The purpose of this creative project was to advance scholarship in areas suffering a lack of attention by Ball State University. Exploring a broader scope of Irish writing than most theses would cover, this project could easily be incorporated by other universities which share Ball State's departmental impotence with regard to Irish literary studies. I chose a time frame of two-hundred years to focus attention for this course.My directed readings from my project chairperson and my research at the Dublin Writers Museum led me to the design of this hypothetical course in contemporary Irish Literary Studies. I chose texts from 1801-Present which examine the varied cultural assumptions that various sects of the Irish citizenry hold, as depicted in their literature. What I found is that as time progresses, the emphasis toward violent preservation of cultural identity increases literally. This portfolio maps out those assumptions via Irish literature. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on September 20, 2006). PDF text of dissertation: v., 165 p. ; 0.34Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3209963. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

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A full understanding of nineteenth century Irish America requires close examination of emigration as well as immigration. Knowledge of Irish pre-emigration experiences is a key to making sense of their post-emigration lives. This work analyzes the regional origins, the migration and settlement patterns, and the work and associational life of the Catholic Irish in Brooklyn between 1850 and 1900. Over this pivotal half century, the Brooklyn Irish developed a rich associational life which included temperance, Irish nationalism, land reform and Gaelic language and athletic leagues. This era marked the emergence of a more diverse, mature Irish-Catholic community, a community which responded in a new ways to a variety of internal and external challenges. To a degree, the flowering of Irish associational life represented a reaction to the depersonalization associated with American industrialization. However, it also reflected the changing cultural norms of many post-famine immigrants. Unlike their pre-1870 predecessors, these newcomers were often more modern in outlook - more committed to Irish nationhood, less impoverished, better educated and more devout. Consequently, post-1870 immigrants tended to be over-represented in the ranks of associations dedicated to Irish nationalism, Irish temperance, trade unionism, and cultural revivalism throughout Kings County. Unsurprisingly, over 70 of Brooklyn's 96 Catholic churches in 1901 were built after July 1, 1870. The internal diversity of the Brooklyn Irish was extensive. The opportunities and experiences of some Irish differed markedly from those experienced by others. Gender, county of origin and skill level all served as factors in post-emigration success. Moreover, generation was especially pronounced as a socioeconomic agent in Brooklyn. Economic prospects for the Irish-born remained as poor in Brooklyn as anywhere in the nation, but improved more rapidly for the American-born Irish then anyone might realistically have considered possible. Increased opportunities for land ownership seemed to support the socioeconomic prospects of thrifty Irishmen, but occupational mobility strongly favored the second generation, more so than in other locales. Why do both popular and scholarly accounts tend to portray all nineteenth century Irish Americans as either an undifferentiated mass of unskilled proletarians or as nouveau riche "lace curtain" aristocrats when significant variation clearly existed? In Philadelphia, Detroit and Brooklyn, at least 30 percent of Irish-born male workers in 1880 could be classified as "skilled craftsmen." In five other major cities, from San Francisco to Providence, the corresponding figure was roughly one-fifth in the same census year. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Irish displayed a curious pattern of halting socioeconomic progress among foreign-born men (55% nonskilled in 1850, 51% nonskilled in 1900) alongside impressive progress for their American-born sons (35% nonskilled in 1880, 22% nonskilled in 1900). Irish American socio-economic mobility paled in comparison to that of their German peers, especially among the foreign born. Their intra-urban geographic mobility patterns differed as well. Irish Americans, in Brooklyn and other Northeastern and Midwestern cities, tended to move out of the older core wards as soon as they enjoyed a degree of economic success. German Americans, conversely, seem to have reinvested their new wealth in "a nicer house in the old neighborhood." Germans tended to separate themselves, whether they lived in the tenement districts of New York's Germantown and Brooklyn's Williamsburg, or the single-family homes of Riverdale just south of the Bronx. By 1890, the Irish were virtually ubiquitous, inhabiting all areas and all housing types of Brooklyn.

This dissertation contains a critical edition of the early Irish tale Aided Derbforgaill “the violent death of Derbforgaill”. It includes an introduction discussing the main thematic components of the tale as well as intertextuality, transmission and manuscript relationship. The edition is accompanied by transcripts from the three manuscript copies of the tale and textual notes. Aided Derbforgaill is an Ulster Cycle tale and belongs to a category of tales describing the death of prominent heroes, rarely heroines, in early Irish literature. Arriving in the shape of a bird to mate with the greatest of all heroes, Cú Chulainn, Derbforgaill is refused by Cú Chulainn on account of him having sucked her blood. Forced to enter a urination competition between women, and upon winning this, Derbforgaill is mutilated by the other competitors. The tale ends with two poems lamenting the death of Derbforgaill. This very short tale is complex, not only in its subject matter, but in the elliptical language of the poetry. Thematically the tale is a combination of very common motifs found elsewhere in early Irish literature, such as the Otherworld, metamorphosis and the love of someone unseen, and some rare motifs that are almost unique to this tale, such as blood sucking and the urination competition. The text also have clear sexual overtones.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 9, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-346). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Title from opening screen (viewed on July 5, 2006). Available in: Gutenberg-e (Columbia University Press). "Gutenberg-e is a series of award-winning digital monographs in history, selected by the American Historical Association and published by Columbia University Press." Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis, Strangers in the House, illuminates how "strangers in the house"--unconventional women, Travellers, emigrants and immigrants--have made significant contributions to the evolving traditions of Irish literature and culture. I trace the literary and creative contributions of groups that were silenced during the early twentieth-century nation-building project to review the impact of the Irish Revival, from the politics of Arthur Griffith and Eamon de Valera to the writings of Yeats, Gregory and Synge, on the establishment of an "authentic" Irish identity. I draw on scholarship that establishes Ireland as a postcolonial nation, suggesting that contemporary identity is closely linked to the national, religious and gender expectations reinforced during the periods of colonialism and decolonization. My scholarship considers individuals who continue to be peripheral in the "reimagining" of what it means to be Irish in a post-Celtic Tiger, E.U. Ireland.