Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: Conference at Notre Dame, Race and Immigration in the New Ireland
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From Brian O Conchubhair

Race and Immigration in the New Ireland

Keough-Naughton Institute conference, University of Notre Dame,
October 14-17, 2007

On Thursday, June 28th, Ireland elected its first black mayor, Rotimi
Adebari, a Nigerian who arrived seven years ago as an asylum seeker.
This event points to the rapid population explosion the country is
experiencing. Ireland has undergone profound changes in the last
decade, not simply by reversing a long history of emigration, but also
by attracting hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, many of these
from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. The arrival of over 207,000
Poles alone in the last decade is changing the face of the Irish
nation and the Irish Catholic Church. The world accepted the Irish.
Will the Irish accept the world? That is the question the Notre Dame
Keough-Naughton Institute conference on "Race and Immigration in the
New Ireland" (October 14-17) will address.

The conference will open with a keynote address on campus in
Washington Hall Sunday evening, October 14th, by Mary Robinson, the
former President of Ireland and U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights. President Robinson's speech will also help the University of
Notre Dame celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Center for Social
Concerns.

The conference panels Monday through Wednesday will focus on "The
Demographics of the New Ireland," "Race," "Legality and Rights," "Work
and Labor," "The Experience of Women," "Sport in the New Ireland,"
"The Linguistic Challenge of Multi-Cultural Ireland," "Social
Integration," on "What Ireland can learn from North-American and
European Experience," on relations "North and South," and "Religion in
the New Ireland."

The conference on Race and Immigration in the New Ireland will close
Wednesday October 17th with a keynote address at 11:15 A.M. in the
McKenna Hall Center for Continuing Education by Notre Dame Keough
Family Professor of Irish Studies, Luke Gibbons.

Among the distinguished participants, the conference speakers include
John Haskins, the Senior Civil Servant responsible for Irish
immigration policy; David Begg, the General Secretary of The Irish
Congress of Trade Unions; Donncha O'Connell, the Dean of National
University at Galway Law School; Salome Mbugua, the National Director
of AkiDwA, the Irish African Women's Association; Minister =C9amon =D3
Cu=EDv; Cork hurler Se=E1n =D3g =D3 hAilp=EDn; Anna Lo, Member of the =
Northern
Ireland Assembly and the first East Asian elected to a European
parliament; Steve Garner of the University of Western England; Pat
Hickey, President of the European Olympic Committee; Matthew Frye
Jacobson of Yale University; Ali Selim, Secretary of the Islamic
Cultural Centre of Ireland; Isabela Grawbowski-Lusinski of the
University of Warsaw; journalists Susan McKay and Patsy McGarry;
Anaele Diala Iroh of the Dublin Institute of Technology; Philip Watt
of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism;
Ronit Lentin and P=E1draig =D3 Riag=E1in of Trinity College-Dublin; Mike
Cronin of Boston College; Niamh Hourigan of University College Cork;
Mary Corcoran of National University at Maynooth; Carmen Frese of
University College, Dublin; Abel Ugba of the University of East
London; and, along with Luke Gibbons, Jorge Bustamante and Tony
Messina of Notre Dame. They will be joined by scholars, policy-makers
and representatives from various groups making up what has come to be
called the New Ireland.

The conference will also host a performance Tuesday and Wednesday
evenings at 8:00 P.M. in the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts
Decio Theater of the play, "The Kings of The Kilburn High Road," by
Arambe Productions, Ireland's first African Theatre Company led by
Nigerian Bisi Adigun.

There will also be a pre-conference Saturday Scholar Lecture by
Professor Luke Gibbons in the Snite Museum on Saturday, October 13th
at noon, and a film, "In America," to be shown Sunday afternoon,
October 14th, at 4:00 P.M. in the Marie DeBartolo Center for the
Performing Arts.

Participants are welcome to register for the conference on line at
https://marketplace.nd.edu/cce/

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: CFP Anti-Popery Conference, Philadelphia
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This item will interest a number of IR-D members, if only as a way of
tracking the research and the discourse...

P.O'S.


Final Call for Papers: Anti-Popery Conference

Proposal Deadline: September 15, 2007

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Omohundro Institute
of Early American History and Culture, in cooperation with the School of
Arts and Sciences of The Catholic University of America, will hold a
conference in Philadelphia September 18-20, 2008, on the uses of
anti-popery in the early modern world. Antagonism towards the pope and his
co-religionists was nearly universal in the Protestant societies of Europe
and colonial America. In recent years historians on both sides of the
Atlantic have begun to realize that anti-Catholic fears represented more
than blind prejudice or ignorance. Instead, anti-popery was a powerful set
of ideas that early modern Europeans used to understand their world and
their place in history. This conference will explore the diverse uses of
anti-popery in the Protestant Atlantic - whether religious, social, legal,
economic, or political - from the time of the Reformation to the era of
massive Catholic migration to America in the mid-nineteenth century.

We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of anti-popery in Europe or
the Americas from approximately 1530-1850. Presenters will be expected to
complete a 20-30 page essay by the end of May 2008, for pre-conference
circulation among registered attendees. We welcome submissions from
advanced graduate students as well as more senior scholars. Support for
travel expenses will be available.

To apply, please send a 500-word synopsis of your proposal along with a
short c.v. to Anti-Popery Conference, McNeil Center for Early American
Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4531, or e-mail to
mceas[at]ccat.sas.upenn.edu by September 15, 2007. Other questions can be
directed to the conference organizers: Evan Haefeli [eh2204[at]columbia.edu],
Brendan McConville [bmcconv[at]bu.edu], and Owen Stanwood [stanwood[at]cua.edu].

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: REMINDER, CFP, The Radical History Review, The Irish Question
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Call for Proposals
Issue #104: The Irish Question

The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue that will explore
the intellectual, historical and political implications of the "Irish
Question" over the past eight centuries.

We depart from the premise that the national question and its resolution (or
not) in Ireland is not only a major topic in Irish and British Imperial
history, but one with fundamental implications for the evolution of the
modern world, and the histories of colonialism and postcolonialism. We
envision contributions focused on Ireland, first as a colony and then
partitioned into two states after 1922, and the attendant "Irish diaspora"
in England, Canada, the United States, and beyond. However, the editors do
not assume that the Irish Question is restricted to people of Irish descent
or the countries they inhabit: we are equally interested in the relationship
of Ireland's national struggle to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The issue will seek to explore a series of interlocking questions, including
but not limited to:

1. Is Ireland a founding site of European imperialism and anti-imperial
resistance, as well as post-colonialism? What are the implications for
European or world history of moving the Third back into the First World?
2. How has the rise of a Revisionist historiography challenging the
nationalist narrative paralleled Ireland's move away from postcolonial
dependency since the 1970s? What is its significance for historians outside
of Ireland? What does it mean to deny the existence of a national revolution
in Ireland?
3. What are the implications of the process beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century whereby Ireland and Irishness was configured as exclusively
Catholic? How has that identity played out on the world stage-is it equally
relevant in all cases?
4. Why is "race" so rarely mentioned inside Irish history when the Irish as
immigrants are so emphatically raced once they leave Ireland, whether as
"becoming white" or not-quite-white? Does Ireland occupy a distinctive place
in whiteness studies, or should it?
5. Is it useful or accurate to assert an "Irish Diaspora?" What are the
implications of this particular form of diasporic studies?
6. How have the Irish, whether in Ireland or abroad, appropriated
transnational forms of popular culture like soul and later hip-hop?
7. How influential has the Irish version of cultural nationalism been in the
larger world? Can we link De Valera with Garvey and Ben Gurion, or is the
Ireland sui generis, given the role of the Catholic Church?
8. How has Irish Republicanism been represented in popular and mass culture,
in different parts of the world? Are these tropes and images similar to
those assigned to other movements committed to armed struggle by any means
necessary, or distinctively different?
9. What is the Irish Left, alongside or outside of Irish republicanism? Are
its problems relevant to the problem of class politics in other national
liberation struggles?
10. How has Irish women's history and Irish feminism recast the National
Question?
11. Are there distinctive Irish and/or Irish American discourses of
sexuality and queerness-are they similar or different, and what role does
demography play in Ireland's distinctive history of sexual repression?

Though the RHR continues to publish monographic articles, we also invite
Reflections, Interventions, roundtables, interviews, and reviews that go
beyond books to look at popular historical representations, whether visual,
cinematic, or textual. Potential contributors are encouraged to look at
recent issues for examples of these non-traditional forms of scholarship.

Submissions are due by March 15, 2008 and should be submitted
electronically, as an attachment, to rhr[at]igc.org with "Issue 104 submission"
in the subject line. For artwork, please send images as high resolution
digital files (each image as a separate file). For preliminary e-mail
inquiries, please include "Issue 104" in the subject line. Those articles
selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in
issue 104 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in Spring 2009.
Abstract Deadline: March 15, 2008
Email: rhr[at]igc.org

http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/calls.htm

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From: Patrick O'Sullivan
Subject: English and British National Identity
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History Compass

Volume 5 VIRTUAL ISSUE: The British World Page 428-447, July 2007

To cite this article: Krishan Kumar (2007)
English and British National Identity
History Compass 5 (v1), 428-447.
doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00331.x

English and British National Identity

* Krishan Kumar1*1University of Virginia* Correspondence: Department of
Sociology, University of Virginia, PO Box 400766, Charlottesville, VA
22904-4766, USA.

*
1University of Virginia

Abstract


National identities in the British Isles have been a neglected subject of
study for a long time, though interest has been growing recently. Why the
neglect, and why the new interest? This article proposes that much of the
puzzle has to do with the peculiar, and dominating, position of England
historically within the United Kingdom. This has led to a relative
indifference to questions of national identity on the part of the English,
and, by a defensive reaction, a corresponding increase, over time, with such
questions on the part of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. The English developed a
largely 'non-national' conception of themselves, preoccupied as they were
with the management of the United Kingdom and the British Empire; the
'Celtic' nations followed a more familiar pattern of developing national
consciousness, as shown elsewhere in Europe. With the loss of the British
Empire, large-scale immigration, the call of Europe, and renewed nationalist
movements that threaten the 'break-up' of Britain, it is the English who
find themselves most acutely faced with questions of national identity.
Hence the new interest in national identity, especially among the English
but also generally throughout the United Kingdom as other groups seek to
imagine alternative futures for themselves.

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: Book: Counter-Hegemony and the Irish "Other"
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The following book, which may be of interest to the list, has come to =
our
attention.=20

Counter-Hegemony and the Irish "Other" Editor(s): Thomas Acton, =
University
of Greenwich, London and Michael Hayes, University of Limerick, Ireland. =
UK:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1-84718-047-7

http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Counter-Hegemony-and-the-Irish--Other-.htm

=20
William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Graduate Program Coordinator=20
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA=20
Office: 1-270-809-6571
Fax: 1-270-809-6587=20
=20
=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick Keane
Subject: Re: Yeats and 1916
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Dear Kate,

I guess you forwarded to me this lecture as reported by Bill Mulligan. Okay,
then; I'll use it as an excuse to stop thinking about Emily Dickinson and
God for a few minutes. Professor Crotty's remarks are certainly intemperate.
It's hard to see, for example, how the comments of either Declan Kiberd or
Helen Vendler regarding "Easter 1916" can be fairly characterized as
"dissembling." Still, he does have a point, or two. He begins and ends (if
the IRISH TIMES synopsis is accurate) with some rather confused or at least
confusing remarks, so let's get past them quickly.

(1) Professor Crotty seems to have begun by accusing Kiberd of
"misrepresenting the poem when he said that what appalled Yeats was the loss
of gifted thinkers." That would indeed amount to misrepresenting the poem;
but the misrepresentation would not be on Kiberd's part. While he does note
Yeats's (belated) references to the dead men's "learning and literary
skill," this is hardly his primary emphasis.

(2) It is difficult to believe that the opening sentence of what would seem
to be Professor Crotty's conclusion has been accurately reported. The
"unresolvable argument" he refers to--"whether the poem sent out certain men
to be shot by the English or Irish"--is neither unresolvable nor an
argument. Precisely because "Easter 1916" is the work of a divided,
ambivalent man and poet--at once celebrant, elegist, and critic--it is
hardly a call to arms. Professor Crotty is fully aware that the question he
is echoing--"Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English
shot?"--was raised by Yeats (in his late poem "The Man and the Echo") in
reference to his early, propagandistic play, CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN.

There's no need to say much about the critique of Helen Vendler. In "Four
Elegies," a characteristically illuminating essay, first given as a lecture
at Sligo, she placed "Easter 1916," along with "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth
and Con Markiewicz" (and two other poems) in a special genre: the "group
elegy." The "elegy" designation alone offends Professor Crotty, who
brusquely dismisses her essay as "unconvincing" and "on the wrong track."
His criticism has to do, obviously, not with genre, but with politics: he
sees a political, presumably quietist design in Vendler's alleged
transformation of "Easter 1916" into a poem centered on death rather than on
the rebirth emphasized by the refrain: "A terrible beauty is born." Though I
understand the motivation, this seems to me a reductive reading of what I
recall as a wonderfully nuanced essay, especially the reading of the
Gore-Booth elegy. But I can't get into the essay since I don't have a copy
at hand.

In any case, Professor Crotty's main target is Declan Kiberd. The gist of
his critique is that, in what amounts to a "rather nasty subtext," Kiberd
reveals "a worryingly genuine sectarian implication, to put beside the
spurious imperialistic one he detects in the poem." Kiberd's attribution to
Yeats of an unconscious imperialism "sounds like another way of saying that
Yeats is a Protestant" and can therefore, unlike Pearse and MacDonagh,
"never fully belong to the national formation"--an interesting variation on
an old story

In INVENTING IRELAND, Kiberd twice discusses "Easter 1916," and the
different contexts matter. Initially, connecting the poem with "The Stolen
Child," Kiberd stresses the poet's ambivalence, which, pulling him in
"opposite directions," leaves him "wondering about the costs in human terms
of an abstract ideal." In the passage that evidently provoked Crotty, Kiberd
remarks of the sacrifice of the Easter Rising rebels that "Yeats may have
unwittingly trivialized their gesture and have done so in a time-honoured
colonialist way" by making them not only heroes and martyrs but "children"
to be soothed by a mother. Thus, though it is "the foundational poem" of the
Irish nation-state, "Easter 1916" is also, "in a perhaps inevitable
sub-text, an imperialist's elegy for a headstrong but contained foe. In it,
the Irishman is still a child."

The repetition of "colonialist" and "imperialist" is at least one (maybe
two) too many, not only for Professor Crotty, but for me. Neverthless,
whether we like it or not, these patronizing, mandarin elements are present;
they're there, in the text of the poem. It is worth noting, though, that
theYeatsian hauteur is simultaneously presented AND mocked by the poet
himself, who also numbers himself ("Being certain that they and I...") among
the wearers of motley, even if he IS telling stories around "the fire at the
club." We can register the superior airs, just as the poet himself does,
without--and I for one don't think Kiberd does--
dismissing Yeats as an unreconstructed Ascendancy colonialist. After all,
whatever his ambivalence, he was powerfully moved by the Rising and its
immediate aftermath. Professor Crotty knows that; so does Declan Kiberd; and
so do we, providing we submit ourselves to the cadences and tonalities of
the poem.

In addition, it matters that this particular emphasis on yeats;s description
of the rebels as "children" occurs in Chapter 6 of INVENTING IRELAND, the
theme of which is announced in the chapter-title: "Childhood and Ireland."
Later, in the 11th chapter, titled "Uprising," Kiberd observes that the
"power" of Yeats's poem "derives from the honesty" with which he registers
his "growing scruples about" the sort of "heroism" displayed by the rebels:
an issue he debates, "in the process postponing until the very last moment
his dutiful naming of the dead warriors." The chapter then offers a close
reading of the poem's final stanza, making two proposals (is this what
Crotty was objecting to when he claimed that Kiberd's "prose" is
"provocative where it might be suggestive, reckless where it should be
judicious"?)

In any case, Kiberd wonders about Yeats's "prolonged hesitation to name" the
heroes. "If to name is to assert power over the rebels, then to refuse that
option is to admit their power over him." But, of course, in the end, Yeats
does name. Kiberd then proposes (asserts? suggests?) that the poet,
marginalized by the event, attempts, through the poem, "to insert himself
back into history, to regain control and to earn the right to perform that
final bardic naming." Ironically, it is too late; for, in Kiberd's double
Yeatsian allusion, "history has taken fire, but it has taken fire in someone
else's head."

Without having heard Professor Crotty's lecture, there's no way to judge
what his own full reading of "Easter 1916" would look like. Presumably, he
would go well beyond nationalist cheerleading. But no matter what he has to
say about the poem, does he really want to throw out--on what appear to be
political rather than aesthetic grounds-- the tonally nuanced insights
provided by readers as acute as Declan Kiberd and Helen Vendler? On this
occasion, I guess so. But of course there are always other lectures.

Pat Keane


----- Original Message -----
From: "bill mulligan"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 9:00 PM
Subject: [IR-D] Yeats and 1916


> This item from the August 9th Irish Times has been brought to our
attention
> and may be of interest to the list.
>
> Yeats director lectures Kiberd
>
> Marese McDonagh
>
> The director of this year's International Yeats Summer School has
criticised
> two former directors of the school for their interpretation of the poem
> Easter 1916, accusing one of using "loaded and partisan language" in
> relation to the Rising itself, and the other of being "firmly on the wrong
> track".
>
> While expressing concern that his remarks might seem ungracious to friends
> of the summer school "who I also like to think as friends of mine", Prof
> Patrick Crotty from the University of Aberdeen told students in Sligo that
> poetry was "too important to be spoken about in a dissembling manner".
>
> In his lecture Easter 1916 and the Critics, Prof Crotty reserved his
> strongest criticism for Declan Kiberd, saying while he had produced books
on
> Irish literature marked by copiousness, good cheer and delight in ideas,
his
> prose was sometimes "provocative where it might be suggestive" and
"reckless
> where it might be judicious".
>
> Quoting from Kiberd's analysis of Easter 1916 in his book Inventing
Ireland,
> Prof Crotty said the language was loaded and partisan in its description
of
> the rebels as "heroes" and some of Ireland's "most gifted thinkers". He
> accused Kiberd of misrepresenting the poem when he said what appalled
Yeats
> was the loss of gifted thinkers.
>
> "There is a rather nasty subtext in Kiberd's remarks, a worryingly genuine
> sectarian implication to put beside the spuriously imperialistic one he
> detects in the poem," Prof Crotty maintained.
>
> He told his students Kiberd had identified Yeats with the colony and
> characterised him as an unconscious imperialist, which "sounds like
another
> way of saying that Yeats is a Protestant and can therefore never fully
> belong to the national formation which embraces such gifted thinkers as
> Pearse and McDonagh".
>
> While expressing concern that he was disagreeing with former directors, he
> also took issue with Harvard's Prof Helen Vendler's suggestion that the
poem
> was an elegy.
>
> Calling her argument "unconvincing", he said she was "on the wrong track",
> insisting the poem was less concerned with death than with birth as the
> closing words - "a terrible beauty is born" - make clear.
>
> Prof Crotty pointed out that the poem is widely regarded as the 20th
> century's most famous political poem in English. He said its impact on
> events in Ireland since its publication in 1920 had been exaggerated, but
> "few would question its reality".
>
> He said he would not get into the "unresolvable argument" about whether
the
> poem sent out certain men to be shot by the English or the Irish. His
> concern was with the literary and critical responses to the poem, many of
> which he believed involved misreading of the text itself or its political
> context.
>
> The school continues today with a lecture by Dr Bruce Stewart from the
> University of Ulster on Yeats and Joyce, while Dr Nicholas Allen from the
> University of North Carolina will speak on Civil Wars: WB Yeats, Jack
Yeats
> and 1922.
>
>
> Bill Mulligan
> Professor of History
> Murray State University
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: Conference: Europe and its Established & Emerging Immigrant
Communities
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This may be of interest to the list, forwarded from H-Migration.=20

Europe and its Established & Emerging Immigrant=20
Communities: Assimilation, Multiculturalism or Integration?


De Montfort University is hosting a conference on
Europe and its Established & Emerging Immigrant
Communities: Assimilation, Multiculturalism or
Integration? on 10th =A1V 11th November 2007.

This conference will focus on Europe and will draw on=20
perspectives beyond Europe in an attempt to discuss,=20
analyse and critique European policy response to post
World War 11 established and emerging immigrant =20
communities as well as share good practice in the=20
areas of health, security, social cohesion and=20
education amongst other things.

Speakers Include:
- Doudou Diene United Nations Special Rapporteur in
Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, TBC
- Karen Chouhan 1990 Trust/JRCT Visionary
- Prof Gus John Institute of Education
- Tariq Ramadan TBC
- Halifa Sallah People=A1=A6s Centre for Social Science
Research Civic Awareness and Community Initiative,
Gambia
- Anastasia Crickley European Monitoring Centre on
racism and Xenophobia
- Doug Nicholls Community and Youth Workers Union CYWU
- Ted Cantle Improvement and Development Agency for
local government (IDeA)
- Prof Chris Gaine University of Chichester
- Arun Kundnani Institute of Race Relations
- Mark RD Johnson Mary Seacole Centre, De Montfort University
=20
Topics

These will include the following:
- Asylum seekers and refugees
- Health and social welfare
- Immigration
- Islamophobia
- Education
- Criminal justice
- Youth and community development
- Housing
- Security/Terrorism
- Deprivation/Poverty
- Community cohesion/race relations
- Employment/unemployment/exploitation

For more information please visit www.dmu.ac.uk/euimmigrationconf. If
you feel your colleagues would be interested in the conference please =
could
you pass the e-mail on.

Kind Regards

Margaret Barton
Short Course and Conference Co-ordinator
De Montfort Expertise Ltd
De Montfort University
Innovation Centre
49 Oxford Street
Leicester
LE1 5XY
Tel: 0116 250 6213
Fax: 0116 257 7982
www.dmu.ac.uk/dmccc
Company Registration No 2360101 / VAT Registration No
806 6611 35 / Registered Address The Gateway,
Leicester LE1 9BH


Bill Mulligan
William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Graduate Program Coordinator=20
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA=20
Office: 1-270-809-6571
Fax: 1-270-809-6587=20
=20
=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: CFP: > Ethics & International Affairs
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This may be of interest to the list, forwarded from H-Migration.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ethics & International Affairs (www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org), =
a
refereed, quarterly
publication of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, =
is
pleased to invite submissions for upcoming issues.

The Journal bridges the gap between theory and practice by publishing
original essays that integrate rigorous thinking about principles of =
ethics
and justice into discussions of practical
issues related to current policy developments, global institutional
arrangements, and the conduct of important international actors.

The Journal welcomes submissions related to the major three themes of =
the
Carnegie Council's work: Ethics, War, and Peace; Global Social Justice; =
and
Religion and Politics. In 2008 we are particularly seeking submissions =
that
address the following topics:

1. Multinational corporations as international actors and moral agents
2. Ethics and the environment
3. Immigration and citizenship
4. Normative issues in post-conflict settings, including jus post
bellum, transitional justice, and reconciliation

Theoretical discussions that originate in philosophy, religion, or the
social sciences should connect with such interests and concerns as the
function and design of international organizations, arrangements =
governing
trade and the world economy, as well as issues of human rights, the
environment, and the use of force.

DEADLINE: Rolling
RESPONSE TIME: Estimated 2-3 months

STYLE

Articles should be written in clear, jargon-free English with adequate =
but
not excessive documentation. We aim to be accessible to a variety of
readers: scholars from diverse disciplines, policy-makers, and =
journalists,
among others.

Textual style generally follows the Chicago Manual of Style. House style
sheets may be sent to authors as part of the revision process. =
Manuscripts
should be approximately 7,000 to 8,000 words.
Articles will be reviewed by the Editors and will be forwarded for peer
review upon their assessment. Endnotes (not footnotes) in Chicago note =
style
should be used. Lengthy endnotes are strongly discouraged. An abstract
should be included, not to exceed 250 words, as well as a short =
biography.

SUBMISSION

Manuscripts should be submitted as electronic files to =
journal[at]cceia.org.
Authors are encouraged to email the Editors at the same address should =
they
have additional questions about the submission process.

Bill Mulligan
William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Graduate Program Coordinator=20
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA=20
Office: 1-270-809-6571
Fax: 1-270-809-6587=20
=20
=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: CFP: Migrations & Identities
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This may be of interest to the list, forwarded from H-Migration.

Call for papers

migrations & identities is a new journal published bi-annually by
Liverpool University Press. The title represents a programme: We aim
to interrogate notions of 'identity' while asking how the fact of
mobility and displacement shapes understandings of self and the wider
world, among both migrants and 'host' societies. By the same token,
we seek to understand how ideas and concepts are transformed as they
'migrate' from one place and culture to another.

Multi- and interdisciplinary in both conception and management,
migrations & identities aims to cover the widest possible range of
places, periods and methods, subject only to a shared curiosity and
enthusiasm about the possibilities of working at the interface
between the investigation of the material conditions of migration
processes and the study of ideas and subjectivities.

In particular, we hope that scholars working in many fields will find
in migrations & identities a forum for discussion of the methods
appropriate to a project of linking observable experience and
mentalities in difference times and places, and that among the topics
of discussion will be the real challenges involved in conversing
across disciplinary boundaries.

We are now inviting proposals for contributions for the inaugural
issue, to be published in the summer of 2008. We welcome both
critical surveys considering how particular disciplines or fields of
study have dealt with the relationship between migration and
identity, and case studies which exemplify a self-conscious approach
to the methodological issues it raises. Your proposal should be for
an article of 5-8,000 words, and should take the form of an abstract
of no more than 300 words.

Please send abstracts to Mark Choonara at inmotion[at]liv.ac.uk no later
than 15th September 2007.


Bill Mulligan
William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Graduate Program Coordinator
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA
Office: 1-270-809-6571
Fax: 1-270-809-6587

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Re: Yeats and 1916
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From: Patrick Maume
I'd like to make a couple of tangential points about this:
(1) The expression "unreconstructed Ascendancy colonialist" seems to me to
merge two separate questions; it is not necessarily the case that support
for ascendancy (whether the term is equated with aristocracy - as here - or
with its original meaning of Protestant Ascendancy, which was criticised
by some opponents precisely because it made a Protestant cornerboy the
nominal superior of a Catholic earl). There was a strain of aristocratic or
aspiring-aristocratic patriotism in the late eighteenth and for much of the
nineteenth centuries which maintained that the Irish aristocracy's big
mistake was to throw in their lot with a British state which would always in
the last resort sacrifice their interests to appease the rabble, whereas if
they had set themselves at the head of the nationalist movement they would
have become the country's natural leaders by common consent. Converesely,
there was a strain of liberal unionism which declared that only under the
Union was it possible to abolish religious ascendancy and class privilege
without tearing the country apart, and that the logical end result of the
Union was the admission of the whole Irish populaion to UK citizenship on
equal terms. It is very strongly arguable that both these positions were
based on self-deception and in that in the Irish context nationalism and
democracy inevitably stood or fell together, but it simply is not the case
that there was no such thing as an elitist nationalist or a
liberal/democratic unionist.
(2) My big problem with Kiberd is that he seems to want to shut down debate
by denying the mere possibility that there might have been inherent flaws in
the nationalist project, and by dismissing those problems which did arise in
its working-out as simply traces of colonialism; he turns it into a
non-falsifiable theory in which any contrary evidence is ruled out of court
in advance. This is a man who claimed Pearse's use of Cuchulain is ironic
and Yeats's is not, for heaven's sake! (I can see how Pearse's usage could
be seen as ironic or YEats's as straightforward, what I don't see is by what
criteria someone can simultaneously say one is ironic and the other is not.)
Best wishes,
Patrick


On 8/17/07, Patrick Keane wrote:
>
> Dear Kate,
>
> I guess you forwarded to me this lecture as reported by Bill Mulligan.
> Okay,
> then; I'll use it as an excuse to stop thinking about Emily Dickinson and
> God for a few minutes. Professor Crotty's remarks are certainly
> intemperate.
> It's hard to see, for example, how the comments of either Declan Kiberd or
> Helen Vendler regarding "Easter 1916" can be fairly characterized as
> "dissembling." Still, he does have a point, or two. He begins and ends (if
> the IRISH TIMES synopsis is accurate) with some rather confused or at
> least
> confusing remarks, so let's get past them quickly.
>
> (1) Professor Crotty seems to have begun by accusing Kiberd of
> "misrepresenting the poem when he said that what appalled Yeats was the
> loss
> of gifted thinkers." That would indeed amount to misrepresenting the poem;
> but the misrepresentation would not be on Kiberd's part. While he does
> note
> Yeats's (belated) references to the dead men's "learning and literary
> skill," this is hardly his primary emphasis.
>
> (2) It is difficult to believe that the opening sentence of what would
> seem
> to be Professor Crotty's conclusion has been accurately reported. The
> "unresolvable argument" he refers to--"whether the poem sent out certain
> men
> to be shot by the English or Irish"--is neither unresolvable nor an
> argument. Precisely because "Easter 1916" is the work of a divided,
> ambivalent man and poet--at once celebrant, elegist, and critic--it is
> hardly a call to arms. Professor Crotty is fully aware that the question
> he
> is echoing--"Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English
> shot?"--was raised by Yeats (in his late poem "The Man and the Echo") in
> reference to his early, propagandistic play, CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN.
>
> There's no need to say much about the critique of Helen Vendler. In "Four
> Elegies," a characteristically illuminating essay, first given as a
> lecture
> at Sligo, she placed "Easter 1916," along with "In Memory of Eva
> Gore-Booth
> and Con Markiewicz" (and two other poems) in a special genre: the "group
> elegy." The "elegy" designation alone offends Professor Crotty, who
> brusquely dismisses her essay as "unconvincing" and "on the wrong track."
> His criticism has to do, obviously, not with genre, but with politics: he
> sees a political, presumably quietist design in Vendler's alleged
> transformation of "Easter 1916" into a poem centered on death rather than
> on
> the rebirth emphasized by the refrain: "A terrible beauty is born." Though
> I
> understand the motivation, this seems to me a reductive reading of what I
> recall as a wonderfully nuanced essay, especially the reading of the
> Gore-Booth elegy. But I can't get into the essay since I don't have a copy
> at hand.
>
> In any case, Professor Crotty's main target is Declan Kiberd. The gist of
> his critique is that, in what amounts to a "rather nasty subtext," Kiberd
> reveals "a worryingly genuine sectarian implication, to put beside the
> spurious imperialistic one he detects in the poem." Kiberd's attribution
> to
> Yeats of an unconscious imperialism "sounds like another way of saying
> that
> Yeats is a Protestant" and can therefore, unlike Pearse and MacDonagh,
> "never fully belong to the national formation"--an interesting variation
> on
> an old story
>
> In INVENTING IRELAND, Kiberd twice discusses "Easter 1916," and the
> different contexts matter. Initially, connecting the poem with "The Stolen
> Child," Kiberd stresses the poet's ambivalence, which, pulling him in
> "opposite directions," leaves him "wondering about the costs in human
> terms
> of an abstract ideal." In the passage that evidently provoked Crotty,
> Kiberd
> remarks of the sacrifice of the Easter Rising rebels that "Yeats may have
> unwittingly trivialized their gesture and have done so in a time-honoured
> colonialist way" by making them not only heroes and martyrs but "children"
> to be soothed by a mother. Thus, though it is "the foundational poem" of
> the
> Irish nation-state, "Easter 1916" is also, "in a perhaps inevitable
> sub-text, an imperialist's elegy for a headstrong but contained foe. In
> it,
> the Irishman is still a child."
>
> The repetition of "colonialist" and "imperialist" is at least one (maybe
> two) too many, not only for Professor Crotty, but for me. Neverthless,
> whether we like it or not, these patronizing, mandarin elements are
> present;
> they're there, in the text of the poem. It is worth noting, though, that
> theYeatsian hauteur is simultaneously presented AND mocked by the poet
> himself, who also numbers himself ("Being certain that they and I...")
> among
> the wearers of motley, even if he IS telling stories around "the fire at
> the
> club." We can register the superior airs, just as the poet himself does,
> without--and I for one don't think Kiberd does--
> dismissing Yeats as an unreconstructed Ascendancy colonialist. After all,
> whatever his ambivalence, he was powerfully moved by the Rising and its
> immediate aftermath. Professor Crotty knows that; so does Declan Kiberd;
> and
> so do we, providing we submit ourselves to the cadences and tonalities of
> the poem.
>
> In addition, it matters that this particular emphasis on yeats;s
> description
> of the rebels as "children" occurs in Chapter 6 of INVENTING IRELAND, the
> theme of which is announced in the chapter-title: "Childhood and Ireland."
> Later, in the 11th chapter, titled "Uprising," Kiberd observes that the
> "power" of Yeats's poem "derives from the honesty" with which he registers
> his "growing scruples about" the sort of "heroism" displayed by the
> rebels:
> an issue he debates, "in the process postponing until the very last moment
> his dutiful naming of the dead warriors." The chapter then offers a close
> reading of the poem's final stanza, making two proposals (is this what
> Crotty was objecting to when he claimed that Kiberd's "prose" is
> "provocative where it might be suggestive, reckless where it should be
> judicious"?)
>
> In any case, Kiberd wonders about Yeats's "prolonged hesitation to name"
> the
> heroes. "If to name is to assert power over the rebels, then to refuse
> that
> option is to admit their power over him." But, of course, in the end,
> Yeats
> does name. Kiberd then proposes (asserts? suggests?) that the poet,
> marginalized by the event, attempts, through the poem, "to insert himself
> back into history, to regain control and to earn the right to perform that
> final bardic naming." Ironically, it is too late; for, in Kiberd's double
> Yeatsian allusion, "history has taken fire, but it has taken fire in
> someone
> else's head."
>
> Without having heard Professor Crotty's lecture, there's no way to judge
> what his own full reading of "Easter 1916" would look like. Presumably, he
> would go well beyond nationalist cheerleading. But no matter what he has
> to
> say about the poem, does he really want to throw out--on what appear to be
> political rather than aesthetic grounds-- the tonally nuanced insights
> provided by readers as acute as Declan Kiberd and Helen Vendler? On this
> occasion, I guess so. But of course there are always other lectures.
>
> Pat Keane
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "bill mulligan"
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 9:00 PM
> Subject: [IR-D] Yeats and 1916
>
>
> > This item from the August 9th Irish Times has been brought to our
> attention
> > and may be of interest to the list.
> >
> > Yeats director lectures Kiberd
> >
> > Marese McDonagh
> >
> > The director of this year's International Yeats Summer School has
> criticised
> > two former directors of the school for their interpretation of the poem
> > Easter 1916, accusing one of using "loaded and partisan language" in
> > relation to the Rising itself, and the other of being "firmly on the
> wrong
> > track".
> >
> > While expressing concern that his remarks might seem ungracious to
> friends
> > of the summer school "who I also like to think as friends of mine", Prof
> > Patrick Crotty from the University of Aberdeen told students in Sligo
> that
> > poetry was "too important to be spoken about in a dissembling manner".
> >
> > In his lecture Easter 1916 and the Critics, Prof Crotty reserved his
> > strongest criticism for Declan Kiberd, saying while he had produced
> books
> on
> > Irish literature marked by copiousness, good cheer and delight in ideas,
> his
> > prose was sometimes "provocative where it might be suggestive" and
> "reckless
> > where it might be judicious".
> >
> > Quoting from Kiberd's analysis of Easter 1916 in his book Inventing
> Ireland,
> > Prof Crotty said the language was loaded and partisan in its description
> of
> > the rebels as "heroes" and some of Ireland's "most gifted thinkers". He
> > accused Kiberd of misrepresenting the poem when he said what appalled
> Yeats
> > was the loss of gifted thinkers.
> >
> > "There is a rather nasty subtext in Kiberd's remarks, a worryingly
> genuine
> > sectarian implication to put beside the spuriously imperialistic one he
> > detects in the poem," Prof Crotty maintained.
> >
> > He told his students Kiberd had identified Yeats with the colony and
> > characterised him as an unconscious imperialist, which "sounds like
> another
> > way of saying that Yeats is a Protestant and can therefore never fully
> > belong to the national formation which embraces such gifted thinkers as
> > Pearse and McDonagh".
> >
> > While expressing concern that he was disagreeing with former directors,
> he
> > also took issue with Harvard's Prof Helen Vendler's suggestion that the
> poem
> > was an elegy.
> >
> > Calling her argument "unconvincing", he said she was "on the wrong
> track",
> > insisting the poem was less concerned with death than with birth as the
> > closing words - "a terrible beauty is born" - make clear.
> >
> > Prof Crotty pointed out that the poem is widely regarded as the 20th
> > century's most famous political poem in English. He said its impact on
> > events in Ireland since its publication in 1920 had been exaggerated,
> but
> > "few would question its reality".
> >
> > He said he would not get into the "unresolvable argument" about whether
> the
> > poem sent out certain men to be shot by the English or the Irish. His
> > concern was with the literary and critical responses to the poem, many
> of
> > which he believed involved misreading of the text itself or its
> political
> > context.
> >
> > The school continues today with a lecture by Dr Bruce Stewart from the
> > University of Ulster on Yeats and Joyce, while Dr Nicholas Allen from
> the
> > University of North Carolina will speak on Civil Wars: WB Yeats, Jack
> Yeats
> > and 1922.
> >
> >
> > Bill Mulligan
> > Professor of History
> > Murray State University
> >
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Guillermo MacLoughlin
Subject: Re: Article,
A Movement from Right to Left in Argentine Nationalism?
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Thank you for this information.
As you know, the Irish integrated in the Argentine life, so it is not a
surprise to trace them among the Right Nationalism as well into the =
right
and left "guerrilla" movements. Also, during the "dirty war" it is =
possible
to trace Argentine militar officers of Irish extract as well as
Irish-Argentine politicians supporting the militar government.
The Irish-Argentine are every where in my country.
Best regards,

Guillermo MacLoughlin


-----Mensaje original-----
De: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK] En =
nombre
de Patrick O'Sullivan
Enviado el: mi=E9rcoles, 15 de agosto de 2007 6:09
Para: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Asunto: [IR-D] Article, A Movement from Right to Left in Argentine
Nationalism?

This item appeared in one of our automated searches - I was not clear =
why,
and explored further.

See extract, and quoted footnote, below...

It is very unusual for comment on Argentineans of Irish origin to appear =
in
anything outside family history - I know that some members of the IR-D =
list
will want to know about this article. And I therefore pass on the
information - without further comment.

Usual between the lines conditions apply...

P.O'S.



Bulletin of Latin American Research

Volume 26 Issue 3 Page 356-377, July 2007

To cite this article: MICHAEL GOEBEL (2007) A Movement from Right to =
Left in
Argentine Nationalism? The Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and Tacuara =
as
Stages of Militancy Bulletin of Latin American Research 26 (3), =
356=96377.
doi:10.1111/j.1470-9856.2007.00229.x

A Movement from Right to Left in Argentine Nationalism? The Alianza
Libertadora Nacionalista and Tacuara as Stages of Militancy

* MICHAEL GOEBELaaUniversity College London, UK

*
aUniversity College London, UK

Abstract

This article contributes to debates about fascist influences among
Argentina=92s guerrilla groups of the 1970s. From the overall =
perspective of
developments in Argentine nationalism, it traces back the history of the
far-right Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and Tacuara and assesses =
their
significance as the nuclei from which later guerrillas came. Based on =
police
reports and periodical publications from the period in question
(c.1937=96c.1973), it makes some generalisations about the collective
biographies of militants. While not contradicting the widely held view =
that
originally fascist groupings played a role in the emergence of Argentine
guerrillas, the article introduces some nuances into this argument.
Particular emphasis is given to the role of Peronism and the Cuban
Revolution as facilitators of changes in Argentine nationalism.

EXTRACT
The most important of the offspring with regard to later developments,
however, was the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario Tacuara (MNRT),
which was formally constituted in December 1962, under the leadership of =
Joe
Baxter and Jos=E9 Luis Nell. Both were law students of Irish descent,6

WHICH REFERS TO FOOTNOTE

6 As one of the anonymous reviewers of this article has put it, the =
Irish
dimension may be =91not just anecdotal=92. Given the small size of =
Argentina=92s
Irish community, the inordinate number of Argentines of Irish origin in
revolutionary nationalist circles is conspicuous indeed: besides Baxter
(who, however, was of Anglo-Irish descent) and Nell, two more leading
tacuaristas, Juan Mario Collins and Nicanor D=92El=EDa Cavanagh, were of =
Irish
origin. So were Nell=92s partner, Luc=EDa Cullen (first FAP, later =
Montoneros),
Walsh (see below) and, on the paternal side, Cooke and Kelly. Another
example was Norma Kennedy (see below). This over-representation of Irish
Argentines may well have to do with similarities between Argentine and =
Irish
nationalism, which both allowed for both left- and right-wing currents =
and
drew on anti-British feelings and Catholicism. Interestingly, the other
over-represented group in these circles were Argentines of Croatian =
descent
(e.g. Tomislav Rivaric (see below), Daniel Zverko (first GRN, then
Montoneros), Jaroslav Dazac (ALN) and the Peronist nacionalista =
politician
Oscar Ivanissevich).

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.=20
Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.19/953 - Release Date: =
14/08/2007
17:19
=20

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.=20
Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.1/962 - Release Date: =
20/08/2007
13:08
=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Alison Younger
Subject: Re: Yeats and 1916
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A colleague in America made a contribution to this discussion:

Hi Alison
I've been mulling over these posts for a couple of days. It is really fascinating that this issue has come up again. One wonders what will happen in 2016. Whatever Declan Kiberd's virtues might be (and he has many for sure), I have always found his discussion of "Easter" in relation to "The Stolen Child" as simply bizarre. It's hard not to see it as part of an agenda, one which he shares with many others--most notably Seamus Deane--who are determined to keep Yeats in the enemy camp as an unrepentant apologist for Anglo-Irish domination. And yet it seems to me that "Easter" is very much a self-accusation by a poet chastising himself for having lost sight of the cause, for having been content to mumble those "polite meaningless words," and for having walked past those gray eighteenth-century (Georgian) houses without thinking about how Ireland had been shaped by English domination. To me the voice of the poem is believable, not an exercise in rhetoric, and it shows us
Yeats as a changed man. What that has to do with "The Stolen Child," a poem from Yeats's youth, I cannot fathom.
Thanks for sending this.
Dan



Patrick Maume wrote:
From: Patrick Maume
I'd like to make a couple of tangential points about this:
(1) The expression "unreconstructed Ascendancy colonialist" seems to me to
merge two separate questions; it is not necessarily the case that support
for ascendancy (whether the term is equated with aristocracy - as here - or
with its original meaning of Protestant Ascendancy, which was criticised
by some opponents precisely because it made a Protestant cornerboy the
nominal superior of a Catholic earl). There was a strain of aristocratic or
aspiring-aristocratic patriotism in the late eighteenth and for much of the
nineteenth centuries which maintained that the Irish aristocracy's big
mistake was to throw in their lot with a British state which would always in
the last resort sacrifice their interests to appease the rabble, whereas if
they had set themselves at the head of the nationalist movement they would
have become the country's natural leaders by common consent. Converesely,
there was a strain of liberal unionism which declared that only under the
Union was it possible to abolish religious ascendancy and class privilege
without tearing the country apart, and that the logical end result of the
Union was the admission of the whole Irish populaion to UK citizenship on
equal terms. It is very strongly arguable that both these positions were
based on self-deception and in that in the Irish context nationalism and
democracy inevitably stood or fell together, but it simply is not the case
that there was no such thing as an elitist nationalist or a
liberal/democratic unionist.
(2) My big problem with Kiberd is that he seems to want to shut down debate
by denying the mere possibility that there might have been inherent flaws in
the nationalist project, and by dismissing those problems which did arise in
its working-out as simply traces of colonialism; he turns it into a
non-falsifiable theory in which any contrary evidence is ruled out of court
in advance. This is a man who claimed Pearse's use of Cuchulain is ironic
and Yeats's is not, for heaven's sake! (I can see how Pearse's usage could
be seen as ironic or YEats's as straightforward, what I don't see is by what
criteria someone can simultaneously say one is ironic and the other is not.)
Best wishes,
Patrick


On 8/17/07, Patrick Keane
wrote:
>
> Dear Kate,
>
> I guess you forwarded to me this lecture as reported by Bill Mulligan.
> Okay,
> then; I'll use it as an excuse to stop thinking about Emily Dickinson and
> God for a few minutes. Professor Crotty's remarks are certainly
> intemperate.
> It's hard to see, for example, how the comments of either Declan Kiberd or
> Helen Vendler regarding "Easter 1916" can be fairly characterized as
> "dissembling." Still, he does have a point, or two. He begins and ends (if
> the IRISH TIMES synopsis is accurate) with some rather confused or at
> least
> confusing remarks, so let's get past them quickly.
>
> (1) Professor Crotty seems to have begun by accusing Kiberd of
> "misrepresenting the poem when he said that what appalled Yeats was the
> loss
> of gifted thinkers." That would indeed amount to misrepresenting the poem;
> but the misrepresentation would not be on Kiberd's part. While he does
> note
> Yeats's (belated) references to the dead men's "learning and literary
> skill," this is hardly his primary emphasis.
>
> (2) It is difficult to believe that the opening sentence of what would
> seem
> to be Professor Crotty's conclusion has been accurately reported. The
> "unresolvable argument" he refers to--"whether the poem sent out certain
> men
> to be shot by the English or Irish"--is neither unresolvable nor an
> argument. Precisely because "Easter 1916" is the work of a divided,
> ambivalent man and poet--at once celebrant, elegist, and critic--it is
> hardly a call to arms. Professor Crotty is fully aware that the question
> he
> is echoing--"Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English
> shot?"--was raised by Yeats (in his late poem "The Man and the Echo") in
> reference to his early, propagandistic play, CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN.
>
> There's no need to say much about the critique of Helen Vendler. In "Four
> Elegies," a characteristically illuminating essay, first given as a
> lecture
> at Sligo, she placed "Easter 1916," along with "In Memory of Eva
> Gore-Booth
> and Con Markiewicz" (and two other poems) in a special genre: the "group
> elegy." The "elegy" designation alone offends Professor Crotty, who
> brusquely dismisses her essay as "unconvincing" and "on the wrong track."
> His criticism has to do, obviously, not with genre, but with politics: he
> sees a political, presumably quietist design in Vendler's alleged
> transformation of "Easter 1916" into a poem centered on death rather than
> on
> the rebirth emphasized by the refrain: "A terrible beauty is born." Though
> I
> understand the motivation, this seems to me a reductive reading of what I
> recall as a wonderfully nuanced essay, especially the reading of the
> Gore-Booth elegy. But I can't get into the essay since I don't have a copy
> at hand.
>
> In any case, Professor Crotty's main target is Declan Kiberd. The gist of
> his critique is that, in what amounts to a "rather nasty subtext," Kiberd
> reveals "a worryingly genuine sectarian implication, to put beside the
> spurious imperialistic one he detects in the poem." Kiberd's attribution
> to
> Yeats of an unconscious imperialism "sounds like another way of saying
> that
> Yeats is a Protestant" and can therefore, unlike Pearse and MacDonagh,
> "never fully belong to the national formation"--an interesting variation
> on
> an old story
>
> In INVENTING IRELAND, Kiberd twice discusses "Easter 1916," and the
> different contexts matter. Initially, connecting the poem with "The Stolen
> Child," Kiberd stresses the poet's ambivalence, which, pulling him in
> "opposite directions," leaves him "wondering about the costs in human
> terms
> of an abstract ideal." In the passage that evidently provoked Crotty,
> Kiberd
> remarks of the sacrifice of the Easter Rising rebels that "Yeats may have
> unwittingly trivialized their gesture and have done so in a time-honoured
> colonialist way" by making them not only heroes and martyrs but "children"
> to be soothed by a mother. Thus, though it is "the foundational poem" of
> the
> Irish nation-state, "Easter 1916" is also, "in a perhaps inevitable
> sub-text, an imperialist's elegy for a headstrong but contained foe. In
> it,
> the Irishman is still a child."
>
> The repetition of "colonialist" and "imperialist" is at least one (maybe
> two) too many, not only for Professor Crotty, but for me. Neverthless,
> whether we like it or not, these patronizing, mandarin elements are
> present;
> they're there, in the text of the poem. It is worth noting, though, that
> theYeatsian hauteur is simultaneously presented AND mocked by the poet
> himself, who also numbers himself ("Being certain that they and I...")
> among
> the wearers of motley, even if he IS telling stories around "the fire at
> the
> club." We can register the superior airs, just as the poet himself does,
> without--and I for one don't think Kiberd does--
> dismissing Yeats as an unreconstructed Ascendancy colonialist. After all,
> whatever his ambivalence, he was powerfully moved by the Rising and its
> immediate aftermath. Professor Crotty knows that; so does Declan Kiberd;
> and
> so do we, providing we submit ourselves to the cadences and tonalities of
> the poem.
>
> In addition, it matters that this particular emphasis on yeats;s
> description
> of the rebels as "children" occurs in Chapter 6 of INVENTING IRELAND, the
> theme of which is announced in the chapter-title: "Childhood and Ireland."
> Later, in the 11th chapter, titled "Uprising," Kiberd observes that the
> "power" of Yeats's poem "derives from the honesty" with which he registers
> his "growing scruples about" the sort of "heroism" displayed by the
> rebels:
> an issue he debates, "in the process postponing until the very last moment
> his dutiful naming of the dead warriors." The chapter then offers a close
> reading of the poem's final stanza, making two proposals (is this what
> Crotty was objecting to when he claimed that Kiberd's "prose" is
> "provocative where it might be suggestive, reckless where it should be
> judicious"?)
>
> In any case, Kiberd wonders about Yeats's "prolonged hesitation to name"
> the
> heroes. "If to name is to assert power over the rebels, then to refuse
> that
> option is to admit their power over him." But, of course, in the end,
> Yeats
> does name. Kiberd then proposes (asserts? suggests?) that the poet,
> marginalized by the event, attempts, through the poem, "to insert himself
> back into history, to regain control and to earn the right to perform that
> final bardic naming." Ironically, it is too late; for, in Kiberd's double
> Yeatsian allusion, "history has taken fire, but it has taken fire in
> someone
> else's head."
>
> Without having heard Professor Crotty's lecture, there's no way to judge
> what his own full reading of "Easter 1916" would look like. Presumably, he
> would go well beyond nationalist cheerleading. But no matter what he has
> to
> say about the poem, does he really want to throw out--on what appear to be
> political rather than aesthetic grounds-- the tonally nuanced insights
> provided by readers as acute as Declan Kiberd and Helen Vendler? On this
> occasion, I guess so. But of course there are always other lectures.
>
> Pat Keane
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "bill mulligan"
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 9:00 PM
> Subject: [IR-D] Yeats and 1916
>
>
> > This item from the August 9th Irish Times has been brought to our
> attention
> > and may be of interest to the list.
> >
> > Yeats director lectures Kiberd
> >
> > Marese McDonagh
> >
> > The director of this year's International Yeats Summer School has
> criticised
> > two former directors of the school for their interpretation of the poem
> > Easter 1916, accusing one of using "loaded and partisan language" in
> > relation to the Rising itself, and the other of being "firmly on the
> wrong
> > track".
> >
> > While expressing concern that his remarks might seem ungracious to
> friends
> > of the summer school "who I also like to think as friends of mine", Prof
> > Patrick Crotty from the University of Aberdeen told students in Sligo
> that
> > poetry was "too important to be spoken about in a dissembling manner".
> >
> > In his lecture Easter 1916 and the Critics, Prof Crotty reserved his
> > strongest criticism for Declan Kiberd, saying while he had produced
> books
> on
> > Irish literature marked by copiousness, good cheer and delight in ideas,
> his
> > prose was sometimes "provocative where it might be suggestive" and
> "reckless
> > where it might be judicious".
> >
> > Quoting from Kiberd's analysis of Easter 1916 in his book Inventing
> Ireland,
> > Prof Crotty said the language was loaded and partisan in its description
> of
> > the rebels as "heroes" and some of Ireland's "most gifted thinkers". He
> > accused Kiberd of misrepresenting the poem when he said what appalled
> Yeats
> > was the loss of gifted thinkers.
> >
> > "There is a rather nasty subtext in Kiberd's remarks, a worryingly
> genuine
> > sectarian implication to put beside the spuriously imperialistic one he
> > detects in the poem," Prof Crotty maintained.
> >
> > He told his students Kiberd had identified Yeats with the colony and
> > characterised him as an unconscious imperialist, which "sounds like
> another
> > way of saying that Yeats is a Protestant and can therefore never fully
> > belong to the national formation which embraces such gifted thinkers as
> > Pearse and McDonagh".
> >
> > While expressing concern that he was disagreeing with former directors,
> he
> > also took issue with Harvard's Prof Helen Vendler's suggestion that the
> poem
> > was an elegy.
> >
> > Calling her argument "unconvincing", he said she was "on the wrong
> track",
> > insisting the poem was less concerned with death than with birth as the
> > closing words - "a terrible beauty is born" - make clear.
> >
> > Prof Crotty pointed out that the poem is widely regarded as the 20th
> > century's most famous political poem in English. He said its impact on
> > events in Ireland since its publication in 1920 had been exaggerated,
> but
> > "few would question its reality".
> >
> > He said he would not get into the "unresolvable argument" about whether
> the
> > poem sent out certain men to be shot by the English or the Irish. His
> > concern was with the literary and critical responses to the poem, many
> of
> > which he believed involved misreading of the text itself or its
> political
> > context.
> >
> > The school continues today with a lecture by Dr Bruce Stewart from the
> > University of Ulster on Yeats and Joyce, while Dr Nicholas Allen from
> the
> > University of North Carolina will speak on Civil Wars: WB Yeats, Jack
> Yeats
> > and 1922.
> >
> >
> > Bill Mulligan
> > Professor of History
> > Murray State University
> >
>



Slan agus beannacht
www.neicn.com

Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr]
Programme Leader: English and Creative Writing
Department of English
University of Sunderland






---------------------------------
For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month.

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "Rogers, James"
Subject: the Irish language and the historians
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

I wonder if the list could chime in on this query, from someone whom I
assume must be writing about Friel's Translations, and which I feel a bit
overmatched to answer:

"What (if any) are the present-day debates circling around the decline of
the Irish language in the 19th century? Is there a dominant narrative to
which historians and others subscribe, eg, that it was voluntarily
surrendered, or that it was systematically suppressed? And has thinking on
this changed in recent decades? I'm not looking for debates about the
significance or value of the language itself, or about how or whether it
should be supported-I mean debates about how we understand the fact that it
went into rapid decline in a short span of time."

I find the part of this question about how the conversation has shifted in
recent years especially interesting.

Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the list, which is
all-knowing and never fails.

Jim Rogers

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Muiris Mag Ualghairg
Subject: Mass grave in America
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Story on the BBC today about a mass grave of Irish immigrants in
Pennsylvania

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6958216.stm

Muiris

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: "William Mulligan Jr."
Subject: Re: the Irish language and the historians
In-Reply-To:
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You might want to look at Karen Corrigan, "I gcuntas D=E9 m=FAin =
B=E9arla do na
leanbh=E1in eisimirce agus an Ghaelige sa nao=FA aois d=E9ag" [For God's =
sake
teach the children English: emigration and the Irish language in the
nineteenth century] in volume 2 of the Irish World Wide.

Bill=20

William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of History
Graduate Program Coordinator=20
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071-3341 USA=20
Office: 1-270-809-6571
Fax: 1-270-809-6587=20
=20
=20

-----Original Message-----
From: The Irish Diaspora Studies List [mailto:IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On =
Behalf
Of Rogers, James
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 9:05 AM
To: IR-D[at]JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [IR-D] the Irish language and the historians

I wonder if the list could chime in on this query, from someone whom I
assume must be writing about Friel's Translations, and which I feel a =
bit
overmatched to answer:

"What (if any) are the present-day debates circling around the decline =
of
the Irish language in the 19th century? Is there a dominant narrative to
which historians and others subscribe, eg, that it was voluntarily
surrendered, or that it was systematically suppressed? And has thinking =
on
this changed in recent decades? I'm not looking for debates about the
significance or value of the language itself, or about how or whether it
should be supported-I mean debates about how we understand the fact that =
it
went into rapid decline in a short span of time."

I find the part of this question about how the conversation has shifted =
in
recent years especially interesting.=20

Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the list, which is
all-knowing and never fails.

Jim Rogers =20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Sara Ellen Brady
Subject: CFP: Performing at the Crossroads
Comments: To: "Hibernet: GRIAN Irish Studies Scholars"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
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CALL FOR PROPOSALS=3A EDITED COLLECTION

Performing at the Crossroads=3A
Critical Essays on Performance Studies and Irish Culture

Co-edited by Sara Brady and Fintan Walsh

In the field of Irish studies=2C =27performance=27 has been typically
engaged in terms of theatre (the staging of the dramatic text)=3B dance
(traditional Irish dance=3B post-Riverdance commercial forms)=3B and mus=
ic
(the informal seisi=FAn=3B traditional music=3B the ballad tradition)=2E=

Recent changes in Irish society (historical revisionism=3B feminist and
queer politics=3B net migration=3B multiculturalism=3B globalisation) an=
d
the Irish arts industry (the growth of the independent theatre sector
since the 1980s=3B the experimentation with artistic form across a range=

of disciplines=2C including the growth in interdisciplinary work) have
all prompted the need to think further about the complex and
under-researched area of performance in and of Irish culture=2E It is
increasingly well recognized that the categories of =27Irishness=27 and
=27Irish culture=27 are themselves highly performative=2C and in timely =
need
of critical address=2E

This collection seeks to fill this critical gap by looking to
performance studies to inform Irish studies=2E The interdisciplinary
field of performance studies approaches performance as an object of
study and as a method of analysis=2E Invigorated by a wide range of
theories not associated with traditional dramatic or theatrical
criticism=2C performance studies considers all forms of live performance=

occurring within designated performance spaces=2C while also analyzing
practices which occur outside conventional theatre spaces=2C including
ritual=2C play=2C spectacle=2C politics=2C geography=2C landscape=2C arc=
hitecture=2C
etc=2E through the frames of history=2C anthropology=2C sociology=2C
ethnography=2C globalisation theory=2C psychoanalysis=2C critical race
theory=2C feminist and queer theories=2C among others=2E Performance stu=
dies
defines liberally that which can be examined =27as=27 performance=2E

We seek essays that will draw upon a variety of critical approaches to
explore the connection between performance studies and expressive
Irish culture at local=2C national=2C and international/diasporic levels=
=2E
While we are not opposed to the analysis of performance as a
structured discipline=2C we are primarily interested in the analysis of
acts that either puncture or blend into the social=2E

While a wide range of subjects will be considered=2C topics might includ=
e=3A

=95 Parades=3A St=2E Patrick=27s Day (in Ireland and abroad)=3B po=
litical parades=2C etc=2E
=95 Music=3A Change and adaptation in traditional Irish musical
performance=3B transmission of musical styles and traditions over
generations
=95 Language and Orature=3A Oral traditions=3B performance and ora=
ture=3B
Irish language performance=3B translation=3B storytelling=2C etc=2E
=95 Dance=3A =27Dancing at the crossroads=27=3B codification and c=
onstruction of
Irish dancing forms=3B the relationship between Irish dancing and
international forms=2C e=2Eg=2E=2C tap=3B commercialism and globalisatio=
n in
Irish dance (Riverdance=2C Lord of the Dance=2C etc=2E)
=95 Sport=3A Performances of Irish athletes on local=2C national=2C=
and
international levels=3B the Gaelic games=3B Irish participation in rugby=
=2C
soccer=2C cricket=3B race=2C gender=2C and nationality in sport performa=
nce
=95 Tourism=3A Performing heritage and the heritage industry=3B pa=
ckage
heritage and other tours to Ireland=3B bus tours and spectatorship=3B
touristic sites of =27quintessential=27 Irishness (from the Cliffs of
Moher to the Guinness Storehouse)
=95 Theatre=3A New conceptions of performance=3B live art=3B dance=
-theatre=3B
Irish circus tradition=3B site-specific and non-traditional performance
spaces=3B international responses to Irish productions in Ireland and on=

tour
=95 Ruptures of performance=3A The Abbey riots=3B Irish audiences =
abroad=3B
public insurgence and intervention during (theatrical) performance
=95 Rituals and Religion=3A Funerals=3B wakes=3B American wakes=3B=
weddings=3B
religious processions=3B papal visits to Ireland=3B Croagh Patrick=3B Lo=
ugh
Derg=3B The Legion of Mary=3B Marian apparitions=3B moving statues=3B St=
ation
Mass=3B holy wells=3B pilgrimages (Knock=2C Lourdes=2C Medjugorje=2C etc=
=2E)
=95 Festivals=3A Historical and contemporary=3B national and local=
=3B the
festivilisation of culture=2C such as the Beckett Centenary
=95 Folklore and spiritualism=3A Folk villages=3B folklore perform=
ance=3B the
use of spiritualism and the occult by early Abbey writers
=95 Ethnic and Cultural Identities=3A Performances in the Travelle=
r
community=3B Diversity Ireland=2C NPAR (National Action Plan Against
Racism)=2C and immigrant performance=3B religious identities=3B
community-based performance=3B theatre-in-education
=95 Geography and Space=3A Performance spaces=3B public monuments=3B=
public
art projects=3B murals=3B urban development and regeneration=3B audio-to=
urs=3B
Tara=3B Newgrange=2C etc=2E
=95 Death and Commemoration=3A Sites of memory=2C history=2C and f=
orgetting
(the G=2EP=2EO=2E=3B Moore Street=3B Glasnevin Cemetery=3B Magdalene lau=
ndries=3B
Famine memorials)
=95 Politics=3A Performance and politics=3B parties and leaders=3B=
discursive
constructions (Fianna F=E1il as a performer=27s party=2C for example)=3B=
Sinn
F=E9in and the media=2C etc=2E

Proposals of 250 words=2C including a short biographical note=2C should =
be
sent to the editors by October 1st=2C 2007=2E Completed essays of
4=2C000-6=2C000 words will be due in January 2007=2E Send proposals and =
any
inquiries to=3A Sara Brady (bradys1=40tcd=2Eie) or Fintan Walsh
(walshf=40tcd=2Eie)=2E

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Carmel McCaffrey
Subject: Re: the Irish language and the historians
In-Reply-To:
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Paul,

There is a major difference between the language issue in Ireland and
that in Wales I believe - or any other country which is not an
autonomous state. In Ireland after independence the drive to assert the
Irish language as a necessary expression of culture was lessoned I
believe because of the establishment of a new Irish state. Growing up
in Ireland in the twentieth century there was no doubt that a strong
sense of Irishness was being established - and therefore a strong sense
of separate identity from England - in many aspects of Irish life,
including the educational system. Language was no longer seen by many
as the imperative expression of a separate and valid culture as had been
deemed by Douglas Hyde as a necessary way of "de-anglicizing" Ireland.
The removal of the British presence in the early century had done that.

My parents for example had no truck with the Irish language revival
movement or anything connected to the Gaelic league types- yet each time
we went over to Britain for visits or holidays my father would
invariably make the remark on our return journey that "thank God we
broke away from this bloody crowd".

As regards the reasons why the Irish language shrank so fast in the
nineteenth century - there is nothing new is saying that it was likely a
combination of factors - English language schools for children [state
intervention] and the economic need to learn English. The only thing
that changes in the narrative surrounding the issue apparently is which
of these gets to be considered the most dominant reason.

By the way I presume you are not Ireland Republic of Ireland in your
"UK" reference ?

Carmel

Paul O'Leary wrote:
> The relative absence of debate about language shift in nineteenth-century
> Ireland is curious when viewed from the perspective of discussions in some
> other countries, especially so when one considers the vigorous state of
> Irish historical studies. I have in mind, in particular, the multi-volume
> social history of the Welsh language that was published a few years ago,
> which involved social historians, sociologists, socio-linguists, and others.
> This major project took our understanding of the social history of the
> language to a completely new level by providing an enormous body of data as
> well detailed studies of particular regions and a wide variety of linguistic
> domains. In my view, the study of the Irish language in the
> nineteenth-century would benefit enormously from comparative analysis with
> the fate of other non-state languages, especially in the UK,
>
>
>
> .
>
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Re: the Irish language and the historians
In-Reply-To:
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From: Patrick Maume
It might be worth referring back to Sean de Freine's THE GREAT SILENCE,
which revolves around the central point that the language collapsed with
amazing speed in the nineteenth century and the very limited amount of
attention which has been paid to this.
I think the dominant view now tends to play down state compulsion and to
emphasise the extent to which the change was driven by parents themselves
seeing Irish as useless (though it could be argued that this needs to push
responsibility back a stage further, to discuss how these conditions came
into existence). It would also be pointed out that the collapse was the
end-result of a longer process in which Irish got driven out of elite
culture and of many spheres of life, and where it failed to make the
transition to print on any significant scale until the Gaelic Revival at th=
e
end of the nineteenth century. (The implicit comparison would be with
Welsh, which made the print transition earlier and had significant numbers
of local Welsh-language newspapers in the Victorian period.)
One parallel which might be worth considering would be with the decline of
Catholicism in Ireland in recent decades; here again we have an idiom which
was almost universal within the ROI until very recently (NB the extent to
which even in the 60s and 70s the state is described by people
unselfconsciously as a "Catholic country", devotional language is used
spontaneously, &C) and which has been driven back with great rapidity into
the private sphere and even there has thinned out quite considerably. So
much so that Malachi O'Doherty had an articel in a recent issue of MAGILL
suggesting that Ireland can never "really" have been Catholic because it
collapsed so quickly, which seems to me like saying on the same basis that
Ireland had never "really" been Irish-speaking. (BTW I am not making any
comment here about whether the secularisation process is a good thing or no=
t
- I'm simply saying that there is a parallel that might be worth
considering. Declan Kiberd has made a similar comparison in suggesting tha=
t
the abandonment of Irish and of catholicism as soon as these were perceived
as inconvenient shows that the Irish have never been a conservative people =
-
but Iwould not look to Declan Kiberd for detailed analysis.)
The sudden collapse in Mass attendance in the 1990s after a period when
Church-state controversy and increasing disregard for clerical authority
coexisted with continued religious observance, reminded me of some research
I heard about language change in parts of Wales. This discovered that unti=
l
the number of English-speaking monoglots on a previously Welsh-speaking are=
a
reached a tipping-point (about 25%) the amount of Welsh used in public
conversations remained high, much higher than the proportion of the
population able to speak Welsh - about 90%. Once the tipping point (at
which any group of 3-4 people could assume that one of them would not
understand Welsh) was reached the level of usage fell - not to 75% but far
below it. This sounds familiar, though I am not sure how this was
measured. Does anyone have the reference?
Best wishes,
PAtrick


On 8/23/07, Dymphna Lonergan wrote:
>
> My own interest is in to what extent the language survived in an
> English-speaking setting, especially in the New Worlds. The dominant
> narrative has been that the language did not survive once there was a
> /need/ to speak English. Another narrative has been that the language
> was voluntarily surrendered once there was an /opportunity/ to speak
> English. My own narrative is that the language /survived/ as long as
> there was an /opportunity/ to speak it. Enjoy!
>
> Rogers, James wrote:
> > I wonder if the list could chime in on this query, from someone whom I
> > assume must be writing about Friel's Translations, and which I feel a
> bit
> > overmatched to answer:
> >
> > "What (if any) are the present-day debates circling around the decline
> of
> > the Irish language in the 19th century? Is there a dominant narrative t=
o
> > which historians and others subscribe, eg, that it was voluntarily
> > surrendered, or that it was systematically suppressed? And has thinkin=
g
> on
> > this changed in recent decades? I'm not looking for debates about the
> > significance or value of the language itself, or about how or whether i=
t
> > should be supported-I mean debates about how we understand the fact tha=
t
> it
> > went into rapid decline in a short span of time."
> >
> > I find the part of this question about how the conversation has shifted
> in
> > recent years especially interesting.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the list, which is
> > all-knowing and never fails.
> >
> > Jim Rogers
> >
> >
>
> --
>
> Le gach dea ghu=ED
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr Dymphna Lonergan
>
> Director Professional Studies Minor
>
> Convener Professional English (ENGL1001/A; ENGL1012; ENGL1013/A;
> Professional Writing PROF2101; PROF8000; Story of Australian English
> ENGL7214
>
>
>
> Research interests: Irish settlement in South Australia; Irish language
> in Australia; Placenames Australia (Irish project)
>
> Publication: /Sounds Irish: The Irish language in Australia
> /http://www.lythrumpress.com.au
>
>
>
>
>

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Dymphna Lonergan
Subject: Re: the Irish language and the historians
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

My own interest is in to what extent the language survived in an=20
English-speaking setting, especially in the New Worlds. The dominant=20
narrative has been that the language did not survive once there was a=20
/need/ to speak English. Another narrative has been that the language=20
was voluntarily surrendered once there was an /opportunity/ to speak=20
English. My own narrative is that the language /survived/ as long as=20
there was an /opportunity/ to speak it. Enjoy!

Rogers, James wrote:
> I wonder if the list could chime in on this query, from someone whom I
> assume must be writing about Friel's Translations, and which I feel a=
bit
> overmatched to answer:
>
> "What (if any) are the present-day debates circling around the decline =
of
> the Irish language in the 19th century? Is there a dominant narrative t=
o
> which historians and others subscribe, eg, that it was voluntarily
> surrendered, or that it was systematically suppressed? And has thinkin=
g on
> this changed in recent decades? I'm not looking for debates about the
> significance or value of the language itself, or about how or whether i=
t
> should be supported-I mean debates about how we understand the fact tha=
t it
> went into rapid decline in a short span of time."
>
> I find the part of this question about how the conversation has shifted=
in
> recent years especially interesting.=20
>
> Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the list, which is
> all-knowing and never fails.
>
> Jim Rogers =20
>
> =20

--=20

Le gach dea ghu=ED

=20

=20

=20

Dr Dymphna Lonergan

Director Professional Studies Minor

Convener Professional English (ENGL1001/A; ENGL1012; ENGL1013/A;=20
Professional Writing PROF2101; PROF8000; Story of Australian English=20
ENGL7214

=20

Research interests: Irish settlement in South Australia; Irish language=20
in Australia; Placenames Australia (Irish project)

Publication: /Sounds Irish: The Irish language in Australia=20
/http://www.lythrumpress.com.au

=20

=20

Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Muiris Mag Ualghairg
Subject: Re: the Irish language and the historians
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

I'm not sure who has done the research in Wales, probably Colin
Williams, but I know that statistician who does all the work on the
Welsh language on behalf of the Welsh Language Board, so I'll ask him
if he knows who has done the research.

Interestingly, it appears that the Irish community in parts of Wales,
Merthyr for example, kept their Irish after moving into Wales, for a
generation or so and also learnt Welsh. I think that Peredur Lynch may
have more on this in one of his publications.

Muiris

On 23/08/07, Patrick Maume wrote:
> From: Patrick Maume
> It might be worth referring back to Sean de Freine's THE GREAT SILENCE,
> which revolves around the central point that the language collapsed with
> amazing speed in the nineteenth century and the very limited amount of
> attention which has been paid to this.
> I think the dominant view now tends to play down state compulsion and t=
o
> emphasise the extent to which the change was driven by parents themselves
> seeing Irish as useless (though it could be argued that this needs to pus=
h
> responsibility back a stage further, to discuss how these conditions came
> into existence). It would also be pointed out that the collapse was the
> end-result of a longer process in which Irish got driven out of elite
> culture and of many spheres of life, and where it failed to make the
> transition to print on any significant scale until the Gaelic Revival at =
the
> end of the nineteenth century. (The implicit comparison would be with
> Welsh, which made the print transition earlier and had significant number=
s
> of local Welsh-language newspapers in the Victorian period.)
> One parallel which might be worth considering would be with the decline o=
f
> Catholicism in Ireland in recent decades; here again we have an idiom whi=
ch
> was almost universal within the ROI until very recently (NB the extent to
> which even in the 60s and 70s the state is described by people
> unselfconsciously as a "Catholic country", devotional language is used
> spontaneously, &C) and which has been driven back with great rapidity int=
o
> the private sphere and even there has thinned out quite considerably. So
> much so that Malachi O'Doherty had an articel in a recent issue of MAGILL
> suggesting that Ireland can never "really" have been Catholic because it
> collapsed so quickly, which seems to me like saying on the same basis tha=
t
> Ireland had never "really" been Irish-speaking. (BTW I am not making any
> comment here about whether the secularisation process is a good thing or =
not
> - I'm simply saying that there is a parallel that might be worth
> considering. Declan Kiberd has made a similar comparison in suggesting t=
hat
> the abandonment of Irish and of catholicism as soon as these were perceiv=
ed
> as inconvenient shows that the Irish have never been a conservative peopl=
e -
> but Iwould not look to Declan Kiberd for detailed analysis.)
> The sudden collapse in Mass attendance in the 1990s after a period when
> Church-state controversy and increasing disregard for clerical authority
> coexisted with continued religious observance, reminded me of some resear=
ch
> I heard about language change in parts of Wales. This discovered that un=
til
> the number of English-speaking monoglots on a previously Welsh-speaking a=
rea
> reached a tipping-point (about 25%) the amount of Welsh used in public
> conversations remained high, much higher than the proportion of the
> population able to speak Welsh - about 90%. Once the tipping point (at
> which any group of 3-4 people could assume that one of them would not
> understand Welsh) was reached the level of usage fell - not to 75% but fa=
r
> below it. This sounds familiar, though I am not sure how this was
> measured. Does anyone have the reference?
> Best wishes,
> PAtrick
>
>
> On 8/23/07, Dymphna Lonergan wrote:
> >
> > My own interest is in to what extent the language survived in an
> > English-speaking setting, especially in the New Worlds. The dominant
> > narrative has been that the language did not survive once there was a
> > /need/ to speak English. Another narrative has been that the language
> > was voluntarily surrendered once there was an /opportunity/ to speak
> > English. My own narrative is that the language /survived/ as long as
> > there was an /opportunity/ to speak it. Enjoy!
> >
> > Rogers, James wrote:
> > > I wonder if the list could chime in on this query, from someone whom=
I
> > > assume must be writing about Friel's Translations, and which I feel=
a
> > bit
> > > overmatched to answer:
> > >
> > > "What (if any) are the present-day debates circling around the declin=
e
> > of
> > > the Irish language in the 19th century? Is there a dominant narrative=
to
> > > which historians and others subscribe, eg, that it was voluntarily
> > > surrendered, or that it was systematically suppressed? And has think=
ing
> > on
> > > this changed in recent decades? I'm not looking for debates about the
> > > significance or value of the language itself, or about how or whether=
it
> > > should be supported-I mean debates about how we understand the fact t=
hat
> > it
> > > went into rapid decline in a short span of time."
> > >
> > > I find the part of this question about how the conversation has shift=
ed
> > in
> > > recent years especially interesting.
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance for the collective wisdom of the list, which is
> > > all-knowing and never fails.
> > >
> > > Jim Rogers
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Le gach dea ghu=ED
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Dr Dymphna Lonergan
> >
> > Director Professional Studies Minor
> >
> > Convener Professional English (ENGL1001/A; ENGL1012; ENGL1013/A;
> > Professional Writing PROF2101; PROF8000; Story of Australian English
> > ENGL7214
> >
> >
> >
> > Research interests: Irish settlement in South Australia; Irish language
> > in Australia; Placenames Australia (Irish project)
> >
> > Publication: /Sounds Irish: The Irish language in Australia
> > /http://www.lythrumpress.com.au
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>