Courses

SUMMER 2013

Irish Short Story Tradition / IRST 398B / ENGL 356

Prof. Michael Kenneally / Tuesday, Thursday 18:30-21:00

This course will deal with varieties of expression within the Irish Short Story tradition, examining a range of writers from the twentieth century. This course will begin with a focussed discussion of James Joyce’s ‘Araby’ both to establish some of the rhetorical and narrative features of the genre in general and to explore the ‘epiphanic tradition’ within Irish short stories. In exploring the changing concerns, evolving narrative strategies and range of subjects to be found in Irish stories written over an extended period, this course will consider how such texts provide windows into, and simultaneously embody the profound social, political and cultural changes which have taken place in Ireland during this period. This course will consider what impact, if any, the oral storytelling tradition of Gaelic culture as well the dual linguistic heritage in Ireland have had on the Irish short story. Irish Short Story Tradition will also examine how various critical theories can be usefully applied in our reading of specific stories.

FALL 2013

Introduction to Canadian Irish Studies / IRST 203

Prof. Susan Cahill / Monday, Wednesday 11:45-13:00

This multidisciplinary course will introduce the key events, personalities and issues in contemporary Irish Studies through the study of Ireland’s complex history and rich culture, and will also touch on the Irish experience in Canada. The study of Ireland and its Diaspora provides opportunities to explore wider academic issues related to cultural nationalism, linguistic preservation, rebellion and civil war, partition and political re-alignment, national affiliation and sectarian identities, changing gender roles, famine and emigration. The various themes we will focus on will therefore offers case studies for a range of issues that go beyond Irish Studies and are relevant for students whose primary interest is in other areas.

The Irish in Montreal / IRST 205 / HIST 213

Prof. Jane McGaughey / Wednesday 18:00-20:15

Drawing on a diversity of historiographical materials, this interdisciplinary course examines the story of the Irish in Montreal from the French colonial period through the years of expansion in the mid-19th century after the Irish Famine to the break up of its older Irish neighbourhoods a century afterwards. Starting with the demographics of Irish immigration and settlement in Quebec, it devotes special attention to the social and cultural relations between the Irish and other ethnic groups in Montreal over the past two centuries.

History of Ireland / IRST 211 / HIST 211

Prof. Gavin Foster / Tuesday, Thursday 10:15-11:30

This survey course traces the history of Ireland from the earliest times to the present, with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Special attention is given to the development of Irish nationalism and relations with Great Britain.

Celtic Christianity / IRST 298B / THEO 228

Prof. T.B.A. / This course is offered online

This course follows a historical line to show the connections of the pre‑Christian Celtic beliefs with the early Christian Church of Celtic countries. It focuses on the spirituality of the Celtic people in the context of Celtic history and culture. This course is offered entirely online through eConcordia. Students enrolling in this course should have off-campus access to a computer with reliable internet connectivity. To access your online course visit the eConcordia website at http://www.econcordia.com. Pleae contact eConcordia at 514-848-8770 or 1-888-361-4949 if you have any questions regarding the online section of this course.

Irish Emigration & Settlement (officially known as Diasporic Dispersal and Settlement) / IRST 303 / HIST 398H
Prof. Jane McGaughey / Tuesday, Thursday 11:45-13:00
Over 80 million people worldwide claim Irish heritage, making Ireland’s diaspora one of the most significant of the modern age. Why did they leave? Who left? Where did they go? You can answer these questions by taking part in Professor McGaughey’s inter-disciplinary course, examining the diaspora by looking at historical documents, cultural creations, and literature, and becoming involved in academic debates about the importance of Irish ethnicity outside of Ireland. Numerous countries (including Canada) and regions (including Quebec and Montreal) have been influenced by the arrival of Irish immigrants across the generations, while Ireland itself has been irrevocably shaped by the departure of millions of its people, making the story of the Irish Diaspora is, in many ways, the “second half” of Irish history. In this course you will become involved in exploring the meanings of Irishness abroad by learning about a spectrum of issues – reasons for emigration, immigrant mythologies, gendered experiences, and continuing links with Ireland across time and place – and also through comparative case studies of the Irish in Britain, America, Canada, Oceania, Latin America, and other global settings.

Irish Plays: Dramaturgy / IRST 344 / ENGL 398I

Prof. T.B.A / Monday, Wednesday 10:15-11:30

Many have argued that no art form serves as a truer mirror up to the Irish nation than theatre. Indeed, even before the founding of the state, Irish theatre consistently grappled with the nation’s politics, history and identity. However, this course questions and complicates the assumption that Irish theatre is all about Ireland. It takes as its guiding premise theatre scholar Nicholas Grene’s assertion that Irish drama has long been ‘created as much to be viewed from outside as from inside Ireland.’ The course traces a colourful history from the mid nineteenth century to the present, moving through key playwrights, playtexts and productions, including the globally successful melodramas of Dionysius Boucicault; the witty, pithy plays of Oscar Wilde; the political (and arguably propagandistic) work of WB Yeats and Augusta Gregory; the existentialism of Beckett; the commercial phenomenon of Riverdance; and the Tarantino inspired violent comedies of Martin McDonagh. The history of Irish theatre is characterized by figures and organisations that drew energy and self-definition from the world beyond Ireland. This course will illuminate the politics – national, postcolonial, gendered and global – that express themselves through Irish theatre, and, in so doing, it will encourage students to see that when theatre holds a mirror up to the Irish nation, a wider world is reflected back.

Irish Traditional Music in Canada / IRST 373 / ANTH 398V / SOCI 387V

Prof. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin / Monday, Wednesday 13:15-14:30

Canada has enjoyed a long historical relationship with Ireland and the Irish, in various religious, socioeconomic and political guises, which have made a substantial contribution to the evolution of Canadian culture since the late seventeenth century. The cultural history of Irish traditional music in Canada is inextricably linked to a complex matrix of Irish immigration and settlement that began in the late 1600s and stretched from Newfoundland to the Yukon, from the Hudson Bay to the Great Lakes. Evidence of this diaspora continues to echo through the prismatic soundscape of traditional music played by Irish, French, Scottish, and First Nation communities across Canada today. Exploring the music history of the Irish in the Atlantic provinces, Lower and Upper Canada, and the Western provinces, this course draws on analytical models in history, anthropology, and cultural studies, as well as ethnomusicology, and music criticism.

James Joyce / IRST 398C / ENGL 355

Prof. Susan Cahill / Tuesday 18:00-20:15

The course will serve as an introduction to James Joyce’s Ulysses, and will pay particular attention to the social, cultural and political forces in Ireland and beyond which shaped his writing. Because of the limited time available, this course will deal with the sections of the novel in different ways; some will be discussed in detail in class, others will be reported on by groups. This course will examine Ulysses in its literary, cultural, historical and mythical contexts, and do a close textual analysis of representative sections so that a general appreciation of the novel can be achieved. Central to the course will be discussion of Joyce as a modernist whose fiction explores a range of narrative, stylistic and formal experiments. By the end of the course, students should have a solid sense of Joyce’s accomplishments in this work, and should feel competent to re-examine his works with confidence and authority.

History and Memory in Ireland / IRST 398J / IRST 398M

Prof. Gavin Foster / Tuesday 13:15-16:00

Prerequisite: IRST 298A or HIST 211 and 30 credits; or permission of Department.
Explore the complex interaction between past and present and memory and forgetting by tracing the ways events in Irish history have been historicized, represented, narrated, revised, commemorated, and otherwise remembered (and silenced) over time by nationalists, unionists, emigrants, ‘exiles’ and other ‘communities of memory’ in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora.

Making of the Irish Landscape / IRST 398U / GEOG 342

Prof. Patrick Duffy / Tuesday, Thursday 13:15-14:30

Prerequisite: Second-year standing or permission of the Department.

The modern Irish landscape is a legacy of more than two thousand years of interaction between society and environment. This course will examine the evolution of its landscape in a broad historical sweep from early Christian tribalism, through colonial immigrations, demographic crises and political upheavals. The course will reflect on the landscape consequences of the events in Ireland’s historical narrative. The ‘making’ of the landscape emphasises the everyday workings of those who inhabited and occupied our landscapes in the past transforming them from nature to cultural artefacts – focusing on the nuts and bolts of forest clearance, emergence of places and territorial structures, placenames, towns and cities, buildings and transport systems. These processes took place gradually century over century, with today’s landscape being in the words of historian Simon Schama, ‘the sum of our pasts, generation laid over generation, like the slow mould of the seasons.’

Reading the Irish & Canadian Landscapes / IRST 498D / GEOG 498I

Prof. Patrick Duffy / Wednesday 14:45-17:30

This course will look at significant aspects of the landscapes of the Old World/Ireland and the New World/Canada, focusing on reading and representation of landscapes as texts, in maps, paintings, photographs, literature, architecture, monument and memorial. It will examine contrasts/continuities between Ireland and Canada in issues of belonging, identity and place; placefulness, placelessness and ‘landscape amnesia’; fast and slow landscapes; storied and imagined landscapes; organizing space in built/engineered environments. Reading the landscape involves understanding its vocabulary and how it was ‘written’ in terms of inscriptions or representations laid down over centuries. In their reality or their representation, landscapes can be modified or ‘edited’ to change their meaning for society – which is why European/Irish immigrants re-inscribed the colonised landscapes of the New World in familiar terms, in buildings, naming or planting.

FALL/WINTER 2013-2014

Irish Language & Culture I / IRST 233

Prof. T.B.A / Monday, Wednesday 18:15-19:35

The aim of this course is to provide students with a general and exciting introduction to Irish linguistic and cultural practices of contemporary Irish society. It will explore the principles of the Irish language as encountered in everyday life in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) areas of the West of Ireland and as taught in the many Gaelscoileana (Irish language schools) throughout the country. The objective of the course is to introduce students to the unique manifestations of the language expressed in song, poetry narratives, and other cultural traditions so that they can become familiar with the linguistic principles found in oral practices. The course will draw on a wide range of cultural forms (texts, audio, digital, visual) as a means of facilitating the process by which students can develop the basic ability to access the rich cultural traditions embodied in the Irish language. Students should have a keen interest in Irish culture and language.

Irish Language & Culture II / IRST 333

Prof. T.B.A / Tuesday 18:00-20:15

Prerequisite: IRST 233, MIRI 290, or permission of the department.

This six-credit course is for those who have a basic understanding of the Irish language or who have taken the Introduction to the Irish Language and Culture course. The course will provide students with a unique opportunity to enhance improve and develop the linguistic skills that they have already developed in the language. It will draw on student’s previous knowledge of the language to encourage them to improve their skills in both linguistic and cultural practices as encountered in everyday life in contemporary Ireland. The course will draw on a wide range of linguistic forms (texts, audio, digital, visual) as a means of facilitating the process by which students can develop the ability to access the rich cultural traditions embodied in the Irish language.

WINTER 2014

The Irish in Canada / IRST 210 / HIST 212
Prof. Jane McGaughey / Monday 18:00-20:15
Four million Canadians claim Irish ancestry today. Arriving in Newfoundland as early as 1536 and migrating across the country as the agricultural and industrial frontier moved west, the Irish attained a numerical strength second only to French-Canadians by the time Canadian Confederation was passed in 1867. By then, Quebec had a higher proportion of Irish-born residents than anywhere else in North America. From Canadian politics and economics, to culture and religion, the trails and footprints of the Irish are everywhere to behold - in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, and the Canadian West. While this course will focus on the micro histories of the Irish in each of the Canadian provinces, special emphasis will be given to key demographic movements and historic events that highlight the contribution of the Irish to Canadian history - the migration of Irish ‘wintermen’ to Newfoundland, Irish mercantile entrepreneurs in Quebec, the Great Famine, Irish rural pioneers in New Brunswick and Ontario, Irish working classes in urban Canada.

Research Methods in Irish Studies / IRST 300

Prof. Gavin Foster / Wednesday 11:45-14:30

Intended for students who have completed some previous coursework in Irish Studies, this small seminar-style course will sharpen your understanding of Irish Studies as a cutting-edge interdisciplinary field that addresses a host of compelling questions about Irish history, culture, identity, memory, and politics, to name a few. Additionally, this course is designed to provide students with critical tools and skills necessary for cross-disciplinary research, analysis, synthesis and forms of presentation – written, oral, and visual – that can be of enormous benefit beyond Irish Studies. Course approaches and activities will include: readings and discussions around some of the key debates that have shaped Irish Studies; guest presentations by Irish Studies faculty that highlight the methods of research and analysis used in their own areas of study; research activities and projects that combine reading and research across two or more disciplines; and training in the rudiments of scholarly research – from effective library research and field work, to research project development, to essay writing or other research outcomes.

The Great Irish Famine / IRST 312 / HIST 330
Prof. Gavin Foster / Tuesday 18:00-20:15
Remembered in folk memory as ‘An Gorta Mór’ or ‘The Great Hunger’, the Irish Famine of 1845-1850 was a humanitarian, ecological, social, and cultural catastrophe. Within a few years, disease and starvation claimed well over a million people. Learn about and participate in the historiographical debates, political controversies, and ethical challenges that the Great Famine continues to raise a century and a half later.

Irish Cultural Traditions in Quebec / IRST 371 / ANTH 398Y / SOCI 398Y

Prof. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin / Monday 11:45-14:30

For over three centuries, the Irish have played a seminal role in the political, economic, religious, and cultural life of Quebec. During the eighteenth century, Irish Wild Geese soldiers arrived in New France as part of the French military and colonial establishment. A century afterwards, Irish ideologues, journalists, and revolutionary figures helped shape the political contours of both patriotic Quebec and the emergent Canadian confederation, while victims of the Great Irish Famine added a new and tragic chapter to the history of the province. Throughout the twentieth century, Irish communities continued to flourish in rural and urban Quebec, while individual Quebecers of Irish origin made formidable contributions to the life of the province. Drawing on historical, ethnographic, musical, and literary sources, this course will explore the story of the Irish in Quebec since the early 1700s, from small community settings in the Gaspé peninsula and the Gatineau Valley, to larger working class and mercantile enclaves in metropolitan Montreal, Quebec City, and Sherbrooke. Particular attention will be given to Irish commemorative practices in Quebec and the manner in which Irish communities have shaped and maintained their own sense of cultural memory and historical place in La Belle Province.

Highlights of Irish Literature / IRST 398A / ENGL 359K

Prof. Susan Cahill / Wednesday 14:45-17:30

Ireland is home to some of the greatest and most influential writers in the world. With four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney), Ireland boasts a disproportionally large number of influential writers. Such writers have been instrumental in the development of literary movements and genres such as romanticism, realism, modernism, postmodernism, avant-garde theatre, satire, and the gothic, and have contributed to innovating the novel and poetic forms. This course introduces students to some of the best-known and influential Irish texts, placing them in their cultural and literary backgrounds and exploring their resonances through to the present day. Texts will include such classics as Gulliver’s Travels and Dracula, plays by Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, fiction by Elizabeth Bowen and Maeve Brennan as well as the innovations of more contemporary writers such as Kevin Barry and Anne Enright.

The Irish Literary Revival / IRST 398D / ENGL 357

Prof. Susan Cahill / Tuesday, Thursday 11:45-13:00

This course will explore how Irish culture at the beginning of the twentieth century underwent a profound change, producing in W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge some of the most influential writers of their time. The period was one of the most intense, creative and contentious in Irish cultural history, while its meanings and legacy are still the subject of intense debate. Meanwhile, James Joyce began to emerge as a modernist writer who did not believe in the aims of the revivalists. The important of the Literary Revival is still hotly debated: What does it mean to ‘revive’ a literature and language? Was the Revival a deadening if elegant exercise in cultural nostalgia or, as some scholars now argue, a unique and vital instance of colonial modernism? This course will explore such issues by examining some of the most important literary texts of the twentieth century.

Irish Film Studies / IRST 398G / FMST 398Z

Prof. T.B.A / Friday 8:45-12:45

Ireland has been on camera since 1910, when a US production company, the ‘O’Kalems,’ crossed the Atlantic to film romanticised, politicised representations of ‘Old Ireland,’ aimed at a nostalgic American diaspora. Since then, home-grown Irish filmmakers have used the medium to explore and articulate Ireland’s complex social fabric, while Hollywood has continued to play an important role in how Ireland is seen globally, and, indeed, in how it sees itself. This course takes as it start and end point the idea of an Irish stereotype, while the weeks in-between delve into the nuances of Irish history, politics, identity, sexuality and culture. The course examines the oeuvres of key Irish directors, including Neil Jordan, Pat Murphy and Jim Sheridan, and, through analysis of a set feature each week, It shows that film has consistently tackled the thornier dimensions of Irish life. Rooted in contemporary Irish scholarship, and engaging with – amongst other themes – Ireland’s treatment of its Travelling Community, its history of sexual repression, the Northern Irish ‘Troubles,’ and Dublin’s gangland culture, this course offers students an Ireland both picturesque and gritty, both mythologized and human: Ireland through a new lens.

Irish Identities Abroad / IRST 398K

Prof. Jane McGaughey / Tuesday, Thursday 13:15-14:30

Irishmen and Irishwomen living abroad have experienced some of the most consistent ethnic stereotyping of any cultural group over the past two hundred years. The aim of this course is to explore these various identities the Irish have had to navigate while overseas, including the “Berserker Celt”, the Madonna-Whore, the ape-like degenerate, the poverty-stricken mother, the waif-like famine survivor, the hyper-masculine warrior, the romantic revolutionary, the sly domestic servant, and many others. These labels and categories vary from being affectionate to blatantly racist, and often have been just as dependent upon the new country’s previous domestic tensions as any universal Irish characteristics. Course material will question how these stereotypes for both men and women arose, how powerful they were in various areas of the diaspora, how well-engrained they became for immigrant communities, and what changes, if any, have occurred in more modern times.

Performing Irishness / IRST 398X

Prof. T.B.A / Tuesday, Thursday 14:45-16:00

Irishness is performed around the world in myriad ways: some strange, some mundane. St Patrick’s Day parades, Irish dance spectacles, and traditional music are just some of the performance phenomena associated with Irish culture. But is there an authentic Irishness? Is there a ‘real’ Irish cultural identity? This course uses the insights of the discipline of performance studies to reflect on Irishness, but also to offer students the tools to interrogate what it means to perform national identity in the Québécois context and beyond. A core concern of performance studies is the notion of embodied knowledge: things that are learned through doing as much as through thinking. This course, therefore, will combine theoretical texts – including those by Richard Schechner, Judith Butler and Victor and Edie Turner – with performance-based activities – including storytelling and ethnographic re-enactments of Gaelic games. It will encourage participants to think through practice and come to an embodied, as well as intellectual, understanding of what it means to perform politics, to perform ethics, to perform gender, to perform change, and, of course, to perform Irishness.

For further information or registration assistance contact Matina Skalkogiannis at 514 848-2424, ext. 8711 or email: cdnirish.fas@concordia.ca