Irish Culture, Memory, Place

When women are erased from history, what are we left with? Between 1912 and 1922, Ireland experienced sweeping social and political change, including the Easter Rising, World War I, the Irish Civil War, the fight for Irish women's suffrage, the founding of the Abbey Theatre, and the passage of the Home Rule Bill. In preparation for the centennial of this epic decade, the Irish government formed a group of experts to oversee the ways in which the country would remember this monumental time. Unfortunately, the group was formed with no attempt at gender balance. Women and the Decade of Commemorations, edited by Oona Frawley, highlights not only the responsibilities of Irish women, past and present, but it also privileges women's scholarship in an attempt to redress what has been a long-standing imbalance. For example, contributors note the role of the Waking the Feminists movement, which was ignited when, in 2016, the Abbey Theater released its male-dominated centenary program. They also discuss the importance of addressing missing history and curating memory to correct the historical record when it comes to remembering revolution. Together, the essays in Women and the Decade of Commemorations consider the impact of women's unseen, unsung work, which has been critically important in shaping Ireland, a country that continues to struggle with honoring the full role of women today.

From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, showbands were all the rage among Ireland's dancing audiences. Performing covers of rock 'n' roll and pop hits from American and British weekly Top 10 charts, they riveted their fans, dismayed many parish priests, and offered Irish youth a taste of modernism and pop culture from outside of Ireland. In Are You Dancing?, Rebecca S. Miller tells the story of how these working-class bands brought new sounds and choreographies to the Irish and Northern Irish pop landscape. Both as a response to and an agent in Ireland's changing economic landscape, showbands quickly grew into a hugely lucrative commercial industry. At the same time, they nudged open doors for Irish women to take to the stage as pop stars, rewarded a generation of entrepreneurs, and created the template for Ireland's popular music industry. Miller draws upon interviews with more than 80 musicians, agents, managers, fans, and clergy, to reveal the vast interplay of social, economic, and cultural changes that ensued with the Irish showband era. Drawing upon an extensive catalog of ethnographic and archival research, Miller presents an overlooked era of musical performances that revolutionized Irish entertainment.

In 1956, a group of 548 refugees escaping the violence of the Hungarian Revolution arrived on the shores of Ireland. With its own history shaped by waves of emigration to escape war, famine, and religious persecution, Ireland responded by creating its first international refugee settlement. Suitable Strangers reveals the firsthand experiences of the men, women, and children who lived in the Knockalisheen refugee camp near Limerick. For the majority of those living in the camp, Ireland was meant to be a temporary waystation on their ultimate journeys, primarily to Canada, the United States, and Australia. But after almost six months of uncertainty and feeling neglected by the Irish government, the Hungarian refugees began a hunger strike, which garnered national resentment and international headlines. Vera Sheridan explores this revolt and ensuing events by offering a complex and nuanced examination of the daily routines, state policies, and international motives that shaped life in the camp. A fascinating read for historians as well as those interested in refugee and migrant studies, Suitable Strangers complicates the Irish diaspora by providing a closer look at the realities of Ireland's Knockalisheen refugee settlement.

"I find him to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic but shrewd enquirer, a companionable stroller, and a lover of anecdotes gathered by the wayside." So Tim Robinson described folklorist, revolutionary, and district justice Seán Mac Giollarnáth, whose 1941 book Annála Beaga ó Iorras Aithneach revealed his sheer delight in the rich language and stories of the people he encountered in Conamara, the Irish-speaking region in the south of Connemara. From tales of smugglers, saints, and scholars to memories of food, work, and family, the stories gathered here provide invaluable insights into the lives and culture of the community. This faithful and lovingly crafted translation, complete with annotations, a biography, and thoughtful chapters that explore the importance of the language and region, is the final work of both Robinson and his collaborator, the renowned writer and Irish language expert Liam Mac Con Iomaire. Translated into English for the first time, Conamara Chronicles: Tales from Iorras Aithneach preserves the art of storytellers in the West of Ireland and honors the inspiration they kindle even still.

Many look to Ireland's Atlantic islands as timeless places, resistant to change. Island Endurance offers an alternative perspective, examining two neighboring islands where people have cultivated their heritage to confront new challenges and opportunities across centuries. To the west, Inishark is a landscape of ruins, with monuments from a medieval monastery alongside the remnants of a village that endured privation and isolation before its evacuation in 1960. To the east, Inishbofin remains home to a small community of nearly 200 that bustles every summer with thousands of visitors drawn by the island's reputation for hospitality and distinctive local heritage. Combining archaeological discoveries with folklore and ethnography, author Ryan Lash explores how islanders from three different historical eras encountered, altered, and reimagined traces of the past. Fifteen years of fieldwork reconstruct more than a millennium of creativity-from the development of pilgrimage traditions at the shrines of monastic saints, to the reuse of medieval monuments for local devotions in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the repurposing of ruins for managing livestock and guiding tourist trails in the 21st century. Attuned to the sensory dynamics and other-than-human elements of landscapes, Lash illustrates the power of quartz pebbles, picnics, and sheep farming to generate vital perceptions of place, time, and belonging. Islanders have continually and creatively adapted their heritage to foster shared experiences, negotiate collaborative relations, and sustain livelihoods amid adversity. Island Endurance shows us that the illusion of timelessness has always relied on the creativity of heritage.

Long recognized as Ireland's greatest demographic disaster in recent history, the Great Famine of 1845–1851 has shaped Irish identities around the world. From the monuments erected to commemorate its victims to the political rhetoric involving it to the novels, poems, songs, and films that it continues to inspire, the Famine remains a crucial part of Irish memory. Famine memories have also reached across history and national borders to establish links with cultural groups who were not directly connected to the Irish diaspora. Periodical Famines reveals how, within the transatlantic Irish periodical market between 1845 and 1910, Irish, Irish American, and Irish Canadian newspapers and magazines acted as carriers and shapers of cultural identities. Lindsay Janssen argues that famine memory was deployed transhistorically to help represent other crucial events in the Irish past, and periodicals used Famine recollections transnationally to give new meaning to events outside of Ireland, such as labor issues in the United States and the Second Boer War. Moving beyond individual writings to interrogate how different texts printed within a periodical issue influenced each other and affected audiences' attitudes to Irish hunger and distress, Janssen's cotextual approach reveals the intricate and sometimes divergent paths that Famine memory traveled through in the decades during and after its onset. Drawing upon a substantial corpus of creative and nonfiction periodical publications (including nearly 600 works of poetry and prose fiction), Periodical Famines is a thorough analysis of transatlantic Irish periodical culture during and after the Great Famine, demonstrating how periodicals' transmission of famine memories shaped global cultures.

What happens when cultural memory becomes a commodity? Who owns the memory? In The Memory Marketplace, Emilie Pine explores how memory is performed both in Ireland and abroad by considering the significant body of contemporary Irish theatre that contends with its own culture and history. Analyzing examples from this realm of theatre, Pine focuses on the idea of witnesses, both as performers on stage and as members of the audience. Whose memories are observed in these transactions, and how and why do performances prioritize some memories over others? What does it mean to create, rehearse, perform, and purchase the theatricalization of memory? The Memory Marketplace shows this transaction to be particularly fraught in the theatricalization of traumatic moments of cultural upheaval, such as the child sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. In these performances, the role of empathy becomes key within the marketplace dynamic, and Pine argues that this empathy shapes the kinds of witnesses created. The complexities and nuances of this exchange-subject and witness, spectator and performer, consumer and commodified-provide a deeper understanding of the crucial role theatre plays in shaping public understanding of trauma, memory, and history.

When women are erased from history, what are we left with? Between 1912 and 1922, Ireland experienced sweeping social and political change, including the Easter Rising, World War I, the Irish Civil War, the fight for Irish women's suffrage, the founding of the Abbey Theatre, and the passage of the Home Rule Bill. In preparation for the centennial of this epic decade, the Irish government formed a group of experts to oversee the ways in which the country would remember this monumental time. Unfortunately, the group was formed with no attempt at gender balance. Women and the Decade of Commemorations, edited by Oona Frawley, highlights not only the responsibilities of Irish women, past and present, but it also privileges women's scholarship in an attempt to redress what has been a long-standing imbalance. For example, contributors note the role of the Waking the Feminists movement, which was ignited when, in 2016, the Abbey Theater released its male-dominated centenary program. They also discuss the importance of addressing missing history and curating memory to correct the historical record when it comes to remembering revolution. Together, the essays in Women and the Decade of Commemorations consider the impact of women's unseen, unsung work, which has been critically important in shaping Ireland, a country that continues to struggle with honoring the full role of women today.

What happens when cultural memory becomes a commodity? Who owns the memory? In The Memory Marketplace, Emilie Pine explores how memory is performed both in Ireland and abroad by considering the significant body of contemporary Irish theatre that contends with its own culture and history. Analyzing examples from this realm of theatre, Pine focuses on the idea of witnesses, both as performers on stage and as members of the audience. Whose memories are observed in these transactions, and how and why do performances prioritize some memories over others? What does it mean to create, rehearse, perform, and purchase the theatricalization of memory? The Memory Marketplace shows this transaction to be particularly fraught in the theatricalization of traumatic moments of cultural upheaval, such as the child sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. In these performances, the role of empathy becomes key within the marketplace dynamic, and Pine argues that this empathy shapes the kinds of witnesses created. The complexities and nuances of this exchange-subject and witness, spectator and performer, consumer and commodified-provide a deeper understanding of the crucial role theatre plays in shaping public understanding of trauma, memory, and history.

"I find him to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic but shrewd enquirer, a companionable stroller, and a lover of anecdotes gathered by the wayside." So Tim Robinson described folklorist, revolutionary, and district justice Seán Mac Giollarnáth, whose 1941 book Annála Beaga ó Iorras Aithneach revealed his sheer delight in the rich language and stories of the people he encountered in Conamara, the Irish-speaking region in the south of Connemara. From tales of smugglers, saints, and scholars to memories of food, work, and family, the stories gathered here provide invaluable insights into the lives and culture of the community. This faithful and lovingly crafted translation, complete with annotations, a biography, and thoughtful chapters that explore the importance of the language and region, is the final work of both Robinson and his collaborator, the renowned writer and Irish language expert Liam Mac Con Iomaire. Translated into English for the first time, Conamara Chronicles: Tales from Iorras Aithneach preserves the art of storytellers in the West of Ireland and honors the inspiration they kindle even still.