Race in Irish Literature and Culture

This book provides an in-depth understanding of intersections between Irish literature, culture, and questions of race, racialization, and racism.

Malcolm Sen (Edited by), Julie McCormick Weng (Edited by)

9781316513118, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 January 2024

372 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.6 cm, 0.67 kg

Race in Irish Literature and Culture provides an in-depth understanding of intersections between Irish literature, culture, and questions of race, racialization, and racism. Covering a vast historical terrain from the sixteenth century to the present, it spotlights the work of canonical, understudied, and contemporary authors in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and among diasporic Irish communities. By focusing on questions related to Black Irish identities, Irish whiteness, Irish racial sciences, postcolonial solidarities, and decolonial strategies to address racialization, the volume moves beyond the familiar frameworks of British/Irish and Catholic/Protestant binarisms and demonstrates methods for Irish Studies scholars to engage with the question of race from a contemporary perspective.

Introduction: the racial imaginaries of Irish literature and culture Malcolm Sen and Julie McCormick Weng
1. 'Our heroic ancestors': antiquarian literature and the discourse of racial heritage Clare O'Halloran
2. Racializing Irish historical consciousness Guy Beiner and Oded Y. Steinberg
3. Race, minstrelsy, and the Irish stage: the origins and afterlives of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon Patrick Lonergan
4. Race and Irish women's novels in the long nineteenth century Matthew L. Reznicek
5. Blackface minstrelsy, Irish modernism, and the histories of Irish whiteness John Brannigan
6. Joyce's racial comedy Vicki Mahaffey
7. W. B. Yeats, the Irish free state, and the rhetoric of race suicide Julie McCormick Weng
8. 'Ulster's white negroes': rhetoric of race at the start of the troubles Simon Prince
9. Learning from Walcott: Heaney's black and green Atlantic Richard Rankin Russell
10. Race, Irishness, and popular culture in Australia Dianne Hall
11. White nationalism and Irish America: a cultural history told through works by James T. Farrell and Eugene O'Neill Peter D. O'Neill
12. Diasporic afterlives: an Irish-Jewish archive for Ruth Gilligan's Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan Stephen Watt
13. 'Dubh': poets of color and new Irish poetry Ailbhe McDaid
14. Split selves and double consciousness in recent Irish fiction Oona Frawley
15. Race, place, and the grounds of Irish geopolitics Shirley Lau Wong.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]