From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Mystic River: one of the definitive pieces of screen acting

NY TIMES October 3, 2003

MOVIE REVIEW | 'MYSTIC RIVER'

Dark Parable of Violence Avenged

By A. O. SCOTT

At the beginning of Clint Eastwood's mighty "Mystic River," which will open
the New York Film Festival tonight and be released nationwide on Wednesday,
the camera drifts down from its aerial survey of Boston and alights in a
nondescript blue-collar neighborhood of triple-decker wood-frame houses and
scuffed-up sidewalks. A couple of dads sit on a back porch drinking beer and
talking about the Red Sox, who are in the midst of their ill-starred 1975
season, while three boys - Dave Boyle, Jimmy Markum and Sean Devine - play
hockey in the street below.

The somber music (composed by Mr. Eastwood) and the shadows that flicker in
the hard, washed-out New England light create an atmosphere of impending
danger, which arrives soon enough as a dark sedan pulls up and then drives
away with Dave in the back.

Dave's abduction is an act of inexplicable, almost metaphysical evil, and
this story of guilt, grief and vengeance grows out of it like a mass of dark
weeds. At its starkest, the film, like the novel by Dennis Lehane on which
it is based, is a parable of incurable trauma, in which violence begets more
violence and the primal violation of innocence can never be set right.
"Mystic River" is the rare American movie that aspires to - and achieves -
the full weight and darkness of tragedy.

Mr. Eastwood and his screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, have also been faithful
to the sense of place that makes Mr. Lehane's book a superior piece of crime
fiction. Much of the dialogue has been plucked directly from the pages of
the book, and it retains the salty, fatalistic tang of the ungentrified
streets of Irish-Catholic Boston.

A quarter-century after the kidnapping, Dave, Sean and Jimmy have settled
into ordinary adult lives of compromise and disappointment.
Sean (Kevin Bacon) works in the homicide division of the Massachusetts State
Police. His wife has left him but still calls him on his cellphone and
remains silent while he stammers questions and half-hearted apologies.

Jimmy (Sean Penn), whose first wife died while he was serving a prison
sentence for robbery, has remarried; with visible effort, he has reinvented
himself as a responsible citizen, running a small grocery store in his old
neighborhood. Dave (Tim Robbins), who walks with the shuffling,
stoop-shouldered gait of a timid, overgrown child, has a son of his own and
a skittish, devoted wife named Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden).

Celeste and Annabeth (Laura Linney), Jimmy's second wife, are cousins, and
though "Mystic River" takes place in a modern American city, it is as
thoroughly steeped in tribal codes of kinship, blood and honor as a
Shakespeare play or a John Ford western.

Everyone seems to be nursing a dark secret or an ulterior motive, and each
emerges slowly into the light in the wake of a second senseless crime, the
murder of Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum). Because Katie's
body was found in a park that lies within state jurisdiction, the case falls
to Sean and his partner, Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne), and their
investigation sets every sleeping dog in the neighborhood howling.

Suspicion falls on Katie's boyfriend, Brendan Harris (Thomas Guiry), whose
family is connected to Jimmy through an obscure underworld vendetta, and
also on Dave, who saw Katie in a bar the night she was killed and who came
home late with blood on his clothes.

As with most murder mysteries, the densely woven narrative of "Mystic River"
is a skein of coincidences and somewhat implausible connections. What gives
the movie its extraordinary intensity of feeling is the way Mr. Eastwood
grounds the conventions of pulp opera in an unvarnished, thickly inhabited
reality. There are scenes that swell with almost unbearable feeling, and the
director's ambitions are enormous, but the movie almost entirely avoids
melodrama or grandiosity.

Mr. Eastwood has found actors who can bear the weight and illuminate the
abyss their characters inhabit. Mr. Penn, his eyes darting as if in
anticipation of another blow, his shoulders tensed to return it, is almost
beyond praise. Jimmy Markum is not only one of the best performances of the
year, but also one of the definitive pieces of screen acting in the last
half-century, the culmination of a realist tradition that began in the old
Actor's Studio and begat Brando, Dean, Pacino and De Niro.

But Mr. Penn, as gifted and disciplined as any of his precursors, makes them
all look like, well, actors. He has purged his work of any trace of
theatricality or showmanship while retaining all the directness and force
that their applications of the Method brought into American movies.

The clearest proof of his achievement may be that, as overpowering as his
performance is, it never overshadows the rest of the cast. This tragedy,
after all, is not individual but communal, even though each character must
bear it alone. Mr. Bacon, even- keeled and self-effacing, is superb, as is
Mr. Fishburne, whose humor and skepticism keep the movie from being
swallowed up in gloom. Whitey (whose nickname has survived the racial
transformation of his character from page to screen) is the only major
character who is not implicated in the tribal history of the neighborhood,
and his jokes and observations are reminders of the wider world.

Mr. Robbins, in some ways, faces the greatest challenge, since he must play
a man whose damaged personality is an unstable alloy of vulnerability and
violence, naïveté and cunning. You want to feel sorry for him, but he also
scares you. Which is the effect he has on Celeste, who provides the film's
most haunting image of terror and heartbreak, just as Annabeth, emerging
from the shadows near the end, articulates with frightening clarity the
ruthlessness that passes, in this fallen world, for justice.

The twists of plot that every good thriller needs are also, in this case,
revelations of character. The jolts of surprise you feel when crucial bits
of information are disclosed are nothing compared to the shock of seeing who
people really are, and what they are capable of doing in the name of love,
loyalty or self-preservation.

When Sean realizes he must tell his old friend Jimmy that his beloved
daughter is dead, he wonders what he should say: "God said you owed another
marker, and he came to collect."

This grim theology is as close as anyone comes to faith, but Mr.
Eastwood's understanding of the universe, and of human nature, is if
anything even more pessimistic. The evil of murderers and child molesters
represents a fundamental imbalance in the order of things that neither the
forces of law and order nor the impulse toward vengeance can rectify. Dave,
looking back on his ordeal, describes himself as "the boy who escaped from
wolves," and his flight is accompanied by noises that sound like the howls
of wild animals. The actions of his abusers spring from some bestial,
uncivilized impulse that cries out to be exterminated.

The problem - the tragedy - is that grief, loyalty and even love spring from
the same source. When Jimmy learns that he has lost the child who saved his
life by forcing him into responsibility, he rages like a rabid beast, and
you know his fury will only lead to more hurt.
"We bury our sins, and wash them clean," he declares later on as he prepares
to enact his vengeance, but this is wishful thinking, mere sentiment, and
you suspect that Jimmy knows it. Mr. Eastwood surely does.

"Mystic River" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian). It has profanity, abundant violence and existential despair.

MYSTIC RIVER

Directed by Clint Eastwood; written by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel
by Dennis Lehane; director of photography, Tom Stern; edited by Joel Cox;
music by Mr. Eastwood; production designer, Henry Bumstead; produced by
Robert Lorenz, Judie G. Hoyt and Mr. Eastwood; released by Warner Brothers
Pictures. Running time: 137 minutes. This film is rated R. Shown tonight at
8 at Alice Tully Hall and at 9 at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, as part
of the 41st New York Film Festival.

WITH: Sean Penn (Jimmy Markum), Tim Robbins (Dave Boyle), Kevin Bacon (Sean
Devine), Laurence Fishburne (Whitey Powers), Marcia Gay Harden (Celeste
Boyle), Laura Linney (Annabeth Markum), Kevin Chapman (Val Savage), Thomas
Guiry (Brendan Harris) and Emmy Rossum (Katie Markum).

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The latest Irish Studies Review was distributed to subscribers a month ago -
and, of course, it also goes to all members of the British Association for
Irish Studies.

It has taken a while to get hold of the TOC - but here at last it is.

The article by DIEGO TELLEZ ALARCIA takes as its starting point the portrait
of Richard Wall acquired by the National Gallery, Dublin - and notes some
errors in the Gallery's press statements. Joan Meyler reads Sterne's
Tristram Shandy as an allegorical history of Ireland - er, convince me,
someone...

The name of LYNDA PRESCOTT will be familiar to longterm members of the
Irish-Diaspora list - she was one of our original volunteer moderators, now
removed from Bradford to The Open University. I fondly remember discussion
of Jim Farrell's work by the photocopier - and here now is her study of
Troubles. There is a sort of - not a law - but a tendency: when we have
written about British Ireland we find a need to understand British India.
So, Lynda shows here the foreshadowing in Troubles of The Siege of
Krishnapur. GARY PEATLING offers a closely argued critique of David Lloyd's
suggestion of connections between feminism and republicanism in Ireland.

The review article is by Malcom Ballin, Cardiff, on Tom Clyde, Irish
Literary Magazines.

The Book Review section is, as ever, very strong - with many reviews of
interest to the Ir-D list, and many of those reviews BY members of the Ir-D
list. People, consider yourselves chased...

Please share your book reviews with the rest of us...

P.O'S.


Irish Studies Review
Publisher: Carfax Publishing Company, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Issue: Volume 11, Number 2 / August 2003

Richard Wall: Light and Shade of an Irish Minister in Spain (1694-1777) pp.
123 - 136
DIEGO TELLEZ ALARCIA

The 'Body National' and the 'Body Natural': Tristram Shandy's History of
Ireland pp. 137 - 154
JOAN MEYLER

'A Marginal Footnote': O'Faolain, the Subaltern, and the Travellers pp. 155
- - 164
PAUL DELANEY

The Indian Connection in J. G. Farrell's Troubles pp. 165 - 173
LYNDA PRESCOTT

Emotion and Excess: Discourses and Practices of Women and Republicanism in
Twentieth-century Ireland pp. 175 - 187
GARY PEATLING

At Home with Horror: Neil Jordan's Gothic Variations pp. 189 - 198
DESMOND O'RAWE

REVIEW ARTICLE pp. 199 - 203

Reviews

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

I have not been able to find an Abstract for this article.

P.O'S.


Addiction (Abingdon, England)
Volume 98, Issue 6, June 2003, Pages 857-858
ISSN: 0965-2140

Father Mathew's Crusade: Temperance in Nineteenth-century Ireland and Irish
America
Savva, Susan; Edwards, Griffith

[Journal Article; In English; England]

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

Only recently fell into our nets...

P.O'S.


"Educate that holy hatred": place, trauma and identity in the Irish
nationalism of John Mitchel

G. Kearns

Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK

Available online 30 August 2001.

Author Keywords: Nationalism; John Mitchel; Ireland; Irish Famine;
Colonialism; Trauma

Abstract
Many anti-colonial nationalisms incorporate a historical justification for
independence. In the case of Irish nationalism, this historical argument has
often drawn attention to traumatic historical events of conquest and famine.
These traumas are blamed on the English colonisers. In this article, I
explore some of the consequences of this particular way of tying together
place and history in the service of nationalism. I argue that it can serve
to deflect nationalists from detailed consideration of alternative futures
towards a purely manichean critique of the past.

Political Geography
Volume 20, Issue 7 , September 2001 , Pages 885-911

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

P.O'S.

Women's Studies International Forum
Available online
Not yet assigned to a printed issue


Book review

ROMAN CATHOLIC NUNS IN ENGLAND AND WALES 1800?1937, A SOCIAL HISTORY

by Barbara Walsh, 248 pages, Irish Academic Press, Dublin and Portland,
Oregon, 2002, UK£32.50 cloth


Review by Jacinta Prunty
Department of Modern History, National University of Ireland Maynooth,
County Kildare, Ireland

Available online 3 October 2003.

The foreword (by Maria Luddy) to this monograph makes a forceful case for
the study of women religious. The lifestyle choice of thousands of women,
these communities are deserving of study in their own right, for the social
and economic impact they had on the wider (and not just Roman Catholic)
community, and for the insights their rich and still under-used archives can
provide for historians. The phrase `veiled dynamic' (Chapter 1) aptly
conveys something of the essence of this landmark study.

The opening challenge of this study is quantitative and geographical:
establishing the number of convents, dates of opening, how many sisters in
each, their location, relationship with other foundations, and the type of
work(s) in which each engaged. What appears to be a straightforward though
sizable task is complicated by the number of distinct communities, which
share identical names and undertake similar works; the pre-existence of many
communities as loose groups of women co-workers making dating `a foundation'
problematic; the arrival of new groups from the continent which though
sharing the same title and rule as the mother house were administered
separately; the difficulties in categorising communities (as `active',
`contemplatives', and `mixed'). Table 1 (Appendix II) is a chronological
listing of the post-Reformation orders and congregations: location of
return, first arrival or new foundation. This data is examined through a
series of maps showing the distribution of RC convents in England and Wales
1857, 1897, and 1937, and closer examination of the distribution of convents
in the Northern regions, and in London and the Southeast. This essential but
time-consuming exercise throws open the entire research area: which
communities established themselves and where in the direct aftermath of the
1829 Catholic Emancipation act? Why did so many communities establish
themselves in London and the South East rather than in the Catholic North
with which they are traditionally associated? Why were so many French
communities attracted to England and to a lesser degree from Belgium and
Germany? What works were undertaken and how did they finance and manage
these? From where were these thousands of members drawn and what was the
means used to recruit? These are some, but by no means all, of the
questions, which Walsh undertakes to explore, and for the main part with
considerable success.

The backbone of Walsh's study is close analysis of the personnel and other
records of a number of religious congregations (most importantly, the
Sisters of St. Paul the Apostle, Birmingham; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur,
Liverpool; Sisters of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Chigwell, Essex; and
the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Dublin). Through a
combination of comparative and case-study work she quickly dispels some of
the myths which have gathered around convents. In the study of recruitment,
for example (Chapter 6), far from being the depository of `surplus
daughters' beyond marriageable age, the convents under study all had
rigorous weeding-out of unsuitable candidates (occasionally with wonderfully
frank assessments), high levels of non-perseverance among new members, few
departures after final profession, and an average age on entry of 23?24
years. The socioeconomic background of entrants is explored in great detail
wherever the sources allow; the different backgrounds of Irish and English
entrants, to the same communities, and their varying career prospects within
the different congregations is a model of its type.

Despite their undoubted importance to the history of social policy,
education, health and welfare provision, and in the fields of feminist and
gender studies, convents have been ignored or treated superficially (as
argued throughout this text). Walsh's study will act as an encouragement to
students and researchers to think afresh, as nuns do not easily `fit' with
theories about women's submission in a patriarchal society. And as Walsh has
shown, there is the need to understand the fraught ecclesiastical,
political, social, and economic contexts in which women operated. One
disappointment was the glossary (Appendix I), which purports to explain the
terminology employed; this is superficial and has the effect of shaking the
reader's confidence in the study to which it is appended. Describing
postulants and novices together as `entrants who engaged in periods of
training of about 2?3 years before taking their vows', for example, is
simply not accurate. But in fairness, overall the work is produced to a high
standard, the bibliography is invaluable, and the text should be required
reading for students and researchers in the myriad fields in which women as
nuns operated.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

P.O'S.

Women's Studies International Forum
Volume 26, Issue 4 , July-August 2003 , Pages 379-382

THE FIELD DAY ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH WRITING: VOLUMES FOUR AND FIVE: IRISH
WOMEN'S WRITING AND TRADITIONS

Cork University Press: Cork, New York University Press, New York, in
association with Field Day 2002. 3200 pp. $250. £155. ISBN 185918281X


Maria Luddy
Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Available online 30 July 2003.

I have to begin by noting that this is not a review. Having been one of the
editors of these volumes, it would be impossible for me to take an objective
view of the work, but I will try to refrain from praising it too much. What
I would really like to do here is to provide an account of how the volumes
were constructed and give some indication of the range of material
published.

The history of the commissioning of these volumes is relatively
straightforward. In 1991, under the editorship of Seamus Deane, The Field
Day Anthology of Irish Writing was published. This three-volume work,
totalling over 4000 pages, was a major intervention into Irish intellectual
life and was much admired for its innovative structure. While the anthology
provoked a variety of responses, some positive and some hostile, there was a
particular outcry against the underrepresentation of women. By the early
nineties in Ireland, there was a considerable awareness of women's place in
Irish society, literature, and culture and, while research was still in its
early stages, horror was expressed at the apparent lack of empathy for
women's place in the construction of Irish culture and society evident in
these original three volumes. In response to the criticism received Seamus
Deane convened, in 1992, an editorial board of eight scholars to complete an
additional volume on women's writing. Eleven years later, when one volume
had stretched into two and taken up more than 3000 pages, the Field Day
Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes 4 and 5, Irish Women's Writing and
Traditions appeared.

There was a degree of hostility to the entire undertaking with a number of
critics seeing an additional volume as a sop to feminists. Right from the
beginning then, we were, as an editorial committee, constantly questioning
what we were doing. Who might be considered an Irish author? What presence
should the Irish language have in the anthology? What relationship was to
exist between the new anthology and the original three volumes? We did not
want our work to be a mere reaction to the original three volumes. We had
also to question what we meant by an anthology. In his general introduction
to volume I, Seamus Deane suggests that he is using the term `writing' to
avoid the `narrow senses of the word "literature"' ([Deane, 1991], vol. 1:
xix). Volumes 4 and 5 further broaden the category of writing. We redefined
`writing' as `the way in which people use words ( [Bourke et al], vol. 4:
xxxiii). Hence, these volumes contain the usual documents found in
anthologies, extracts from novels, plays, poetry, letters, diaries, official
documents, etc., but there is also a substantial selection of material from
the oral tradition, including the song tradition and from the tradition of
dinnseanchas, (`lore of important places'). It is unusual, if not unique, to
find such a diversity of sources in any one anthology. We felt that in order
to do justice to the ways in which women were represented in Irish society
and the ways in which they expressed themselves the broadest range of
material needed to be included. As Angela Bourke observes in the
introduction to her section on `Oral Traditions', `not all important ideas
are found in books' (vol. 4: 1191).

Substantive matters relating to the structure and content of the anthology
were discussed at numerous editorial meetings. There were long discussions,
often heated, over many issues but most often compromises were made
regarding the inclusion or exclusion of material. The quantity of material
from which selections had to be made was daunting. The 8 editors were
assisted by a group of 47 contributing editors. The editors all came from an
academic background with expertise in history, the Irish language, folklore,
and literature. The contributing editors were from a broader range of
backgrounds and included journalists, novelists, poets, and political
activists. Together and working collaboratively, we selected texts, wrote
interpretative introductions and footnotes, and constructed the biographical
and bibliographical details that ensure the authors of the texts used are no
longer invisible. It is not surprising that the anthology took 11 years to
produce since the construction of the entire anthology involved years of
original research. Many texts were difficult to locate; weeks and months
were spent in archival repositories searching for documents, months, and
years were spent selecting, editing, and annotating. All Irish language
material was translated and where a translation did not exist a new one had
to be created.

The anthology is divided into eight sections. These are, `Medieval to
Modern, 600?1900' edited by Mairin Ni Dhonnchadha; `Religion, Science,
Theology and Ethics, 1500?200' edited by Margaret MacCurtain; `Sexuality,
1685?2001' edited by Siobhan Kilfeather; `Oral Traditions' edited by Angela
Bourke; `Politics, 1500?2000' edited by Mary O'Dowd; `Women in Irish
Society, 1200?2000' edited by Maria Luddy; `Women and Writing, 1700?1960'
edited by Gerardine Meaney; and the final section `Contemporary Writing,
1960?2001' edited by Clair Wills. The overall intention was always that the
anthology would be interdisciplinary and would reflect the diverse nature of
women's contribution to Irish history, culture and politics, and reveal the
forces that shaped those contributions.

The range of material used in the anthology is too vast to provide an
adequate synopsis here of what is to be found in each section. Each section
is further divided into subsections, which allowed the editors to manage the
material, but the subsections also allow the reader a coherent way in which
to approach the texts. The following are some examples of the subsections.
The anthology begins in volume four with the section `Medieval to Modern,
600?1900' which explores, amongst other topics, early medieval law, Mary,
Eve, and the Church (c.600?1800), natural and unnatural women. There is a
subsection on Society and Myth ca. 700?1300, and further subsections on the
visible world, sovereignty, warfare and death, the otherworld, courts and
coteries, and Irish medical writings, 1400?1600. The editor comments in her
introduction that

while the section focuses mainly on medieval traditions it also addresses
some of their consequences... the key period was between 650 and 850. The
reservoir of myths, legends and dramatis personae established during this
time was drawn on by storytellers and poets for over a millennium (vol. 4:
1).

The significance of religion in the shaping of women's place in society is
explored in the section on `Religion, Science, Theology and Ethics', which
ranges from 1500 to 2000. Here, there are subsections on women and the
religious reformation in early modern Ireland, the memoirs and testimonies
of non-conformist women in 17th-century Ireland, 18th-century Catholic and
Protestant women, the re-emergence of nuns and convents, hymns and hymn
writers, women's recollections of Catholicism, and their understanding and
expression of their religious convictions. Also included is a subsection on
poetry of the spirit, faith and science, and theology and ethics. As
Margaret MacCurtain has noted, some of the material in this section reveals
women's publicly or privately expressed `reflections of what was significant
or puzzling, or simply scandalous in their experience of religion'
([MacCurtain, 2002], 2).

The section on `Sexuality, 1685?2001' examines amongst other subjects,
sexual discourse in English before the act of union, sexual expression and
genre, childbirth, infanticide, the erosion of heterosexual consensus in
Ireland in the years between 1940?2001, and lesbian encounters where the
contributing editor, Emma Donoghue, discovered that `at least two dozen
Irish writers, from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth
century, have touched on lesbian themes in their work' (vol. 4: 1090). In
the oral traditions section, we find subsections on life tales,
international folktales, the storytelling traditions of Irish travellers,
legends of the supernatural, the song tradition, spirituality, and religion
in oral tradition. There is also a subsection on lamenting the dead where
the editor discusses the tradition of laments and the art of the `caoineadh'
(anglicised as "keen" or "keening"). The Irish `caoineadh' was chanted or
sung and `was a central theatre of women's expression in the Irish language'
(vol. 4: 1365).

Volume 5 begins with the section on politics, 1500?200 and covers the
political writings and public voices of women, ca. 1500?1850, women and
politics in Ireland 1800?1968, the women's movement in the republic of
Ireland, 1968?2000, the law and private life in the republic of Ireland.
There are subsections also on the political activism of women in Northern
Ireland from 1918 to 2000. In this section, the aim, as stated by the
editor, is to present `texts which illustrate how women influenced the
political process without holding office; secondly, it documents the
movements for women's rights; and thirdly, it traces the interaction between
the latter and the women who secured political office in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries' (vol. 5: 1). Considerable space in this section is also
given to women in Northern Ireland where, especially from the 1960s, they
were instrumental in organising campaigns, community projects and women's
centres and as, Monica McWilliams writes, `[they] played a central role in
the development of alternative political structures in Northern Ireland'
(vol. 5: 34).

My own section of the anthology focuses on `Women in Irish Society,
1200?2000'. It includes substantial surveys of women's place in the Irish
economy from ca. 1170, and the education of girls and women from about 1500.
It was important also to hear the voices of the women who had left Ireland
as willing or unwilling emigrants throughout the centuries. There were women
who followed their military husbands as they sought places in European
armies in the seventeenth century. There is, for instance, a letter from an
Irish woman to the Infanta Isabella of Spain dating from 1629 asking for a
special licence to beg, an occupation engaged in by a number of Irish women
to assist their families until rations or money were received by the soldier
(vol. 5: 570). Exploring Irish women in other cultures also reveals
difficulties in integration. An extract from Narratives of the Witchcraft
Cases, 1648?1706 [Burr, 1959] recounts the story of an Irish woman accused
of witchcraft at the start of the famous witch trials in Salem,
Massachusetts in 1692. While the account suggests mental instability it also
provides a glimpse of her use of the Irish language and her religious
beliefs and an insight into her cultural and spiritual worlds. A number of
subsections deal with women's experiences of institutions such as
workhouses, hospitals, prisons and Magdalen asylums. From the research
undertaken for this section, it is clear that women in Irish society were
aware of the constraints placed upon them. They knew they had limited
choices, but many were also aware that the expectations placed on them could
be overcome, and that the boundaries placed around their behaviour were not
totally rigid. The rules which governed society and women's place in it were
often contradictory. Many Irish women tested these rules to their limits and
found alternative ways of being.

The section dealing with `Women and Writing, 1700?1960' focuses specifically
on literary material and is informed by a feminist literary history
perspective. It concentrates on the novel, poetry, short fiction, and drama
and includes studies of the profession of letters, 1700?1810, women's
narratives 1800?1840, women and literary nationalism, 20th-century Irish
language memoirs, aesthetics and politics, and includes a subsection on
women historians. In her introduction to the subsection `Identity and
opposition: women's writing, 1890?1960', Gerardine Meaney notes, in a
comment that could well be applied to much else in the anthology, that:

Feminism, nationalism, modernism and modernisation are cross-currents that
converge in all of the texts... All are concerned in some way with the
politics of representation. They comprise, not the mainstream, nor a
coherent sub-culture, but a disparate, complex and challenging cultural
slipstream. Each asks the reader to read Irish writing in this period of
transformation and stagnation from a new standpoint (vol. 5: 980).

The final section of the anthology, and possibly the most difficult to
construct, deals with contemporary writing. There are subsections on
contemporary fiction, plays and poetry. As editor, Clair Wills, was also
`concerned to move away from narrow genre-based definitions of Irish women's
writing and to acknowledge the fluidity of forms currently favoured by
women' [Irish Times, 2002], which include autobiography, confessional
writing, historical writing, cultural commentary, and memoir. One of the
subsections deals with `Politics and Sexuality in the Republic, 1965?2000'
and highlights the `way women's journalistic writings feeds into other
genres of creative writing'. Another subsection, `Women in the North of
Ireland, 1969?2000', uses a range of writing that emphasises testimony and
personal experience [Irish Times, 2002].

In total, there are over 1700 documents in this anthology featuring the work
of more than 750 writers and covering 1400 years. The anthology makes
available, for the first time, a comprehensive collection of texts covering
almost every aspect of Irish women's lives. It is an indispensable tool for
the student of Irish history and culture. It makes available forgotten or
inaccessible texts. Its focus on women raises questions about the nature of
Irish history, culture, and society. Its very existence marks the
possibility of a more complex reading of Irish culture and history. The
anthology is not meant to be the final word on women in Ireland, but it does
attempt to offer possibilities for further research, debate, and discussion.
In conclusion, I'd like to quote from the preface:

In ranging so broadly across forms of writing, historical records and oral
traditions, where the words of poets jostle with those of paupers and
politicians, these volumes seek to do more than propose a new or extended
canon of Irish writing, or a subaltern history for academics. Irish women
are entitled to know about their history, culture and traditions. We offer
this anthology to all our readers as a sampler of texts which are
historically interesting, aesthetically accomplished and politically
indispensable (vol. 1: xxxvi).



References
Burr, 1959. George Lincoln Burr, Narratives of the witchcraft cases,
1648?1706. , Barnes and Noble, New York (1959).

Bourke et al., 2002. Bourke, Angela, et al. (Eds.) (2002). The field day
anthology of Irish writing: Volumes four and five: Irish women's writing and
traditions. Cork University Press: Cork, New York University Press, New
York, in association with Field Day.

Deane, 1991. Deane, Seamus (Ed.) (1991). The field day anthology of Irish
writing. Field Day Publications: Derry/Faber: London.

Irish Times, 2002. Irish Times (2002, 26 April).

MacCurtain, 2002. Margaret MacCurtain, Women's writing and women's
traditions: 3. Women and religion??The written and spoken word. British
Association for Irish Studies Newsletter 32 (2002), pp. 1?4.

Women's Studies International Forum
Volume 26, Issue 4 , July-August 2003 , Pages 379-382

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.


Political Geography
Available online - not yet assigned to a printed issue


Workers, migrants, aliens or citizens? State constructions and discourses of
identity among post-war European labour migrants in Britain

Linda McDowell,

Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, WC1H
0AP, London, UK

Available online 19 September 2003.

Abstract
In this paper, I address a series of questions about migrant identities,
assessing the continuities and contradictions between state discourses and
those of migrants themselves. I address these questions through the lens of
a largely neglected group of migrants, who were recruited by the British
State in the immediately post-war period in response to post-war labour
shortages. Whereas the recruitment of considerable numbers of labour
migrants from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom from the late 1940s
onwards is a well-documented part of the response to post-war labour
shortages, earlier schemes to recruit people from refugee camps in Germany
are less known. In this paper, I focus on women from Latvia, one of the
Baltic states, who provide a particularly interesting insight into questions
of identity as they both challenge common distinctions and assumptions in
theories of migration--they came as independent single women for example.
They are also a hybrid category in the sense they were both refugees and
economic migrants with no previous attachments to the UK, unlike the other
main groups of economic migrants at the time and earlier--Irish and
Caribbean people--and the somewhat later migration from the Indian
sub-continent. In this paper I show how these women challenged assumptions
built into state policies at the time about assimilation and mothering
future Britons through a strong and continuing commitment to the recreation
of an imagined Latvian community in exile and the refusal of British
identity.

Author Keywords: EVWS (European Volunteer Workers); Latvia; Britain;
Identity; Diaspora


Article Outline
1. Introduction: diasporic and transnational identities
1.1. Why immigration? Post war labour shortages in the UK
2. State constructions of difference
2.1. Recruiting European volunteer workers
2.2. `Suitable' workers for the British labour market
3. Narratives of identity: British or alien? Workers or mothers?
3.1. Greater involvement with Britain and decisions about citizenship
3.2. Independence and the possibility of return
4. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

This article takes issue with Gerry Leavey's article, mentioned on the Ir-D
list last year.

We have discussed these issues here in Bradford - my own feeling is that the
numbers are not that great and the individual-level analysis recommended by
Peter Aspinall should really not be that difficult.

P.O'S.

The International Journal Of Social Psychiatry
Volume 48, Issue 4 , December 2002 , Pages 290-304
ISSN: 0020-7640


Suicide amongst Irish migrants in Britain: a review of the identity and
integration hypothesis
Aspinall, Peter J

Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury,
Tunbridge Wells, UK; e-mail P.J.Aspinall[at]ukc.ac.uk

Abstract
BACKGROUND: Studies have consistently reported higher rates of suicide
amongst Irish migrants in Britain than in the population as a whole. Leavey
offers a hypothetical model to explain such rates that incorporates lack of
social cohesion and integration meshed with the inability to establish an
authentic identity and other contributory factors. MATERIAL: Systematic
review methodologies are used to examine the central tenets of this
explanatory framework. Some of the macro-level ecological associations in
the model are critically evaluated in the context of findings from the 1991
Census and government social and household panel surveys. DISCUSSION: The
evidence base suggests that statements on social isolation and reluctance to
use health care services are questionable and Irish migration is shown to be
much more heterogeneous than the model suggests. Only small positive, and as
yet unreplicated, associations have been established between identity and
health behaviour in a non-representative sample and evidence is lacking of
Irish stoicism and anti-Irish racism as putative risk factors.
Epidemiological studies show that adjusting suicide rates for social class
explains virtually none of the excess in Irish migrants, although higher
risks for unmarried persons are reported. Explanations in the literature for
higher rates of migrant suicide are discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Studies based on
individual-level analysis and record linkage are urgently needed to explain
the high rates. [Journal Article; In English; England]

Citation Subset Indicators: Index Medicus

MeSH Terms: Adolescent; Adult; Female; Great Britain, epidemiology (EP);
Human; Ireland, ethnology (EH); Male; Middle Age; Social Identification;
Social Isolation, psychology (PX); Suicide, * psychology (PX), * statistics
& numerical data (SN); Transients and Migrants, * psychology (PX), *
statistics & numerical data (SN)


The International Journal Of Social Psychiatry
Volume 48, Issue 4 , December 2002 , Pages 290-304
ISSN: 0020-7640

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----
Subject: Reminder: Call for Papers - Imagining Diasporas Conference


*The deadline for submitting proposals is October 15, 2003.*

The Centre for Social Justice and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
University of Windsor are hosting a conference

Imagining Diasporas: Space, Identity and Social Change

May 14-16, 2004

University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario
Canada


Confirmed Speakers:

Brian Keith Axel "Diasporic Sublime"
Robin Cohen "The Uses of 'Diaspora'"
Nina Glick-Schiller "Biologies of Belonging: Blood, Diasporic Longing,
Long-Distance Nationalism, and the World Beyond"
Michael Gomez "Dilemmas of Identity in Diaspora"
Judith Sinanga Ohlmann "La diaspora rwandaise: où 'l'origine' perd son
sens"
William Safran "Diaspora: Disconnection, Hyphenation, Reconstruction"

Individual and panel proposals are invited to address issues of broad
theoretical interest, as well as case studies of individual diasporic
communities. Paper and panel proposals may be sent to:
Linda Feldman, Programme Chair
Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Windsor
Windsor, ON N9B 3P4
Canada
e-mail: feldman[at]uwindsor.ca

For a conference description and a list of major themes please visit the
conference web site at:
http://www.uwindsor.ca/diasporas

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Maureen E Mulvihill has kindly made available to the Irish-Diaspora list her
review essay - text pasted in below - of The Field Day Anthology of Irish
Writing: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions. This is a version of the
review essay that appeared in the Summer 03 issue of Eighteenth-Century
Studies.

Our thanks to Maureen.

P.O'S.

- -----Original Message-----
From: Maureen E Mulvihill
mulvihill[at]nyc.rr.com

Review Essay (plain-text version):

FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OF IRISH WOMEN WRITERS

The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Irish Women's Writing and
Traditions. Eds. Angela Bourke, Siobhan Kilfeather, Maria Luddy, Margaret
MacCurtain, Geraldine Meaney, Mairin Ni Dhonnchadha, Mary O'Dowd, and Clair
Wills. Volumes IV and V. County Cork, Ireland: Cork UP, 2002. Volume IV, li
+ 1490 pp. Volume V, xlii + 1711 pp. US distributor, New York University
Press. Two-volume set, $250 (cloth). ISBN 0-8147-9908-6.

To the memory of Mitzi Myers.
And for Gerda Lerner, mother of feminist historiography

By Maureen E. Mulvihill, Princeton Research Forum, N.J.
Eighteenth-Century Studies (Summer, 2003, pp 607-610)


Faugh a ballagh! Clear the way for Irishwomen writers. In giving over the
editorial reins of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 1991 to a
capable team of eight Irishwomen scholars, Seamus Deane and his editorial
associates, Andrew Carpenter and Jonathan Williams, have done something
truly important for Irish studies. Students, teachers, scholars, librarians,
antiquarian specialists, and generalists now have in two hefty (yea,
biblical) volumes of 3200 pages a reliable first canon of the indigenous
writings and traditions of Ireland's women, circa 600 to 2001. The voices of
some 900 Irishwomen are heard in these pages. Moreover, the volumes' eight
editors and forty-nine contributing editors have organized the books into
eight large thematic sections, whose contents are richly interdisciplinary.
(Why even an Irishman knows better than to bicker with this.)

Field Day IV and V are not compendia of merely poetry and ancient lore; one
finds here collations of writings which effectively critique the complex
issues that led to the clangor of Ireland's bloody history-issues relating
to politics, institutions, and Anglo-Irish relations. Volume IV offers
thematic groupings on Sovereignty and Politics, Courts and Coteries,
Nonconformist Women, Sexual Expression and Genres, the Erosion of the
Heterosexual Consensus, and (an especially outstanding section) Religion,
Science, Theology and Ethics, 1500-2000, edited by Margaret MacCurtain.
Volume V gathers selections under such headings as Political Writings, circa
1500-1850; Women and the Economy, circa 1170-1850; Women and Emigration from
Ireland from the Seventeenth Century; Education in Ireland before 1800; and
Women's Writing, 1700-1900. Because of the editors' skillful organization of
a massive amount of material, readers can appreciate the origins and
persistence of certain subjects, genres, and traditions in Irish writing and
culture, as well as their changing characteristics over many turbulent
centuries, an astounding feat by any standard.

Prior to this big publishing event, scholars of seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Irish women writers were limited to original
source-materials represented in three large information venues. First in the
print medium, there were such earlier anthologies as Pillars of the House:
An Anthology of Verse by Irish Women from 1680 to the Present, edited by
Angeline Agnes Kelley (Dublin: Attic Press, 1988; rpt., Dublin:
Wolfhound/Merlin Publishing, 1998); Ireland's Women: Past and Present,
edited by Katie Donovan, A. Norman Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly (New York
and London: Norton, 1994); Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland,
edited by Andrew Carpenter (Cork University Press, 1998); and, for the
predictable, canonical figures, the three-volume Field Day Anthology of
Irish Writing (Derry, No. Ireland: Field Day Publications, 1991; New York:
W. W. Norton, 1991). Also in the print medium were two successful reference
works which supplied essential "thumbnails" on the more familiar Irishwomen
writers, namely, Robert Hogan's Dictionary of Irish Literature (Greenwood
Press, 1979; 2d ed., 1996) and the second edition of An Encyclopedia of
British Women Writers, edited by Paul and June Schlueter (Rutgers University
Press, 1998). In the electronic medium, scholars could access "data sets" of
the primary writings in EIRData, a mighty omnigatherum compiled and managed
by Bruce Stewart (University of Ulster, County Coleraine, Derry, Northern
Ireland), Director of the Princess Grace Irish Library of Monaco. But only
now in the opening years of the new millennium do we have all of these
essential writings brought together in only two volumes. Let us consider
what this very Irish team of editorial scholars has wrought.

The principal strength of Field Day IV and V is its staggering coverage. The
editors have assembled a thoughtful thematic organization of 1400 years of
writing, whose selections are culled from multiple genres: poetry, fiction,
memoir, political pamphlet, ballad and song, letter, testimonial,
journalism, folklore, children's literature, and work originally in the oral
tradition. Irish language specialists will thrill to see in Volume IV a
number of selections presented in the original Irish, with translation. The
English-language selections, which account for most of the selections, are
given reader-friendly (mostly modern spelling) formats; and all of the
selections are presented within discrete thematic clusters, each of which is
accompanied by a useful scholarly apparatus consisting of an extended
introductory essay, textual headnote and footnotes, author biographies, and
bibliographies. A reliable general index per volume assures convenient
access of information.

The section on early-modern Irishwomen's political writings (some 25
writers), edited by Mary O'Dowd, will be especially attractive to readers of
this journal. O'Dowd's cluster shows Irishwomen's response to social and
cultural injustices, crises, risings, and atrocities, circa 1500-1850.
Speaking truth to power, élite Irishwomen and those agitating at the
populist level wrote petitions, political pamphlets, bold letters to public
officials, and explicit polemical works. Among this important section are
Elizabeth Butler's letter to Oliver Cromwell, notices of political meetings
convened by Quaker women, a radical pamphlet by Irishwomen in Munster and
Leinster precipitated by the Money Bill Dispute in the Irish Parliament
(1753), and letters between Irishwomen on specific political situations,
such as Mary Delany's letter to Anne Granville (1731). All of these
selections, individually headnoted and annotated by O'Dowd, document the
temper of the times from a female perspective. They also supply a range of
political rhetorics and styles used by women of varying social strata and
political beliefs.

Two other sections merit special praise. "Women's Writing, 1700-1960,"
edited by Gerardine Meaney, gathers work under such headings as "The
Profession of Letters" (publishing women writers, such as Mary Davys, Sarah
Butler, Mary Monck, Mary Barber, Constantia Grierson, Laetitia Pilkington,
Frances Sheridan, Charlotte Brooke, et al) and "Women's Narratives" (Sidney
Owenson, Mary Leadbeater, Marguerite Power, Lady Clarke, et al). Another
strong section is Siobhán Kilfeather's interrogation of Irish constructions
of sexuality (1685-2001), traditionally a taboo subject for most
early-modern Irish writers. Over a variety of genres-ballads, letters,
memoirs, essays, sketches-she offers a feast of Irish writing which shows
that sexuality was largely a social and institutional construct. Extracts
here explore such subjects as rape, premarital sex, adultery, sexual desire,
and transgressive behaviors. Kilfeather's introductory essay to the
subsection, "Sexual Discourse in English before the Act of Union:
Prescriptions and Dissent, 1685-1801" (Volume IV: 761-765), should be
essential reading for all serious students of early-modern Irish cultural
history.

It will not detract from the great achievement of these volumes to offer but
a few critical remarks. The first concerns format. In view of the volumes'
size and, thus, price, Field Day IV and V is an expensive product ($250),
destined mostly for library reference shelves. The volumes' print run was
1500 copies (800 copies, U.S. distribution). Sales have been brisk, thus
far, according to Heather McManus and Eric Zinner at New York University
Press (the volumes' U.S. distributor). But there is some preliminary chat
about future alternate formats for the volumes, such as a series of abridged
paperbacks, perhaps, or CD-ROMs. Digital conversion of the material would be
especially strategic as it would allow the editors to provide something
conspicuously wanting in the current print treatment: visual adjuncts to the
writings. A few musical examples delightfully punctuate the print density of
"The Song Tradition" section in Volume IV: 1312-1364, but surely some
facsimiles of title-pages and autograph manuscripts, displayed throughout
the volumes, as well as, say, a frontispiece portrait in each volume, would
not have been terribly expensive additions. Such illustrated matter would
have lent color and vigor to the volumes, not to mention authenticity. A
multimedia CD-ROM format also could include audio clips for "The Song
Tradition" section, as well as aural portraits (i.e., author readings) for
the modern literature sections. As for the critical assessment of the
writings in Field Day IV and V, it is too early to determine to what extent
this large body of newly gathered work touched the nerve and marrow of a
whole nation; but surely these volumes supply new paradigms and new Irish
texts for historians and feminists. They also show us what Irishwomen can do
when they set their minds to it.


_________________

Maureen E. Mulvihill, editor of Poems by Ephelia (NY, 1992, '93) and Ephelia
(Mary Villiers Stuart, Duchess of Richmond & Lennox) (2003, Ashgate UK), has
published broadly on early-modern English and Irish women writers. Her
recent credits in Irish studies include essays on the Dublin patriot printer
& political journalist, James Esdall (New DNB, 2004); extended profiles,
with apparatus, of Mary Tighe, Eibhlín Ní Chonaill, & Mary Leadbeater
(Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 2d ed., 1998); the Dublin book
trade, Swift, Sheridan, & Oscar Wilde (recent issues, Irish Literary
Supplement); and Trisha Ziff's 'Bloody Sunday' photo exhibition (New
Hibernia Review, December, 2002; html text, Project Muse site). For MLA
2002, NYC, she convened a panel on Irishwomen writing politically. Her
double-review essay of Helen Burke's Riotous Performances: The Struggle for
Hegemony in the Irish Theatre, 1712-1784 (Notre Dame UP, 2003) and Irish
Drama of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries edited by Christopher
Wheatley & Kevin Donovan, 2 vols (Ganesha/Thoemmes UK 2003), will appear in
the Spring, 2004 issue of Restoration & Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research.
Her review of Raymond Gillespie's Scholar Bishop: The Recollections and
Diary of Narcissus Marsh (Cork UP, 2003), will appear in the Winter-Spring
04 issue of Seventeenth-Century Stds. She is at work on Mary Tighe of County
Wicklow, Ireland, the subject of her upcoming paper at the annual conference
of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Stds (Boston, March, 2004;
Kevin O'Neill's Irish panel).



__________________

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

P.O'S.


The Proceedings Of The Nutrition Society
Volume 61, Issue 4, November 2002, Pages 527-536
ISSN: 0029-6651

Effect of social variation on the Irish diet
Kelleher, Cecily; Friel, Sharon; Nolan, Geraldine; Forbes, Betty

National Nutrition Surveillance Centre, Department of Health Promotion,
Clinical Sciences Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Costello
Road, Shantalla, Galway City, Republic of Ireland; e-mail
cecily.kelleher[at]nuigalway.ie

Abstract
Both jurisdictions of Ireland have high rates of chronic degenerative
diseases, particularly of the cardiovascular system, and Irish migrants have
worse health profiles, often lasting at least two generations. The influence
of socio-demographic variation over the life course, and what role diet
plays, has not been well researched in epidemiological terms. There is a
long history of an unusual Irish diet. Estimated dietary fat intake (% total
energy intake) in 1863 was only 9, but had reached 30 in 1948 and 34 in
1999. Conversely, carbohydrate intake has fallen steadily over 150 years.
From 1948 onwards household budget survey data illustrate patterns of
increasing urbanisation and socio-economic gradients in food availability.
The National Survey of Lifestyles, Attitudes and Nutrition, (n 6539, 62.2%
response rate) provides clear evidence of inverse social-class gradients in
intake of fruit and vegetables and dairy products and in reported patterns
of healthy eating. Median carbohydrate and vitamin C levels are higher among
social classes 1-2 and mean saturated fat intake is lower. International
comparisons indicate a continuing, if narrowing, north-south gradient across
Europe. Data from the Boston-Ireland study suggest a crossover in both
dietary intake patterns and risk of heart disease in Ireland and the USA in
the 1970s. Contemporary comparative data of middle-aged Irish and American
women demonstrate patterns of diet intake and inactivity consistent with the
modern epidemic of obesity and non-insulin-dependent diabetes. Thus, dietary
variations within and between countries and over time are consistent with
chronic disease patterns in contemporary Ireland. [Journal Article; In
English; England]

CAS Registry Numbers: Dietary Carbohydrates; Dietary Fats

Citation Subset Indicators: Index Medicus

MeSH Terms: Attitude to Health; Cardiovascular Diseases, epidemiology (EP);
Culture; * Diet; Dietary Carbohydrates, administration & dosage (AD);
Dietary Fats, administration & dosage (AD); Energy Intake; Female; Health
Promotion; Human; Ireland, epidemiology (EP), ethnology (EH); Life Style;
Middle Age; Nutrition; Nutrition Policy; * Social Behavior; * Social Class;
Socioeconomic Factors; Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Support, U.S. Gov't,
Non-P.H.S.; United States

The Proceedings Of The Nutrition Society
Volume 61, Issue 4 , November 2002 , Pages 527-536
ISSN: 0029-6651

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Review, Mulvihill on FIELD DAY WOMEN

I was shocked and saddened to read "in memory of Mitzi Myers," at the
beginning of Maureen Mulvihill's essay,
because she and I had worked on the EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE issue devoted to
the United Irishmen, and we had spoken often by phone.
Can Maureen or someone tell me what happened?

Thank you,

Kerby.

From: Peter Hart

Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 2

Although, as I think Sean Connolly and perhaps Tom Bartlett have argued,
race was never an issue in the Penal Laws - just religion. Converts could
easily cross the legal barrier - an option unavailable to those
discriminated against under apartheid or jim crow.

Peter Hart

>
>From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
>To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny
>
>I wasn't aware that the Statutes of Kilkenny were intended to be a
>racially-based system of segregation. They were directed at the
>Anglo-Norman nobility in Ireland--not the native Irish--and their
>intent seems to have been to force such Anglo-Norman feudal lords to
>behave and present themselves as Anglo-Norman feudal lords. The
>statues, then, seem to have been based more on class and culture rather
>than race, and it also doesn't seem like "race" as a concept entered
>into the equation until the explorations of Africa and the Americas got
under way.
>
>The so-called "Penal laws"--which were not designed to destroy Irish
>Catholicism itself, but to deprive the surviving Catholic nobility of
>any access to political power and to gradually eliminate them as an
>economic factor as well--would seem to be a much more workable parallel to
apartheid.
>Since these came into effect in the 1690's-1700's, it would seem that
>race would be a much more relevant issue then that it would have been
>in the mid-14th century.
>
>Daniel Nieciecki
>

From: patrick maume
Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 4

From: Patrick Maume
Isn't there a basic difference between the Statutes of Kilkenny and
apartheid? People have some control over their customs and ways of living
(and even more over their religious profession, if the comparison is made
with the Penal Laws); they usually can't change their skin colour, and most
can't "pass".
If every form of prejudice and discrimination is called "apartheid" the
term loses its meaning.
There's something older than the Statutes of Kilkenny that is much more
disturbing; the idea that the "wild Irish" were outside the king's law and
that therefore killing them was not murder. I believe this was actually
used as a defence in some mediaeval murder trials (not always successfully,
since some of the Gaelic Irish were regarded as the king's subjects and the
murderers couldn't always distinguish between the two). Did this last until
Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland, or had it gone before then?
Surely the Penal Laws were indeed intended to abolish Catholicism, on the
assumption that if the Catholic lay elite disappeared and no more priests
were ordained, the plebs would gradually be protestantised? (Cf. CDA
Leighton's book CATHOLICS
INA PROTESTANT KINGDOM). Their implementation was another
matter; there were quite a few instances of Protestant zealots complaining
that most of the Ascendancy took no interest in converting Catholics because
if everyone became Protestant they would lose their claim to superiority.
Best wishes,
Patrick

> From: Carmel McCaffrey
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 2
>
> Yes, that is true they were directed at the Anglo-Normans or
> Gaelo-Normans as they had become by then, but they effectively tried
> to separate the two from each other, which is what they were intended
> to do, or to keep the Norman line 'pure'. The idea that they were an
> early attempt at segregation is not new and I even heard it in my
> Dublin secondary school years ago. The word "apartheid" is actually
> used by J.F. Lyndon [formerly of medieval history, Trinity, Dublin] in
> his essay which is what contributed to my discussion with the
> students. So I just wondered if this had been taken further by anyone
> else. I think it is an interesting concept in the light of Ireland
> being the front line of empire building. Of course there was no
> developed idea of race this early on, but the concept of "them" and
> "us" , the victor and the vanquished, the ascendancy of the culture of
> the winners, would certainly have been. Even Giraldus gave us plenty
> of that. Of course the statutes were ineffective, but that is not the
> point, the interesting thing is the conception of these laws so early
> in the Irish colonial experience. I just think it is an interesting
> idea that they perhaps were an early taste of race or ethnic conflict in
later empire building and an indication of a certain way of thinking.
>
> Carmel

From David Rose
Subject: THE OSCHOLARS III/10

Dear Colleagues, chers et chères collègues, Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen, Geachte collega's en collegae, Cari colleghi e colleghe, Drodzy Koledzy i KolezË?anki, Queridos colegas:

[Kindly note that this is being sent once more on a computer not my own: I can be contacted at oscholars[at]netscape.net]

We are happy to announce, albeit once again tardily, the posting of the twenty-ninth edition of THE OSCHOLARS to its website at http//homepages.gold.ac.uk/oscholars; the password remaining umney

As a registered reader you can bypass the portal by going straight to http//homepages.gold.ac.uk/oscholars/homepage.html

We much regret that the rather adverse circumstances under which the September issue was composed resulted in an untoward number of errors and omissions. This issue has been reposted to the website, and we apologise for any confusion caused.

We are continuing to have a number of these encyclicals bounced. Often this is no more than a full mailbox, but an increasing number of institutions are introducing anti Spam programmes which seem to filter us out. Do please check this from time to time; and do remember to alert us to changes of e-address.

Our own life continues peripatetic, and we fear that delays will continue with THE OSCHOLARS until we are once again in possession of a desk, a telephone line, an internet connection, and our iMac. The purchase of a somewhat antiquated laptop has helped.

The October issue is not altogether satisfactory, as we have not been able to give it all our attention, having been largely on the move and with restricted internet access. But our commitment (and that of The Rose Garden) remains, and we are pleased that we have failed to alienate any of our readership, which continues to grow. We dearly need more reviewers, though, especially of productions. This month we review Diana Holmes: Rachilde, Decadence, Gender and the Woman Writer (Jane Desmarais); Salome in Sydney (Julie-Ann Robson); Herodias in Vienna (Margaret de Fonblanque); The Tulira Trilogy of Edward Martyn (1859-1923), Irish Symbolist Dramatist, edited, with Introduction, by Jerry Nolan (Mary C. King); Kenneth Daley: The Rescue of Romanticism: Walter Pater and John Ruskin (Maureen Moran); A Florentine Tragedy in Paris (Danielle Guérin, Tine Englebert); and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Eva Thienpont).

As mentioned in our previous encyclical, I shall be in the United States for a week, 17th to 26th November, based in New York.

To those of you who are celebrating Columbus Day, German Unity Day, the Chung Yeung Festival, Yom Kippur, Ramadan or Ochi Day, our best wishes.

David Rose

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Statutes of Kilkenny

I have a question for the list. Is there anyone out there teaching Irish
history in the former Empire - or anywhere else for that matter - who knows
of any work done on the Statutes of Kilkenny [1366] as precursors to other
colonial experiences? I started a discussion with my students in this area
and many of them - some African-Americans - became interested in the notion
that I set forth that they were the embryonic seeds of apartheid. Of course
the English conquest of Ireland was the practice field of later imperialist
behaviour but I am interested in specific work on the Statutes as such.
That they were unenforceable within Ireland is not the issue - the issue is
the thinking that lay behind such an effort.

Thanks,

Carmel McC

From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny

I wasn't aware that the Statutes of Kilkenny were intended to be a
racially-based system of segregation. They were directed at the Anglo-Norman
nobility in Ireland--not the native Irish--and their intent seems to have
been to force such Anglo-Norman feudal lords to behave and present
themselves as Anglo-Norman feudal lords. The statues, then, seem to have
been based more on class and culture rather than race, and it also doesn't
seem like "race" as a concept entered into the equation until the
explorations of Africa and the Americas got under way.

The so-called "Penal laws"--which were not designed to destroy Irish
Catholicism itself, but to deprive the surviving Catholic nobility of any
access to political power and to gradually eliminate them as an economic
factor as well--would seem to be a much more workable parallel to apartheid.
Since these came into effect in the 1690's-1700's, it would seem that race
would be a much more relevant issue then that it would have been in the
mid-14th century.

Daniel Nieciecki


> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Carmel McCaffrey
> Subject: Statutes of Kilkenny
>
> I have a question for the list. Is there anyone out there teaching
> Irish history in the former Empire - or anywhere else for that matter
> - who knows of any work done on the Statutes of Kilkenny [1366] as
> precursors to other colonial experiences? I started a discussion with
> my students in this area and many of them - some African-Americans -
> became interested in the notion that I set forth that they were the
> embryonic seeds of apartheid. Of course the English conquest of
> Ireland was the practice field of later imperialist behaviour but I am
> interested in specific work on the Statutes as such.
> That they were unenforceable within Ireland is not the issue - the
> issue is the thinking that lay behind such an effort.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Carmel McC

From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny 2

Yes, that is true they were directed at the Anglo-Normans or Gaelo-Normans
as they had become by then, but they effectively tried to separate the two
from each other, which is what they were intended to do, or to keep the
Norman line 'pure'. The idea that they were an early attempt at segregation
is not new and I even heard it in my Dublin secondary school years ago. The
word "apartheid" is actually used by J.F. Lyndon [formerly of medieval
history, Trinity, Dublin] in his essay which is what contributed to my
discussion with the students. So I just wondered if this had been taken
further by anyone else. I think it is an interesting concept in the light of
Ireland being the front line of empire building. Of course there was no
developed idea of race this early on, but the concept of "them" and "us" ,
the victor and the vanquished, the ascendancy of the culture of the winners,
would certainly have been. Even Giraldus gave us plenty of that. Of course
the statutes were ineffective, but that is not the point, the interesting
thing is the conception of these laws so early in the Irish colonial
experience. I just think it is an interesting idea that they perhaps were an
early taste of race or ethnic conflict in later empire building and an
indication of a certain way of thinking.

Carmel

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

>From: "Nieciecki, Daniel"
>To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D Statutes of Kilkenny
>
>I wasn't aware that the Statutes of Kilkenny were intended to be a
>racially-based system of segregation. They were directed at the
>Anglo-Norman nobility in Ireland--not the native Irish--and their
>intent seems to have been to force such Anglo-Norman feudal lords to
>behave and present themselves as Anglo-Norman feudal lords. The
>statues, then, seem to have been based more on class and culture rather
>than race, and it also doesn't seem like "race" as a concept entered
>into the equation until the explorations of Africa and the Americas got
under way.
>
>The so-called "Penal laws"--which were not designed to destroy Irish
>Catholicism itself, but to deprive the surviving Catholic nobility of
>any access to political power and to gradually eliminate them as an
>economic factor as well--would seem to be a much more workable parallel to
apartheid.
>Since these came into effect in the 1690's-1700's, it would seem that
>race would be a much more relevant issue then that it would have been
>in the mid-14th century.
>
>Daniel Nieciecki
>

From: "Maureen E Mulvihill"
Subject: Submission, for Irish Diaspora List posting (Mitzi Myers, R.I.P.)

7 October 2003.

Re: Professor Mitzi Myers, UCLA
Requiescat in Pace

In prompt & sad reply to Professor Kerby Miller's recent query re the recent
death of Professor Mitzi Myers:

As I understand the situation, Mitzi died of pneumonia, aged 62, resulting
from lung injuries and burns incurred during a fire in her house, August,
2000. True to a scholar's heart, she went back into the flames to retrieve a
book MS she was preparing for submission.

I first heard these details from Simon Varey (PhD, Cambridge University), an
editor of The Scriblerian journal, who himself died recently, and also in
his prime, of a pernicious form of melanoma. Simon & Mitzi had both taught
at UCLA; he had fond memories of Mitzi (so he wrote me), in her big '60's
hats.

The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Stds published, in a recent
newsletter, one of many collegial appreciations of Mitzi. If you contact
Vickie Cutting at the ASECS Office (see website), she's sure to send you an
email copy of that piece. Also see John Issitt's detailed appreciation, at
http://w4.ed.uiuc.edu/faculty/westbury/Paradigm/MYERS.HTM.

Mitzi published a fine essay of special interest to subscribers of the Irish
Diaspora list, "Gendering the 'Union of Hearts': Irish Politics between the
Public and Private Spheres," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 30
(Johns Hopkins UP, 2001), 49-70. (Kerby, if your library does not carry this
book series, let me know; I'll be glad to send on a fax or xerox copy. I
have it here, before me.)

Reflecting upon these recent tragedies makes us count our blessings,
certainly; but we also must regret the loss of such talent and affection in
the scholarly community. Both Mitzi Myers and Simon Varey achieved high
credits in scholarly work, with strong promise of more to come. (I am
grateful to you, Kerby Miller, for this opportunity to do but a small thing
for their memory here.)

Maureen E. Mulvihill
Princeton Research Forum, New Jersey
mulvihill[at]nyc.rr.com

"Relentless caper, for all those who step the legend of their youth into the
noon."
Hart Crane, Legend (White Buildings, 1926) Set by Mel Powell (Events, 1963)
_______

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

We have heard curiously little about Kerby Miller's new book, Miller,
Schrier, Boling and Doyle, Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan, 2003.
And I can't help wondering if Oxford University Press is giving the
publication the support it deserves.

I have seen only one review, in Irish Voice, where the reviewer seemed
over-awed by the book. Presumably scholarly reviews for the obvious
journals are in the pipeline - or are they? Does anyone know more.

I have pasted in below further information from the publisher's web site.
This is an important work within Irish Diaspora Studies. On one level, the
book is an extensively edited collection of early Irish (Protestant and
Catholic) immigrants' letters, with nearly 70 short chapters, each one of
which focuses on one or a few immigrant families, their experiences in
Ireland and America, and their letters or memoirs. Each immigrant, his/her
family, her/his historical context on both sides of the ocean, are described
and analyzed in detail and depth. It is kind of a collective biography of
the early Irish migrant experience in colonial and revolutionary America.
The immigrants include Revolutionary soldiers, politicians, and loyalists,
farmers, artisans, indentured servants, merchants, clergymen, women...

The book is thus an essential part of the discussion of the use of letters
and memoirs, which is now such an issue within Irish Diaspora Studies, and
all diaspora studies. On another level, and just as important for our
purposes, the book is an extended essay on the development of "Irish" and
"Scotch-Irish" identities and political cultures, and the important causes
and consequences of those developments, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Patrick O'Sullivan



http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0195154894.html

Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan
Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815
Written and Edited by KERBY A. MILLER, ARNOLD SCHRIER, BRUCE D. BOLING, and
DAVID N. DOYLE

Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan is a monumental and pathbreaking
study of early Irish Protestant and Catholic migration to America. Through
exhaustive research and sensitive analyses of the letters, memoirs, and
other writings, the authors describe the variety and vitality of early Irish
immigrant experiences, ranging from those of frontier farmers and seaport
workers to revolutionaries and loyalists. Largely through the migrants own
words, it brings to life the networks, work, and experiences of these
immigrants who shaped the formative stages of American society and its Irish
communities. The authors explore why Irishmen and women left home and how
they adapted to colonial and revolutionary America, in the process creating
modern Irish and Irish-American identities on the two sides of the Atlantic
Ocean.

"compulsory reading for anyone interested in early Irish immigration to the
Americas, or indeed migration history in general.Undergraduates and
graduates alike will find much to mull over-some "hot topics" coveredby the
book are identity formation, the religious upheavals of the mid eighteenth
century, and the creation of a dynamic Atlantic culture. A truly innovative
collection of vibrant and compelling accounts of migration which not only
illuminates the migrant experience, but sets the standard for future works
in this field."-- New York Irish History

"History at its most intimate....a groundbreaking study of early Irish
(Protestant and Catholic) immigration to America." --Irish Voice

"This is the most vivid and moving collection of letters and memoirs
concerning any immigrant group to mainland North America during the Colonial
and Early National periods. The documents are intelligently organized and
brilliantly contextualized. Altogether it is a glorious
achievement."--Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway

"Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan is sure to become a major landmark,
setting an exemplary standard for study of both Irish-American history and
American immigration and ethnic history more generally. The documents are
elegantly presented, extensively annotated, and framed by contextual and
biographical essays that wonderfully illuminate the rich humanity of the
migrant experience."--Kevin Kenny, Boston College

"An indispensable and inexhaustible treasure-trove for the student of not
only emigration from Ireland to America, but of emigration in general, and
of culture contact in the Atlantic world in particular."-Joe Lee, Glucksman
Ireland House, New York University

"This book's stunning richness in original letters and memoirs is both broad
and intimate, covering all of the 18th century migrations as well as
offering unprecedented closeness to the words and experiences of the
emigrants. Creatively edited and annotated by some of the finest scholars in
the field, it is a masterwork and is bound to become an indispensable
companion to all research and teaching of the subject."-Robert Scally, New
York University

"A monumental work of meticulous scholarship."--Kevin Whelan, Keough-Notre
Dame Centre, Dublin

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ----
Kerby A. Miller is Middlebush Professor of History at the University of
Missouri, Columbia. Arnold Schrier is the Walter C. Langsam Professor
Emeritus of History, University of Cincinnati. Bruce D. Boling is Senior
Cataloger, University of New Mexico General Library. David Noel Doyle is
Statutory Lecturer in History, University College-Dublin.

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

816 pp.; 21 halftones & 6 maps; 7 x 10; 0-19-515489-4