Irish and Irish-American Studies Graduate-Level Course Descriptions

The Irish Studies Seminar I

G58.1001. 4 points.
Core course required for all MA candidates; offered Fall semesters.

This course introduces graduate students to the inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of contemporary Irish Studies practice, focusing on issues of historiographic and representational controversy in the interpretation of Irish history and culture.  Ireland House faculty and guest lecturers explore current sites of contest and research, including the application in the Irish case of theoretical and critical issues in Humanities and Social Science scholarship.  Topics studied on the course include imperialism, colonialism and post-colonialism, modernization, globalization, tourism studies, gender studies, and the cultural construction of memory and identity in Ireland and in Irish communities worldwide.

The Irish Studies Seminar II - An Teanga Bheo: Irish (Gaelic) Language Linguistic Acquisition & Historical/Cultural Context

G58.1002. 4 points.
Core course required for all MA candidates; offered Spring semesters.

This course is intended to give graduate students for the MA degree in Irish Studies with no prior experience of the language a basic conversational proficiency. It will examine in detail the major historical and cultural subjects surrounding the language, with emphasis on the historical reasons for decline of the language in the modern period since 1500, the nineteenth century and twentieth century attempts at revival, and the contemporary position of the language within Ireland and abroad. This exploration of the language and its historical and cultural context is designed to complement related graduate courses in Irish Studies, specifically those which explore modern literature, modern history and contemporary politics.

Modern Irish:  Gaelic Tradition in Literature and Folklore

G58.1080. 4 points.

A survey of the impact of translations of Irish language writing on the development of modern Irish literature in English.  The course considers selected writers of the first Celtic revival at the end of the 19th century, but concentrates on the language revival movement of the late 19th century, the production of scholarly and popular works in translation (from the scholarly editions of the Early Irish Texts Society to the popular re-tellings of Irish myths by Lady Gregory and WB Yeats), and contemporary translations and adaptations of Irish language writing. 

Literature of Modern Ireland I

G58.1083. 4 points.

This course conducts a comprehensive survey of the traditions of writing in Ireland from the plantations of the late sixteenth century to the famine of 1846-50.   By tracing the shadow of Irish language literary traditions in and alongside the emerging Irish literary traditions in English, we will consider the interplay of literature and national identity, and the role of literature and other forms of print culture in a variety of social processes, including politicization, the language shift, and textual representations of violence, domestic life, cultural memory, national and international economy, and forms of agency.  Major authors including Jonathan Swift, Bishop Berkeley, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson, Thomas Moore, Samuel Ferguson, and James Clarence Mangan are considered, as well as the development of Irish forms of poetry, drama, and prose in English.  It is the aim of the course to give students a detailed grasp of Irish literary history before the cataclysmic social changes wrought by the Irish famine, and to introduce students to the concepts and terminology employed in contemporary Irish literary scholarship.

Literature of Modern Ireland II

G58.1084. 4 points.

This course surveys the main currents and individual careers of Irish writers from the late 19th to the middle 20th century.  Authors studied on the course include Synge, Lady Gregory, Shaw, O’Casey, A. E., Stephens, Gogarty, Clarke, Kavanagh, Joyce, O’Flaherty, O’Faolain, O’Connor, and Stuart.

Topics in Irish Literature

G58.1085. 4 points.

The emphasis of this course varies by semester and is designed to allow flexibility in course offerings from visiting scholars and specialists in particular fields. Past examinations have included contemporary Irish fiction and poetry, Irish women writers, and Northern Irish poetry.

Irish Poetry After Yeats

G58.1087. 4 points.

This course will read in depth the most challenging poetry written by Irish poets since the ascendancy of W.B. Yeats.  We will seek to address the most pressing questions facing poetry criticism in the Irish Studies field:  the struggle with Yeats’s commanding example; the relation of poetry to national partition and the civil crisis in Northern Ireland; the confining and liberating aspects of tradition; the use of translation as a means of finding voice; the agency of poetry in forcing change within a conservative cultural climate; the challenge of postmodernism to national literatures, and the arrival of prosperity in Ireland and the consequent need to revise our conceptions of Irish culture.  The poets we will read include Austin Clarke, Louis MacNeice, Denis Devlin, John Hewitt, Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Derek Mahon, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Paul Muldoon, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Ciaran Carson, Vona Groarke and Medbh McGuckian. 

Music and Cultural Identity in Ireland

G58.1315. 4 points.

This course conducts a rigorous survey of the history of music in Ireland and examines critically the role of various musical cultures in the production of national and other forms of identity in Ireland.  The course offers student the opportunity to develop a critical vocabulary for discussing music as an agent of social change and social continuity, addressing key concepts in musicological analysis as these are present in the Irish context, including musical modes, regional and national styles, music as an ideological force and its role in politicization, and the absorption and elaboration of musical technologies in their specific social settings.

Irish Music in America 1750 to the Present

G58.1319. 4 points.

This course surveys the musical culture of Irish emigrants to North America from 1750 to the present.  It seeks to set musical styles in Ireland and America in an informed historical dialogue, thereby opening up explanatory paradigms for Irish diasporic experience and for the role of Irish musics in North American social, cultural, and political life.  Students will gain a detailed groundwork for subsequent historical research in folk and popular culture.  The course will also be of use to students of comparative music history, the history and theory of popular culture, and the study of memory and folklore.

History of Modern Ireland I:
The Making of Modern Ireland, c.1800 to the present

G58.1416. 4 points.

History of Modern Ireland II:
Irish History since 1800

G58.1417. 4 points.

This two-part survey course seeks to analyze modern Irish history before and after the Act of Union of 1800.  The first semester seeks to understand the conditions of possibility for the Union itself:  conquest and colonization, resistance and rebellion; the formation of the Protestant Ascendancy and the imperial context of the British state; the discursive development of Irish nationalism; the demographic and societal shifts occasioned by economic development, agricultural change, and emigration; and the Irish contexts of the Enlightenment and the Atlantic revolutions.  The second semester examines the impact of the Union and the stages of its dissolution on Irish life, considering the role of Ireland in the British empire; the nature of civil society in Ireland, and the cultural and political dimensions of nationalism and unionism before and after independence; the role of the Irish diaspora on developments in Ireland; and the particular nature of the Irish experience of urbanization, modernization, and globalization.

Debates in Modern Irish History

G58.1421. 4 points.

This course seeks to analyze a selection of the intense debates in Ireland itself and abroad, especially in Britain and the USA, that characterize modern Irish history, concentrating on topics that transcend the specific Irish experience to raise issues of wider human import.  It is equally a study of events and of their interpretation from various contested perspectives, and thus requires intense engagement with the historiography, and with the study of history as a mode of thought. The topics to be explored include the issues of Conquest, Collaboration, Assimilation and Resistance, viewed through the prism of Ireland and the British Empire, as reflected in a number of major topics, including: The Act of Union; The Great Irish Famine; Irish Diaspora; Issues of Irish Identity (as seen through Irish and British eyes via historical movements and events); the ethno-religious conflict in Northern Ireland since 1968; Ireland and Globalization.

Ireland in the Atlantic World

G58.1425. 4 points.

The purpose of this seminar is to examine Ireland’s place in the Atlantic World from a variety of perspectives.  Ranging across the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, we will study how and why a small island on the western European periphery intersects with major historical themes such as exploration, colonization, commerce, slavery, revolution, and migration.  Beginning with the Atlantic as a means of opportunity for developing trading relationships with Ireland, students will learn how British and continental imperial dynamics embedded the Irish in the basic structure of the emerging Atlantic World, including its economics, politics, and culture.  We will explore the consequences of the Irish presence on North America (particularly eastern Canada and the thirteen American colonies), the West Indies, South America, and South Africa between approximately 1500 and 1850.  We will conclude with a debate about the definitions and chronology of the “Atlantic World” field vis-à-vis our understanding of Ireland and the Irish diaspora, including the significance of the Atlantic journey for transportation to Australia down to 1853.

The Great Famine and the Irish Diaspora

G58.1431. 4 points.

This course explores the causes and consequences of the Great Irish Famine of .1845-51 in which about one million people are estimated to have died, and from whose consequences another two million people fled the country between 1845 and 1855. It then analyses the impact of this Diaspora, and of the continuing emigration after 1855, on the receiving countries, particularly the USA, as well as on Ireland itself. This course adopts a consciously and systematically comparative approach towards the history of the Famine and of the Diaspora.  A critique of the strengths and weaknesses of comparative methodology in historical studies forms an integral part of the course.

Topics in Irish and Irish-American Studies

G58.1441. 4 points.

The emphasis of this course varies by semester and is designed to allow flexibility in course offerings by Ireland House faculty and by visiting scholars. 

Sociology of Change in Ireland

G58.1467. 4 points.

The aim of this course is to introduce students on the Irish and Irish American Studies MA to the basic concepts used in sociology to understand and analyze contemporary Irish society.  It examines social change and continuity in modern Ireland. The course concentrates on how industrialization and economic development impacted on Irish society in general. By the end of the course, students will acquire a basic understanding of sociological theories of modernization, dependency and class structure, and will be able to apply these theories to the contemporary Irish situation.  Students will be expected to attend all lectures and to participate in the weekly discussion section. 

Britain and Ireland since 1750

G58.2427. 4 points.

Introduces the interpretive and primary literature in modern English history, with emphasis on recent scholarship and methodology in English social and cultural history. Readings and discussions of social class structure, the Victorian city and village, labor unions, public education and literacy, criminality, prostitution, and health.

Guided Research

G58.1099. 4 points.

The option of pursuing a 4-point Guided Research course is provided to allow students on the MA in Irish and Irish American Studies to prepare their MA thesis in close supervision with their faculty supervisor.  Students are required to submit a proposal with description of proposed research, an abstract of the final project, and a schedule of meetings to their supervisor for approval before registration for the semester in which the Guided Research will be conducted.  The proposal must be approved by the supervisor and by the Director of the MA.  Only 4 points of the 32-point MA may be pursued via Guided Research.  Only students who have completed 12 points may apply for Guided Research.