...

The two 'valorisations' of the two Wests - Turner's 'frontier thesis'
and the valorisation of the West of Ireland. The link between the two
is fairly simple - both are 'versions of pastoral'. And both distrust
cities. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, pointed out that Turner's thesis
was a version of pastoral. I have suggested a number of times that
there is a kind of 'Irishness' which is a version of pastoral - though I
am not sure what my key text should be. Suggestions? I tend to go with
the de Valera quote, cause it is so well known. I still have great
admiration for William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral. If I were
still teaching I might put Empson, Pastoralism, alongside Said,
Orientalism... Holding a corrective lens up to the distorting mirror...

Ethnic identity and leisure. The Irish and Ireland offer rather
wonderful examples of this - since the boundaries of a leisure
activities were actually policed. 'The Ban' by the Gaelic Athletic
Association, the ban on the playing of 'foreign' games and the
ostracising of 'crown forces'. Also, there was a spat some years ago
between two historians of Fenianism - about whether or not Fenianism was
a 'leisure activity'. Well, apart from the comparatively small number
of professional politicians and activists, politics is always a spare
time activity. Yes, there is here an invitation to think of religion as
a use of leisure. And the theology of the Sabbath and leisure is very
well developed in Judaism and Christianity.

Paddy


- --
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 Email Patrick O'Sullivan

History Ireland, Vol 11. no 1, Spring 2003, is now being distributed...

The cover is displayed on the web site...

http://www.historyireland.com/

But, not, as far as I can see, the list of contents. The cover story is
Ireland and the Crimean War. Then follow articles on Redmondism, on
Balfe and on Belfast and the slave trade.

The web site is gradually becoming of more interest - I recommend
browsing through the Book Reviews section, freely available.

Ir-D members will be aware that History Ireland has faced some problems
in recent times - and some of you will know far more than I do. It
seems that History Ireland has been acquired by Wordwell Ltd - which
some of you will know through Archaeology Ireland. Rod Eley is no
longer the publisher of History Ireland - but will continue with a
separate venture, History Scotland. Hiram Morgan has retired as joint
editor, Tommy Graham stays as editor, and Sean Duffy joins as consulting
editor.

The two missing issues of History Ireland, Autumn and Winter 2002, will
not be produced - but the new owners promise to honour outstanding
subscriptions.

I have never disguised my own problems with History Ireland - mainly
that it is impossible to use it as a scholarly source, because the
articles are never properly sourced and referenced, and the little
guides to 'Further Reading' do not solve that problem. Rod Eley would
always convince me that History Ireland was worth supporting for other
reasons...

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: "Sarah Morgan"
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Scholarships at QUB

Please circulate:

APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING

SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY

University Studentships for full-time graduate research (PhD)

The School is among the top dozen departments of sociology and social
policy in Ireland and Britain. It incorporates three main subject areas:
sociology, social policy and women's studies.

The School is pleased to offer University scholarships for full-time
graduate research (PhD) beginning in September 2003. Applications are
welcomed in any subject area in which the School has expertise.
Preference may however be given to applications in the School's four
priority areas of: State Power and Conflict, Health Welfare and
Inequalities, Gender Sexuality and Identity, and Life Stages and Life
Styles.

Applicants must have or expect to obtain at least a 2.1 honours degree
or equivalent in Sociology, Social Policy, Womens Studies or a cognate
subject.

The Scholarships are open to UK, EU and Overseas applicants. They
provide fees (home rate) and maintenance of £9,000 p.a (tax free) for
three years.

The closing date for applications is Friday 2nd May 2003.

For further information, application forms, and advice on applying,
please consult the addresses below.

Postgraduate Awards

Research and Regional Services

Queens University

BELFAST BT7 1NN

http://www.qub.ac.uk/pao/main.htm

Postgraduate Tutor

Professor Eithne McLaughlin

School of Sociology and Social Policy

Queens University Belfast

e.mclaughlin[at]qub.ac.uk
www.qub.ac.uk/ssp/postgraduate.htm


-----------------------
Mike Tomlinson
Head of School
School of Sociology and Social Policy
Queens University
Belfast
BT7 1NN

Tel: 028 90 27 33 91
Fax: 028 90 27 39 43
m.tomlinson[at]qub.ac.uk
www.qub.ac.uk/ssp

From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
Subject: Reminder of UW Press series

Greetings to all:

Despite recent UK census reports that you may be a figment of our
imagination, Jim Donnelly and I would like to remind those on the other
side of the pond and beyond of our series in Irish and Irish Diaspora
History. Of course, the same message also goes for all of you on this
side of the Atlantic. So far, we have committed to publishing three
volumes, and have several more under evaluation. The University of
Wisconsin Press believes that it can produce four to six volumes per
year in the series.

I am writing because I have been disappointed at the relatively few
manuscripts coming in for the Diaspora side of the series. We have
numerous offers of collections of articles, but can realistically
foresee publishing only one or two books of that kind. Anybody out
there doing book projects that you'd like us to see? The Press is also
willing to engage in co-publishing or reprinting European house
products.

The announcement for the series follows:


THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
is pleased to announce a new book series on

Irish and Irish Diaspora History
Thomas Archdeacon and James Donnelly, General Editors


This new series seeks submission of manuscripts treating emerging
subjects of inquiry and established topics approached in fresh and
revealing ways. The linkage of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora in the
same book series is meant to recognize the manifold forms of historical
interaction between the Irish at home and abroad, and it is hoped that
some of the best books in the series will be transnational in their
scope and concerns. The linkage also recognizes the extent to which
Irish American and other Diaspora histories have come to rival Irish
history in the maturity and sophistication of their scholarship, and
this should permit the editors to develop both streams of publishing
activity with reasonable balance. The editors will consider both works
of original research and books of broader design that consolidate
scholarship on a given subject and present their findings in forms
particularly well-suited to use by students and general readers. Last,
the editors and the University of Wisconsin Press are open to exploring
the possibility of co-publication agreements with other publishing
houses in Ireland or the United Kingdom for works of distinction in
Irish and Irish Diaspora history.



Please direct inquiries to:
Professor James Donnelly or Professor Thomas Archdeacon Department of
History, 3211 Mosse Humanities Building 455 North Park Street, Madison,
WI 53706
(entails: tjarchde[at]wisc.edu and jsdonnel[at]facstaff.wisc.edu)
or to:
Dr. Robert Mandel, Director, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1930
Monroe Street, 3rd Fl., Madison, WI 53711 email: ramandel[at]wisc.edu The
University of Wisconsin Press www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress

From: Fintan Vallely
To:

Crosbhealach an Cheoil - The Crossroads Conference 2003

A major conference debating all levels of
Education in Traditional Music

Magee campus, University of Ulster, Derry,

April 25-27, 2003

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES by
Philip Bohlman, University of Chicago (Folk Music in the Modern World)
Caomhin Mac Aoidh, Cairdeas na bhFhidleiri, Donegal (Between the Jigs
and the Reels)

35 SPEAKERS from the performance and academic fields including Seamus
MacMathuna, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Éireann * Marie McCarthy, University of
Maryland, USA * Pierre Crepillon, Conservatoire de Rennes, Brittany *
Gunnar Stubseid, Ole Bull Traditional music Academy, Voss, Norway * Jo
Miller, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow * Alistair
Anderson University of Newcastle, England * Tom Munnelly, Dept. of
Folklore, University College, Dublin

SESSION CHAIRS include
Nicholas Carolan (Irish Traditional Music Archive) *
Micheal O Suilleabhain (University of Limerick) *
Martin Dowling (Arts Council of Northern Ireland)


MAIN TOPICS ADDRESSED
1/ The variety of teaching contexts
2/ Goals of teaching in music
3/ Teaching for the future


FULL TIMETABLE and speaker information for this conference is now posted
on www.cros2003.com

REGISTRATION: info[at]cros2003.com
30% reduction for registration before March 30th
(see site) www.cros2003.com

From: "Mark E. Hall"
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D History Ireland Spring 2003

Patrick writes:

>Ir-D members will be aware that History Ireland has faced some problems
in recent times - and some of you will know >far more than I do. It
seems that History Ireland has been acquired by Wordwell Ltd - which
some of you will know
>through Archaeology Ireland. Rod Eley is no longer the publisher of
History Ireland - but will continue with a separate >venture, History
Scotland. Hiram Morgan has retired as joint editor, Tommy Graham stays
as editor, and Sean Duffy
>joins as consulting editor.

Well, I guess I will have to finally get around to subscribing then.
Wordwell has done a very good to excellent job with ARCHAEOLOGY IRELAND
(I say this as a professional archaeologist) and has steadily improved
over the years. It manages to bring Irish archaeology to the masses (at
least IMO) and not upset us nitpicky archaeologists. Their editorial
staff manages to get die-hard academics to produces very readable
articles.

Best, Mark Hall

From: Peter Hart
Subject: Re: Ir-D Detention of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

My guess would be, under current circumstances, that this is a favour to
the British government (solicited or not) on account of her opposition
to the `peace process' and history of paramilitary associations (i.e.
part of the `war on terrorism'). There may be a perceived link with
backers of the Real IRA in the States. Not that such would be easily
justified in terms of her actual record, as far as I know. I have lost
track of her current position on things - I'm sure she's still a
republican socialist or vice-versa - but she has said or written on
several occasions that The War is over. My impressions is that she
falls into the category of republican dissident - not in favour of
restarting an IRA campaign but also opposed to current Sinn Fein
policies. Although I think she has also avoided criticizing Adams
directly. There's certainly no way she is actually a threat to US
national security.

I note that this story has been picked up by a lot of news websites at
any rate.

Peter Hart

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

Ir-D member Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum) has
published three recent pieces of possible interest to students of the
early Irish Book Trade, contemporary Irish-Anglo politics, and Oscar
Wilde:

(1) "Dublin's Inky Brotherhood: New Work on the Irish Booktrade," Irish
Literary Supplement (Fall, 2002; an extended essay);

(2) "The Camera Does Not Lie: Revisiting Bloody Sunday (1972, 2002),"
New Hibernia Review (Dec., 2002, w/ images), a critique of Trisha Ziff's
global photographic exhibition on the Bloody Sunday atrocity, with
sideglances to the current Saville Inquiry and the Bloody Sunday Panel,
hosted by NYU Ireland House and NYU's Law School, March, 2002 (digital,
illustrated version, Project Muse site); and

(3) "Ephebe: Extreme Beauty & the Seduction of Oscar Wilde," Irish
Literary Supplement (Spring, 2002); color digital version, illustrated,
The Oscholars site, Goldsmiths College, U of London, June, 2002).

Our thanks to Maureen for keeping us informed.

Paddy

From: Hilary Robinson
Subject: Re: Ir-D Detention of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey


- - tangental, but just to add to this sorry tale of visa problems:
last week I was chairing a panel at the College Art Association
annual conference in New York, on international discourses in art
history, and two of our panelists were unable to come because shortly
before the conference they were informed that they had been refused
visas - one from the people's republic of China, one from the
Philippines. The latter sent me an email saying that she had been
invited to the US before but had declined, knowing of the
humilitation that she would have to face as an asian woman attempting
to enter the US, but this was one forum that she really wished to
attend. She was asked to prove that she would have enough money to
cover travel and subsistence for the conference, but not enough to
allow her to stay longer; and that she had family ties that would
take her back to the philippines. A partner and 4 year old daughter
were not deemed sufficient (she is not married).

and these are the articulate, politically informed tip of the
iceberg.....

hilary

At 11:45 pm +0000 27/2/03, irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

>From: Kerby Miller
>Subject: No Irish Need Apply
>
>
>In view of the visa and travel problems discussed here recently, I'm
>somewhat surprised this rather disturbing news (about which I learned
>only yesterday) hasn't been a subject of mention or discussion.
>
>Kerby.
>
>
>
- --
Professor Hilary Robinson
Head of School
School of Art and Design
University of Ulster
York Street
Belfast
BT15 1ED

From: Oliver Marshall
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Brazil in British and Irish Archives


_Note to Paddy_: This might interest some people. Irish diaspora
mainly lies in references to Irish and English archival holdings
relating to 17th century Irish settlements in the Amazon, but material
relating to mercenaries and other Irish migrants is also discussed. One
failure has been not locating material relating to Irish missionaries -
hopefully in the next edition....

Oliver

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

BRAZIL IN BRITISH AND IRISH ARCHIVES

Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford

Oliver Marshall

One enduring legacy of the close relationship that developed between
Britain and Brazil over the course of centuries is the existence in the
British Isles of a wealth of archival holdings relating to Brazil.
Brazil in British and Irish Archives is the first guide devoted to this
rich resource. The Brazil-related manuscript holdings of 69 British and
Irish archives, libraries and museums described in the guide are
extremely varied, but together they offer unique insights into 16th- to
20th-century Brazilian history. Although this material is especially
important for the understanding of 19th- and early 20th-century
British-Brazilian relations, many other historical themes and periods
are illuminated. Historians will find Brazil in British and Irish
Archives to be a valuable tool for identifying material that is held by
national, local and specialist archival repositories.

December 2002 xix+241 pp 1 map
216x140mm
Paperback ISBN 0-9544070-0-8

Order form and further information at: http://www.brazil.ox.ac.uk

From: "Murray, Edmundo"

'Chistes de Gallegos' are hot stuff in Argentina, particularly among
Buenos Aires city 'porteños'. For the good joke teller, accent imitation
is mandatory. Ref. patterns, it is interesting to remark that, in spite
that most Buenos Aireans used to consider gallegos as their servants
(eg., 1943 film 'Cándida' - a galician woman who arrives in Argentina to
work as a maid with a bourgeois family), and also had a urban regard on
them, most of them feel today geographically marginalised with respect
to Europe, and they think they are natives rather than settlers. Not
suprisingly, Argentine jokes about Galicians are sometimes a duplicate
of French jokes about les Belges. Best wishes,

Edmundo Murray
U. de Genève

> -----Original Message-----
> From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
[SMTP:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
> Sent: 03 March 2003 06:59
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Subject: Ir-D Chistes de gallegos
>
>
> From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> As an example of ways in which our work might be of interest to other
> diasporas... In email discussion with our colleagues in Galicia it
> emerged that there are 'Galician jokes' (chistes de gallegos) - a
> well-known genre in Spain and in Argentina and Brasil.
>
> There is even a 'stage Galician' - in plays, 'zarzuelas', etc. until
> at least the middle of the twentieth century. The Galician night
> watchman, the 'sereno', in Madrid was a comic character on stage. And
> the traits attributed to Galicians are very similar to those
> attributed to the Irish in this genre.
>
> I chortled at this. That there should be 'chistes de gallegos' is
> precisely predicted by my own essay, 'The Irish joke' in IWW3, The
> Creative Migrant.
>
> These are the patterns that attract the jokes...
>
> 1. geographic marginality
> 2. native/settler relationship
> 3. servant/master relationship
> 4. rural/urban contrasts
>
>
> Paddy
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

As an example of ways in which our work might be of interest to other
diasporas... In email discussion with our colleagues in Galicia it
emerged that there are 'Galician jokes' (chistes de gallegos) - a
well-known genre in Spain and in Argentina and Brasil.

There is even a 'stage Galician' - in plays, 'zarzuelas', etc. until at
least the middle of the twentieth century. The Galician night watchman,
the 'sereno', in Madrid was a comic character on stage. And the traits
attributed to Galicians are very similar to those attributed to the
Irish in this genre.

I chortled at this. That there should be 'chistes de gallegos' is
precisely predicted by my own essay, 'The Irish joke' in IWW3, The
Creative Migrant.

These are the patterns that attract the jokes...

1. geographic marginality
2. native/settler relationship
3. servant/master relationship
4. rural/urban contrasts


Paddy


- --
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 Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Dear Piaras,

Thank you for this...

I am not sure what will happen to this article next. It arose out of a
dialogue with our colleagues in Galicia - so that I was trying to think
of ways in which a report on our work might might be useful to them...

I guess my substantive point would be that as the Irish (we) cross seas,
oceans and political boundaries they (we) must also cross the boundaries
of discourses. We can note the oddity that two of these significant
discourses are 'versions of pastoral' - I fall back on Empson's nicely
vague phrase. Both dis-value the emigrant Irish experience. It is only
when they (we) try to understand that experience that such oddities
become visible.

Your mention of Corkery is interesting. I recall that it was Patrick
Maume's excellent study of Corkery, Life that is Exile (1993), that
brought home to me how much Corkery's thinking was based on Ruskin and
Robert Blatchford. 'Versions of pastoral' indeed. We do need a good
essay on 'Irishness' as a version of pastoralism. Or has someone
already written one?

On Paul Henry... Whose work I admire. I recall someone (who?) saying
that Paul Henry was the first painter to paint Ireland so that it looked
like Ireland - before him painters had painted Ireland so that it looked
like Switzerland. Or Scotland...

Paddy


- -----Original Message-----
Subject: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior 2

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
Hello Paddy,

Delighted to see published your most interesting article (about which, I
now realise guiltily, I failed to offer comments - sorry. If you have
the text as finalised I'd be grateful for a copy. Meantime, I had a few
other reflections on Turner which might start a few hares...

....A propos of this topic, if anyone is visiting Dublin between now and
May they might like to look at the superb Paul Henry exhibition in the
National Gallery. There are up to 100 paintings and drawings by Henry
and the exhibition is very valuable, I think, because it enables us to
consider the iconic status of his paintings as representing a certain
idea of Ireland within the broader context of his formation as a
painter, with the strong influences of people like Daumier, Millet and
Whistler. One of the lessons I took away is that there was a general
feeling of European nostalgia, in an age of industrialisation and
urbanisation and rapid change, for a life that was passing - in a sense
Henry is an Irish variant on a broader theme. The other was that Henry
himself does not seek to _romanticise_ rural life, in my view. His
figures seemed to me to be not so much heroic as enduring, but the
propagandists of Catholic frugal Ireland chose to exalt them to a status
of saintliness and noble suffering, self-sufficient and non-materialist.
In fact, Henry painted fewer and fewer human figures in his work as the
years went by, focusing on the landscapes themselves. It is a pity that
the very ubiquity of his work and the cultural baggage that went with it
has obscured the fact that he was a fine painter, of an Ireland which
has now largely vanished, but this exhibition does restore his place.

Piaras

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

This is a most extraordinary, well-designed web resource...

As usual, we test it by searching for the word 'Irish' - and immediately
find the story of Hugh Riley, the Irish language, accusations of sodomy,
in London 1718... In 1729 Sylvester Sullevane accused of stealing 4
books...

Patrick O'Sullivan


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

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Online from 5 March 2003.

Between 1670 and 1834 the proceedings of the central criminal court in
London, the Old Bailey, were published eight times a year. These records
detail 100,000 trials, and include over 60,000 pages of text. They
represent the largest single source of information about non-elite lives
ever published, and provide a wealth of detail about everyday life, as
well as hugely valuable evidence for the history of crime.

A transcription of this material, along with scanned images of the
original pages, is now available free of charge to users throughout the
world. You can search for entries in specific fields, such as crime, or
defendant's occupation, or search the whole text for any word or text
string. It is possible to tabulate specific fields, such as sex of
defendant by type of crime, and generate results as either tables or
graphs. Information on related documents and sources found in the
libraries and archives of London can also be linked to each trial,
creating a trail of information leading from the internet to original
source material.

The website currently covers December 1714 to December 1759. Trials
from 1760 to 1799 will be available in the late Spring of 2003; from
1674 to October 1714 in the Autumn of 2003; and 1800 to 1834 in the
Spring of 2004, when an international conference will take place to mark
the completion of the project.

The digitisation of this material has been made possible by grants from
the New Opportunities Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Board.
Scanning and double rekeying of the original text has been managed by
the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of
Hertfordshire, and file mark up and search engine design at the
Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield. In the
process both structured meta-data detailing specific aspects of each
trial and archival references have been incorporated into the trial
accounts. A substantial website authored by the directors of this
project, Professor Tim Hitchcock and Dr Robert Shoemaker, giving
detailed historical background to the Proceedings and to the history of
crime and of London between 1674 and 1834 has also been created.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


Forwarded on behalf of...

Nicholas Allen
nicholas.allen[at]dit.ie
Subject: Moving On 2


Moving On 2
4 - 5 April 2003
St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin

A joint project of the School of Languages, Dublin Institute of
Technology, the Keough Centre of the University of Notre Dame, St
Patrick's College, Drumcondra

Programme

Friday 4 April

6.30 pm Opening Reception
7.30pm St Patrick's College Lecture Blake Morrison, 'Things my mother
never told me'

Saturday 5 April

9.30 am Kathleen Biddick (Notre Dame), 'Discipline, punish, colony'
11.30am School of Languages DIT Lecture Michael McDowell (Minister of
Justice), 'Irish culture and the law'
1pm Lunch
2pm University of Notre Dame Lecture John Kelly (Oxford), 'The Irish
Revival of 1903'
3.30pm 'Transitions': Jane Ohlmeyer (Aberdeen), David Wheatley (Hull),
Caroline Walsh (Irish Times)
5pm 'Closing remarks' Nicholas Allen, Mary Shine Thompson



Moving On 2
4 - 5 April 2003
St Patrick's College, Drumcondra
Registration Form
Name
Institution (if any)
E mail
Telephone no

I will attend Moving On 2, 4-5 April 2003 YES/ NO
(10 euro, payable on site, including lunch and reception)
I would like to attend the Moving On 2 closing dinner, 5 April 2003
YES/ NO
(35 euro, payable on site, limited student concession available)

Please return to
Nicholas Allen nicholas.allen[at]dit.ie 01 - 4024552
Mary Shine Thompson mary.thompson[at]spd.dcu.ie 01 - 8842078

From: "William Mulligan Jr."
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior 2

Central to Turner's thesis is the idea of the frontier as a
moving place where democracy is continually renewed, not just a pastoral
setting. According to Turner, on the frontier individuals are judged and
can advance socially, economically, etc. based on their innate abilities
and willingness to work rather than their family connections or other
accidents of birth. It is where the "American character" was shaped and
democratic institutions renewed. Interestingly, he first presented the
thesis in 1893, the year the US Census Bureau announced that, for the
first time, there was no identifiable frontier of settlement. In this
sense I am not sure there are parallels to Ireland, but do recall from
graduate school some comparisons to Australia.
In my work on Irish immigrant miners in Upper Michigan it does
appear that there was much greater openness for advancement during the
early years of settlement than there was later. Those who arrived in
the region before the early 1860s had much more economic and
occupational mobility than those who arrived later.

Bill Mulligan

Please Note New Address: BillMulligan[at]murray-ky.net

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior

Hello Paddy,

Delighted to see published your most interesting article (about which, I
now realise guiltily, I failed to offer comments - sorry. If you have
the text as finalised I'd be grateful for a copy. Meantime, I had a few
other reflections on Turner which might start a few hares.

I was very taken, as an undergraduate history student in UCD (a long
time ago!) with F.J. Turner's frontier thesis. There are parallels but
also significant differences, I think, with the Irish version of rural
pastoral. Certainly, in the American case the frontier was 'pure' in a
kind of inverse proportion to how near it was to the east coast cities
and their alleged floods of immigrants. There is also some parallel
here, I think, with the concept of 'La France Profonde' It's not a
coincidence, for instance, that in French the term 'cosmopolite' was
often used as a coded term for 'Jew' by anti-Semites who did not want to
employ a more explicit term. Cities were seen, by definition, as mongrel
places, compared to the unsullied wellsprings of rural authenticity. For
Turner, the American city reflected a kind of adulterated heritage of
European culture, whereas what was specifically and authentically
American was found on the edge - the frontier.

A case can be made that the west of Ireland was also seen as 'pure'
because it was not the anglicised east coast, and was also seen as 'not
modern' and 'not urban' and therefore 'more Irish'; presumably this is
what people like Synge had in mind. But there are differences between
this version of rural pastoral and that of Turner, apart from the
additional specific factor of language in the Irish case. There is none
of the 'God's own people' rhetoric of Protestant American settler
culture, looking for its own Promised Land. Jackson's thesis rendered
the indigenous population as a defining but oppositional presence,
whereas in the Irish case the indigenous population were seen as the
repository of ancient wisdom. For Turner, it is the epic struggle
between land and settler people which moulds their character and defines
their values ('the wilderness masters the colonist' - chapter 1 in
Turner, or 'Not the constitution, but free land and an abundance of
natural resources open to a fit people, made the democratic type of
society in America for three centuries while it occupied its empire' -
chapter 11).

The Turner vision is very much that of the New Republic -
entrepreneurial, egalitarian, meritocratic, individualistic, even
contrarian. It is an enlightenment project, dynamic and forward-looking
(although also inherently
racist) whereas the Irish equivalent looked back, seeking to uncover an
essential and unchanging Irish identity. It's as if Irish identity was a
palimpsest where, once the top layer of adulterated foreign-ness was
removed, you could re-discover the ur-level. I think a lot of Irish
people still think in this way about Irishness.

I suppose my final point is that Turner's thesis, when one agrees with
it or not, is a vigorous, cogent, sustained argument, informed by a wide
knowledge of history, enlightenment ideas and political science. I
cannot think of an Irish equivalent, although maybe others can. It could
be argued that the nearest cultural equivalent is found in the works of
Daniel Corkery. In recent years, of course, critics like Declan Kiberd
have considered these questions, but I don't think there is a text _of
the period_ to compare to Turner's.

A propos of this topic, if anyone is visiting Dublin between now and May
they might like to look at the superb Paul Henry exhibition in the
National Gallery. There are up to 100 paintings and drawings by Henry
and the exhibition is very valuable, I think, because it enables us to
consider the iconic status of his paintings as representing a certain
idea of Ireland within the broader context of his formation as a
painter, with the strong influences of people like Daumier, Millet and
Whistler. One of the lessons I took away is that there was a general
feeling of European nostalgia, in an age of industrialisation and
urbanisation and rapid change, for a life that was passing - in a sense
Henry is an Irish variant on a broader theme. The other was that Henry
himself does not seek to _romanticise_ rural life, in my view. His
figures seemed to me to be not so much heroic as enduring, but the
propagandists of Catholic frugal Ireland chose to exalt them to a status
of saintliness and noble suffering, self-sufficient and non-materialist.
In fact, Henry painted fewer and fewer human figures in his work as the
years went by, focusing on the landscapes themselves. It is a pity that
the very ubiquity of his work and the cultural baggage that went with it
has obscured the fact that he was a fine painter, of an Ireland which
has now largely vanished, but this exhibition does restore his place.

Piaras

From: McCaffrey


I am curious. This seems to happen fairly early in the native/conquerer
relationship. On the question of the Irish joke - one of the earliest
references to this is in Shakespeare's Henry V, the character Macmorris.

Do we have an earlier example?

Carmel McC


irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

From:
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior 2


Dear Piaras
Its very interesting that you should be prompted by the Paul
Henry Exhibition to recall FJ Turners's 'Frontier' thesis.

I suspect that the appeal of this exhibition for Irish people today lies
in large part in its portrayal of a landscape which, like Turner's West
when he wrote about it, is itself almost mythical.

Achill, where Henry lived & painted these ubiquitous scenes, is now
blighted by holiday home developments and, like much of the Western
seaboard, culturally polluted by the materialism and selfishness of the
contemporary urban Irish who own most of these properties, as compared
with the peasants so beloved of those who saw in Henry's work a eulogy
for 'true Irishness'.

Henry however knew well what hardship those stooping figures endured in
the course of their laborious pastoral activities. He would also have
known that, far from being self-sufficient, they survived on the land
only by virtue of their seasonal labour as migrants for half of every
year on the farms of England and Scotland - so much so that they were
seen by some English commentators as 'English labourers resident in
Ireland'.

Again as with Turner, this 'frontier' is virtually de-populated of its
original inhabitants. Today a new breed of idealistic 'settler', often
foreign, practising self-sufficiency, organic farming, and ethical
environmentalism, has established a new generation of smallholdings and
craft/artisan cottage industries in those parts of the West where land
is still cheap - usually well away from the highly desirable and costly
sea views of the coastline. Ironically, they seek to emulate a lifestyle
which the original inhabitants have long since rejected.

It is interesting that a symposium is being held in Dublin next Tuesday,
uder the auspices of the St. Patrick's Day Festival Committee, to
examine the contemporary meaning of this event for the Irish. A
spokeswoman on RTE made it clear that its purpose was 'to look forward,
not back', because this was what the modern Irish were interested in,
'as opposed to the Irish Diaspora', which was 'backward-looking'! I rest
my case...

Ultan Cowley

From: patrick maume
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior 2


From: Patrick Maume
One thing that did strike me when I was doing some research in
this area is that some at least of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth-century revivalists saw the Westerners as being
somehow more in touch with the bare realities of life and free
from the social restrictions of the nineteenth-century
Dublin/Belfast/Limerick middle-classes. Synge would be a good
example; Alice Milligan (in a very idealistic form); Sean
Keating's cult of Aran was partly a reaction against
Redemptorist Limerick etc. I think a lot of commentators tend
to miss this because they see the ideals which these writers
projected but not what they were reacting against (since the
writers assumed their contemporaries would recognise the
contrast).
The other problem is their tendency to see the peasantry (a
term which was designed by such urban revenants to present them
as deeply/immemorially rooted in the soil, &c - cf the farmers
in Seamus O'Kelly's WET CLAY who don't realise that they are
peasants until a returned Yank relative describes them as such)
in terms of the writer's own projected ideal rather than as
inhabiting a way of life to be understood on its own terms.
Milligan is very prone to this (cf Terence Brown's remarks on
her in his NORTHERN VOICES); this whole tendency is what PAtrick
Kavanagh gets so steamed up about - the tourists proclaiming
"the peasant has no worries in his cosy little fields".
Best wishes,
Patrick
On 03 March 2003 05:59 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

>
> From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
> To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
> Subject: RE: Ir-D Article in Tempo Exterior
>
> Hello Paddy,
>
> Delighted to see published your most interesting article (about which,

> I now realise guiltily, I failed to offer comments - sorry. If you
> have the text as finalised I'd be grateful for a copy. Meantime, I had

> a few other reflections on Turner which might start a few hares.
>
----------------------
patrick maume