Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.

Exceptionally high FDI inflows into Ireland have been one of the main resources of Irish rapid economic growth, and earned the country a title of “Celtic Tiger”.  The goal of this thesis is to find out the driving sources behind this high inward investment and to examine whether Ireland has truly enjoyed higher amounts of FDI inflows than predicted by the model. This thesis analyzes the determinants of foreign direct investment in Ireland. The determinants being examined are GDP, GDP per capita, infrastructure, labor productivity, education and trade openness. The analyzed period is from 1997 to 2007 and data is collected for 30 OECD member states. With the help of the pooled regression we were able to obtain the following results: GDP, GDP per capita, infrastructure and education have a significant effect on FDI and FDI per capita inflows. However, labor productivity and trade openness turned out to be less significant in attracting FDI to Ireland. Moreover, based on the results, infrastructure had an unexpected negative sign, while the rest of the variables indicated expected positive relation to FDI.

<p>This study examines Irish modernist literature in order to complicate established critical modes which read modernist movements as reflective of distinctly vernacular or cosmopolitan aesthetic and political commitments. I argue that neither recent models of vernacular modernism nor older models of cosmopolitan modernism entirely account for the stylistic innovations and formal experiments of modernist literature. Instead, modernist writers negotiate a field of tension between the poles of cosmopolitan and vernacular, and demonstrate that their works represent forms of identity that accommodate elements of both national belonging and cosmopolitan individualism. </p><p>Examining works by four authors - William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, and Raymond Queneau - this project argues that modernist literature represents a set of idiosyncratic, dynamic efforts to negotiate the tensions between the limits of the nation-state system and a variety of emerging transnational modes of cultural exchange in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The nature of modernist writers' efforts to negotiate a period of passage between national and global systems of exchange is, I think, especially visible in the case of Irish modernism. Ireland's transition from a part of the United Kingdom to an independent nation-state in the interwar period makes that nation's literature an exemplary case for my argument, as does the critical importance of Irish writing in the modernist canon. </p><p>By examining these and other critical and historical perspectives alongside a sampling of plays, novels, short stories, and memoirs, this study makes the case that modernist literary aesthetics spring from writers' efforts to make sense of competing desires for national belonging and cosmopolitan autonomy. Focusing on works that cross categorical boundaries between Irish and cosmopolitan modernism, this study traces the ways in which modernist aesthetics construct dynamic, adaptive relationships between the global and the national, and suggest that we can imagine them as something other than static, exclusive alternatives.</p> / Dissertation

"May 2006." / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, Dept. of English. / "May 2006." / Includes bibliographic references (leaves 36-39)

As Englands first colony, Irelands experience is of great significance to wider colonial studies. Similarities exist between settler societies such as Australia, Canada and Ireland in terms of economic structures and demographic tensions; however the colonial experience of Ireland is unique as it was Englands first colonial enterprise and therefore something of an ongoing experiment, and also because of its proximity to the home island. Nowhere else was Englands appropriation of overseas territory followed by an attempt to amalgamate it into domestic lands.</p><p>This thesis discusses aspects of colonialism, political-religious dissent and education in Belfast in the immediate post-Union period (1801-1814). The commentary is couched in a study of The Belfast Monthly Magazine, a small publication that ran from 1808-1814 which provides a contemporary account of Belfast reformers who had witnessed the period of rebellion and union and continued to promote real whig principles in its aftermath. William Drennan (1754-1820) undertook the publishing venture jointly with John Templeton (1766-1825) and John Hancock (1762-1823). Drennan was a co-founder of the United Irishmen, Templeton was a well-known botanist and former United Irishman, and Hancock was a linen merchant and former member of the Society of Friends. The Proprietors, as they referred to themselves in their publication, reported on continental politics and their observations on the ongoing Napoleonic wars were largely informed by their experiences of civil unrest over the previous three decades.</p>

While discourse and rhetoric has always been a part of traditional diplomacy, rhetoric and communication theory has not enjoyed an active voice in the scholarship of foreign relations, and more specifically, public diplomacy. This project argues that a postmodern turn in public diplomacy was formalized in the State Department's 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and that two specific directives laid out therein--to expand and strengthen relationships between individuals and steer the narrative--can find theoretical ground in communication scholarship. After examining the mid-to-late 20th century shift from specialized modern policy training to a rhetorical public diplomacy that views diplomats as generalists engaging members of varied, local publics, Pearce and Cronen's Coordinated Management of Meaning and the narrative work of Ricoeur, MacIntyre, Fisher, Arnett, and Arneson carve out a place for communication scholarship in the academic study of diplomacy and foreign relations. A case study of the State Department's community diplomacy initiatives in Northern Ireland are examined as a core tactic of what I call "public diplomacy 2.0"--postmodern public diplomacy attentive to rhetoric and communication. This work rests on the premise that philosophy of communication and rhetorical scholarship is central to good public diplomacy praxis in a postmodern world. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD; / Dissertation;

The purpose of this essay is to examine how Irish people on a rural location practice their faith in everyday life. The intention is also to find out what strategies my interviewees use to negotiate the abuse scandal and what their thoughts on the Catholic Church are. The material mainly consists of interviews with seven people part of a rural parish in Ireland. My research also entails smaller observations and conversations in the homes of the participants. The results indicate that they all consider themselves religious, however not all Catholic. All of the participants integrate their religion in everyday life. It also showed that almost all of them used a certain strategy when negotiating the knowledge of the abuse scandal leaving just one participant saying it negatively affected his faith. My results show that all of them are asking for changes within the Catholic Church when it comes to celibacy, ordaining women and same sex marriages. The results of my study are analyzed with Meredith McGuire’s theory on lived religion and Peter Berger’s theory on socialization and secularization. Religious activity is occurring in my participants’ everyday life and church-based practices such as Mass or Confessions are not as important for them as for instance prayer and humility. It also shows that my participants are socialized into Catholicism but that the Church no longer can serve as a sole legitimating power and is being severely questioned. I would also argue that today’s modern society with different religions and expressions has led to my participants questioning of the Church. In the location I have studied the results show that individuals let religion into their everyday lives and create their own version of it. With these results I would argue that my participants allow religion to influence their everyday tasks and create their own religious practice. The results suggest that my participants are indeed part of a secularization process, the objective secularization which separates the Church and state. However, religion is still alive within the subjectivity of my participants.

This thesis aims at investigating whether archaeobotanical investigations, combined with geochemical (phosphate) and geophysical (magnetic susceptibility) soil surveys, can provide valid data concerning the functional aspects of several burnt mounds detected in County Cavan, Ireland, during the realignment of a local road (N3 between Cavan Town and Belturbet). The results show that the methods can indeed be used to gain data concerning the formation, use and post-depositional aspects governing the nature of these sites. With the exception of one site (which is proven by the analyses not to represent “traditional” burnt mound activities) the sites display indications of animal produce processing as well as some sparse evidence for cereal based activities. The results are not entirely conclusive but indicate that an extended archaeobotanical, geochemical and geophysical investigation coupled with further analyses with methods belonging to environmental archaeology (such as palynology and insect analysis) may potentially be very useful in providing comprehensive information concerning the function of burnt mound sites in County Cavan and Ireland in general.

As Englands first colony, Irelands experience is of great significance to wider colonial studies. Similarities exist between settler societies such as Australia, Canada and Ireland in terms of economic structures and demographic tensions; however the colonial experience of Ireland is unique as it was Englands first colonial enterprise and therefore something of an ongoing experiment, and also because of its proximity to the home island. Nowhere else was Englands appropriation of overseas territory followed by an attempt to amalgamate it into domestic lands.</p><p>This thesis discusses aspects of colonialism, political-religious dissent and education in Belfast in the immediate post-Union period (1801-1814). The commentary is couched in a study of The Belfast Monthly Magazine, a small publication that ran from 1808-1814 which provides a contemporary account of Belfast reformers who had witnessed the period of rebellion and union and continued to promote real whig principles in its aftermath. William Drennan (1754-1820) undertook the publishing venture jointly with John Templeton (1766-1825) and John Hancock (1762-1823). Drennan was a co-founder of the United Irishmen, Templeton was a well-known botanist and former United Irishman, and Hancock was a linen merchant and former member of the Society of Friends. The Proprietors, as they referred to themselves in their publication, reported on continental politics and their observations on the ongoing Napoleonic wars were largely informed by their experiences of civil unrest over the previous three decades.</p>

<p>This dissertation explores the place of Irish-Gaelic language (Gaeilge) television and film media in the lives of youths living in the urban greater Dublin metropolitan area in the Republic of Ireland. By many accounts, there has been a Gaeilge renaissance underway in recent times. The number of Gaeilge-medium primary and secondary schools (Gaelscoileanna) has grown throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, the year 2003 saw the passage of the Official Languages Act (laying the groundwork to assure all public services would be made available in Gaeilge as well as English), and as of January 2007 Gaeilge has become a working language of the European Union. Importantly, a Gaeilge television station (TG4) was established in 1996. This development has increased the amount of Gaeilge media significantly, and that television and film media is increasingly being utilized in Gaeilge classrooms.</p><p>The research for this dissertation was based on a year of fieldwork conducted in Dublin, Ireland. The primary methodology was semi-structured interviews with teenage second-level-school students who were enrolled in compulsory Gaeilge classes at two schools in the greater Dublin area. Simultaneous examination of social discourses, in the form of prevalent television and film media, and the talk of the teenage students I interviewed led me to discern a "locality production" process that can be discerned in both these forms of discourse. While it is noted that this process of locality production may be present anywhere, it is suggested that it may be particularly pronounced in Ireland as a result of a traditional emphasis on "place" on the island.</p><p>This dissertation thus makes a contribution to Irish and Media Studies through an analysis of Gaeilge cultural productions in the context of increased effects of globalization on the lives of the youth with whom I did my research. Additionally, this dissertation contributes to an on-going critique of identity-based theorizations through contribution of an alternative framework.</p> / Dissertation