Documenting Irish Feminisms: The Second Wave
Linda Connolly and Tina O’Toole
Documenting Irish Feminisms: The Second Wave
ISBN: 9781851322367
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Charts the development of second wave feminism in Ireland, utilising an extensive range of rare primary sources, including documents, photos and publications. A number of themes in the analysis of Irish feminist politics from the 1970s to the 1990s are introduced and advanced, including the emergence of pioneering feminist groups and organisations; reproductive rights and activism; the legal system and the State; the development of cultural projects; feminism and Northern Ireland; lesbian activism; class and education. This book is an invaluable resource in the fields of history, sociology, politics, Irish studies and women’s studies.
Female Activists: Irish Women and Change, 1900–1960
Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy (eds)
Female Activists: Irish Women and Change, 1900–1960
ISBN: 9781851322350
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Charts the lives and work of women who were significant figures in Irish political life in the twentieth century. Many of these women cut their activist teeth in the suffrage campaign and went on to play an important role on the national and international political stage. These biographical studies recount the lives and work of trade unionists, Louie Bennett, Helena Molony and Mary Galway, and political activists, Kathleen Lynn, Rosamond Jacob, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins. These women campaigned on numerous significant issues, from suffrage to pacifism, republicanism, trade unionist, socialism and health reform. In addition, Jacob was a novelist and historian, Molony an Abbey Theatre actor, and Lynn a pioneer in pediatric medicine. Many were viewed as ‘radical’ in a society that was deeply conservative. This collection adds considerably to our view of women’s place in twentieth-century Ireland.
Dorothy Macardle: A Life
Dorothy Macardle (1889–1958) was a political and social activist, journalist, novelist, broadcaster, playwright, one of the most popular and influential Irish historians of her time, and a student of the occult. This first biography traces her life from her involvement in the War of Independence to her role as a leading civil libertarian in the 1950s, and discusses her literary career and her international human rights work. An Irish nationalist writer with an international reputation, Macardle was a woman of many parts, and her career sheds light on modern Irish political history, interwar-era women’s history, and Irish historiography and literature.
Red-Headed Rebel, Susan L. Mitchell: Poet and Mystic of the Irish Cultural Renaissance
Hilary Pyle
Red-Headed Rebel, Susan L. Mitchell: Poet and Mystic of the Irish Cultural Renaissance
ISBN: 9781851322336
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Described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the nearest approach they have to a true poet’ Susan Mitchell (1866–1926) was an active and valued member of Dublin society. Originally from Carrick-on-Shannon and raised by Unionist aunts in Dublin, she rebelled against privileged society and the Protestant Church in which she was raised. By a trick of fate she exchanged life as a gentlewoman in provincial Ireland for that of a journalist working on far-sighted publications in Dublin. Objective despite her republican views, contemporary politics and the literary world were lampooned by her. Dublin in the tumultuous years from the Easter Rising of 1916, the signing of the Treaty and the Civil War is seen through her eyes. Her satirical commentary, which cuts close to the bone, provides essential reading.
The Sligo-Leitrim World of Kate Cullen
Hilary Pyle (ed)
The Sligo-Leitrim World of Kate Cullen, 1832–1913
ISBN:
9781851322329
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Kate Cullen’s lively manuscript is a riveting account of the close-knit life of Protestant Ireland, a society absorbed in its own triumphs and misfortunes, in its religion and fashions, and yet conscious that history was being made. During the 1840s Kate Cullen lived in Dublin, staying for periods in Sligo, Donegal and Leitrim. She witnessed the Famine, though she was cushioned from it. She married the bank manager in Carrick-on-Shannon; moving as a widow to Sligo to earn her living as manageress of the County Club. Kate remembered her experiences so vividly that around 1900 her daughter, Susan L. Mitchell, then a budding writer, persuaded her to dictate them, eager to learn of her own origins. Her memoir has an additional importance in the background that it reveals about Mitchell, one of the leading figures of the Irish literary revival, later distinguished as a poet and friend of Yeats, AE and Seumas O’Sullivan.
Cesca's Diary
Hilary Pyle
Cesca’s Diary, 1913–1916: Where Art and Nationalism Meet
ISBN: 9781851322312
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Born in England into a unionist family, the artist Frances Georgiana Chenevix Trench became a convinced nationalist and quickly involved herself in the movement for Home Rule and political freedom in Dublin. Cesca, as she was better known, took the name Sadhbh Trinseach during the Gaelic Revival, and kept a detailed diary of her involvement in the nationalist movement as a member of Cumann na mBan, as well as a personal account of her presence in the Howth gun-running incident and the events of Easter Week 1916. Before the outbreak of the First World War she was at art school in Paris where she associated with students from other small countries seeking freedom. Her passion for Ireland affected her art, her love life, and her relations with her unionist family. Her seven manuscript journals, originally written in Irish, English and French, have been translated and set in the context of their times by Hilary Pyle. The book is heavily illustrated with her portrait sketches of friends and associates in the movement, as well as examples of her oil paintings and pastels. This is a fascinating account of a young woman in early twentieth century Ireland.
Ireland's Legendary Women
Rosemarie Rowley
Ireland’s Legendary Women
ISBN: 9781851321568
Years later, when all that was left was talk
in Tara there was held a loving feast
at such momentous meeting lovers balk
but Echu the King had his magic tryst
and sent out word the greatest was the least
Etain’s famous beauty now enriched him
he had seen her bathing, it bewitched him.
Rosie: Essays in Honour of Rosanna 'Rosie' Hackett
Mary McAuliffe (ed.)
Rosie: Essays in Honour of Rosanna ‘Rosie’ Hackett (1893-1976) Revolutionary and Trade Unionist
ISBN: 9781851321421
In 2014, following a grassroots activist campaign, the new bridge over the River Liffey was named after the revolutionary and trade union activist, Rosanna ‘Rosie’ Hackett (1893–1976). From an early age Hackett, a working-class Dublin woman, was involved in trade unionism, nationalism and the fight for women’s rights. She was at various times a member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union, the Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan. She was involved in the 1913 Lockout, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence; she spent over 50 years as a trade union activist working in Liberty Hall. Naming a major structure in the capital city after this ‘unknown’ woman honours the contributions of many other unknown women to modern Irish history. In this collection historians and activists bring to light more of those hidden histories of Irish women’s political, militant and trade union activism.
Dr Mary McAuliffe is a historian and lecturer in Women’s Studies at UCD. She is past President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland (WHAI) and a committee member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians (IAPH).
Irish Feminisms Past, Present and Future
Clara Fischer & Mary McAuliffe (eds)
Irish Feminisms Past, Present and Future: Essays in Honour of Mary Cullen and Margaret Mac Curtain
ISBN: 9781851321186
Irish Feminisms: Past, Present and Future is a collection of multi-disciplinary essays from leading academics and activists that interrogates the various waves of Irish feminist activism over the last one hundred years. Emanating from a conference held in 2012, this collection offers snapshots of the many feminist issues, ideas and campaigns that have invigorated, enlivened and challenged Irish society since the early twentieth century. From the first wave suffrage women who fought for an Ireland in which women were to be full and equal citizens, to the third and even fourth wave feminists who campaign for full reproductive rights, this collection provides insightful analyses, from the centre and the margins, of the various feminist battles and backlashes modern Irish society has experienced. This book is essential reading for all those interested in Irish feminist identities, histories and activism.
The Language of Gender: Power and Agency in Celtic Studies
Amber Handy & Brian Ó Conchubhair
The Language of Gender: Power and Agency in Celtic Studies
ISBN:
9781851320288 hardback
This important volume, The Language of Gender, Power and Agency in Celtic Studies, edited by Amber Handy and Brian Ó Conchubhair, not only demonstrates the breath and depth of Celtic Studies as a vibrant, multifaceted, interdisciplinary subject, but combines essays by senior scholars such as Catherine McKenna (Harvard), Máirín Nic Eoin (St Patrick’s College, Dublin) and Dan M. Wiley (USI), with new and ground-breaking work by young, emerging scholars such as Hannah Zdansky (Love in Translation: The Irish Vernacularization of the Aeneid), Theresa O’Byrne (Ireland’s Earliest Visionary Account of St Patrick’s Purgatory), Tomás L. Ó Murchú (The Language of Discontent in Séamas Óg Mac Coitir’s Elegies) and Wes Hamrick (Hard News, Messianic Visions: Scribes and the Public Sphere). Introduced by Joseph Falaky Nagy (UCLA) these fourteen essays explore current trends and themes in Celtic Studies ranging from the literary manuscript to contemporary literature.
Brian Ó Conchubhair is Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame. His monograph on the intellectual history of the Irish revival, Fin de Siècle na Gaeilge: Darwin, An Athbheochan agus Smaointeoireacht na hEorpa, was published in 2009 by An Clóchomhar. He has edited Gearrscéalta Ár Linne (CIC, 2006), Why Irish? Irish Language and Literature in Academia (Arlen House, 2008), Twisted Truths (CIC, 2011), The Midnight Court: A Critical Edition (Syracuse University Press, 2011), Dorchadas by Liam Ó Flaithearta (Arlen House, 2012), and Notre Dame’s Happy Returns (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). He was Series Editor for Kerry’s Fighting Story 1916–1921, Limerick’s Fighting Story 1916–1921, Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story 1916–1921 and Dublin’s Fighting Story 1916–1921, all published by Mercier Press in 2009. He served as the Executive Director of the IRISH Seminar (2011–2013) and is currently Vice-President of the American Conference for Irish Studies.
Amber Handy is an Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, MS. She holds a Ph.D. in History with a doctoral minor in Gender Studies from the University of Notre Dame and an M.Phil. in Medieval History from Trinity College, Dublin. Her primary research interests are the early medieval cultural history of gender, youth, and education and the relationship between Ireland and the rest of western Europe. She is currently at work on a monograph concerning the relationship between early medieval Irish and continental specula principum and the changing social and gendered aspects of early medieval kingship.