Basic Language Courses in Irish:
The courses focus on learning Irish (sometimes referred to as Gaelic) as it is spoken in the Irish-speaking regions of Ireland, known as the Gaeltacht. The courses utilize conversation and song, and aim to promote fluency in spoken Irish as well as proficiency in reading and writing. Students progress to conversation, translations, compositions, and readings from contemporary Irish literature. They also participate in Irish-speaking events at Glucksman Ireland House. The Irish language fulfills NYU's Morse Academic Plan language requirement.
Elementary Irish I
V58.0100 Identical to V42.0100. Open to students with no previous training in Irish. 4 points.
This course introduces students to the rudiments of the Irish language, including phonemes and pronunciation, syntactical structure, and verbal conjugations. In addition, a history of the language is provided, as well as a general introduction to Irish culture, including discussions of family and place names. Students are encouraged to begin speaking with basic sentence structures.
Elementary Irish II
V58.0101 Identical to V42.0101. Continuation of V58.0100 or assignment by placement examination or department permission. 4 points.
This course builds on the grammatical lessons of Elementary Irish I and expands into more complex verbal conjugations while concentrating on idiomatic expressions. The accumulation of vocabulary is stressed and students are introduced to basic literature in Irish while developing beginning conversational fluency.
Intermediate Irish I
V58.0102 Identical to V42.0102. Prerequisite: V58.0101 or assignment by placement examination or department permission. 4 points.
For the more advanced student of Irish, this course focuses on improving conversational fluency and on expanding vocabulary through reading more complex literature in Irish.
Intermediate Irish II
V58.0103 Identical to V42.0103. Continuation of V58.0102 or assignment by placement examination or department permission. 4 points.
The focus of this course is on conversational fluency, reading complex literature in Irish, and writing in the Irish language, further encouraging students to strengthen their pronunciation and command of spoken Irish.
Introduction to Celtic Music
V58.0152 Identical to V71.0151. 4 points.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the traditional and contemporary music of the Celtic areas of Western Europe—Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and Galicia. Recordings and live performances present the extraordinary range of singing styles and the musical instruments employed in each culture, including harps, bagpipes and a variety of other wind, free reed, keyboard and stringed instruments. Forms and musical styles are explored in depth along with a study of their origin, evolution, and cultural links.
The Irish and New York
V58.0180 Identical to V57.0180 and V99.0325. 4 points.
This course explores the symbiotic relationship between New York City and the Irish from the 18th through the 20th centuries, as well as the impact of political, social, and cultural changes in Ireland and America on a transnational population. Factors beyond race and language, which help define and preserve ethnic group identity, as well as the city’s role in the creation of a pseudo-Irish identity that is disseminated on both sides of the Atlantic, are also explored. Readings are broadly drawn from immigration, urban, and social history. Primary documents, literature, and film are also used as texts.
Topics in Irish History
V58.0181 Identical to V57.0181. 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 imagery and ideology of Irish nationalism, Irish American popular folk culture, and the Irish in America.
For more information about the course on Oral History of Irish America, please see our special Oral History Project page.
History of Modern Ireland, 1580-1800
V58.0182 Identical to V57.0182. 4 points.
Examines the English conquest of Ireland from the reign of Elizabeth I to the last meeting of the Irish Parliament. Key themes include the plantation of Ireland with settlers from England, Scotland, and Wales, the decline of the Gaelic political order and culture, the religious reformation and Counter Reformation, Ireland as a site of English and European wars, the imposition of a penal code, and the vain attempt to rebel against British rule in the late 18th century resulting in the Act of Union, which disestablished the Irish Parliament in Dublin.
History of Modern Ireland, 1800-1922
V58.0183 Identical to V57.0183. 4 points.
Examines the period from the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland to the achievement of partial independence in 1922. Topics covered include the Union and its aftermath; the growth of nationalism in 19th-century Ireland; the Great Famine of 1845-1850 and its long-term economic, social, and political consequences; the shaping of modern Ireland; Fenianism and the Land War; the Irish cultural revival; the policy of Home Rule and Unionist reaction; the 1916 Rising; and the War of Independence.
History of Modern Ireland, 1922-Present
V58.0184 Identical to V57.0184. 4 points.
The focus of this course is the political history of the two jurisdictions within the island of Ireland founded upon the partition settlement of 1920-1922. An era of revolution and bitter civil and confessional conflict temporarily gave way to a period of separate state-building projects according to different political, cultural, and economic priorities and therefore to divergent historical experiences. Division has characterized the history of the island in the 20th century and attempts to negotiate those fractures characterize the political agenda, a process ongoing in the present moment.
Seminar in Irish History
V58.0185 Identical to V57.0185. 4 points.
Intensive examination of specific areas of Irish history with an emphasis on critical reading and individual research projects. Past themes include the development and modernization of the Republic of Ireland with particular consideration of the economy; the Great Famine of 1845-1851, which was an immediate and long-term catastrophe for the Irish people but which was also the catalyst for substantial changes—positive and negative—in Irish society and culture; and the cinematic representations of Irish Americans.
The Irish in America
V58.0187 Indenitcal to 57.0187. 4 points.
This course uses different approaches and points of focus depending on the instructor, as denoted by its subtitle. Please see the following descriptions:
The Irish in America: Immigration and Experience
This course examines the Irish experience in the United States by considering the history of the relationship from both sides of the Atlantic. Specifically, it encompasses the period from 1845 to the present: the years from the potato famine to the Celtic Tiger. Areas covered include: the political, social, and economic forces in Ireland that prompted emigration; the demographic patterns of immigration; the role of religion and the Catholic Church in the development of the community; Irish immigrant influence and involvement in the American political system and labor movement; the persistence of the Irish nationalist movement in America and how the Irish experience in America is reflected in literature and on stage and screen. Course materials range from readings in immigration history and original source material to Irish American drama and film.
The Irish in America: Music, Stage, and Popular Culture
This course explores the impact of Irish immigrants on American popular culture. Focusing on ports of entry and urban centers of entertainment and migration over the past two centuries, the course looks at the ways in which the Irish and Irish-Americans have shaped American entertainment in the realms of music, dance, drama, film, recording, literature, festivals and sport. In addition, the course delves into issues of race surrounding the American reception of the early Irish immigrants through imagery and media depictions.
Contemporary Irish Politics and Society
V58.0515 Identical to V42.0515. 4 points.
An examination of the politics of contemporary Ireland, north and south. The course focuses on political, governmental, and constitutional developments in the Republic of Ireland since independence and discusses the causes of conflict and the prospect of resolution in Northern Ireland.
The Irish Renaissance
V58.0621 Identical to V41.0621. 4 points.
This course seeks to understand the extraordinary achievements of Irish writers in the last decade of the 19th and the first third of the 20th century. We will read widely in all the different genres – poetry, polemic, short story, novel, drama – that were remade by Irish writers during the tumultuous period from the fall of Charles Stuart Parnell into the early years of national government in the 1930s. Authors read on the course include Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Lady Augusta Gregory, John Synge, Sean O’Casey, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien and others. We will balance our readings of literature with consideration of the social and historical contexts of Ireland under the Union with Britain, and after that Union was partially broken. In attempting to refine the proper lens through which to view this literature, we will address a number of salient issues, including the nature and cultural forms of Irish cultural nationalism, the violence of civil war, the social position of literature and of intellectuals in projects of national reconciliation and national identity, and the clash between revolutionary anti-imperialism and conservative Catholicism, between rural and urban identities, between provincialism and cosmopolitanism as strategies for literary self-fashioning.
Irish American Literature
V58.0622 Identical to V41.0622. 4 points.
The course examines Irish American literature from the 19th century to the present, considering the literary responses of generations of Irish immigrants as they strove to understand and contribute to the American experience. The works of writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, Flannery O’Connor, John O’Hara, and William Kennedy are explored, as are the connections between ethnic and literary cultures.
Colloquium: James Joyce
V58.0625 Identical to V41.0625. 4 points.
This course is an in-depth consideration of all of the major works of James Joyce, from the early short stories of Dubliners to the late experimental prose/poetry of Finnegan's Wake; it concentrates, however, on a detailed and systematic reading of Ulysses. The biographical and social/historical contexts of Joyce's work are investigated alongside consideration of his pathbreaking formal experiments and his relations with the many currents of literary and artistic Modernism. Discussion of Ulysses is complimented by consideration of the many forms of literary and critical theory that have been fashioned around readings of the book.
Irish Dramatists
V58.0700 Identical to H28.0603, V30.0700, and V41.0700. 4 points.
A study of the rich dramatic tradition of Ireland since the days of William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the fledgling Abbey Theatre. Playwrights covered include John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, and Anne Devlin. Issues of Irish identity, history, and postcoloniality are engaged alongside an appreciation of the emotional texture, poetic achievements, and theatrical innovations that characterize this body of dramatic work.
Independent Study
V58.0998 Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies is required. 2 or 4 points per term.
Independent study with an Irish studies faculty member.
NYU in Dublin
The focus of NYU’s summer program in Dublin is contemporary Ireland and its culture. The program is centered at Trinity College, Ireland’s oldest university, situated in the heart of Dublin, where students reside and take classes. Courses are open to NYU and non-NYU students, both graduate and undergraduate, and include Irish literature, history, politics, visual and performing arts, creative writing, popular culture and the Irish language. The academic program is complemented by a series of field trips and cultural and social activities designed to broaden students’ knowledge of Ireland. Among the typical evening activities are outings to the theatre, poetry readings, screenings at the new Irish Film Center, and traditional music sessions. Weekend excursions include Donegal and Galway. See our visit the NYU's Summer Study Abroad: Summer in Dublin page for more information about available courses and its application process.
