Read more
The recent past has witnessed the development of new and diverse notions of Irish identity, alongside changes in the way we articulate the long-established links between Ireland and the Irish, both at home and abroad. This volume focuses on the intersection between migrancy and the narratives of 'hidden' Irish peoples - those emergent voices in the Irish diaspora whose discourses have frequently been occluded, repressed or simply forgotten - and provides a platform for a range of subversive voices. By usurping notions of identity hitherto considered fixed or authentic, it is possible to engage constructively with some of the larger problems that circumvent historiographical debate, particularly in relation to the diasporic experience and its expression in current oral history scholarship. Among the themes examined here are our understanding and definition of the diasporic experience, the role of language in the formation of identity and community, and the relationship between various members of the Irish diaspora and their homeland.
List of contents
Contents: Mícheál Ó hAodha/John O'Callaghan: Introduction - Ann McGrath: Australia's Occluded Voices: Ned Kelly's History Wars - Catherine O'Connor: Revealing Narratives: Perceptions of Migration and Identity in Ireland 1900-1960 - Mary Muldowney: 'Very Humiliating for the Country': Differing Perspectives on the Emigration of Irish Women to Britain During the Second World War - Regina Fitzpatrick: Interviews of the GAA Oral History Project from Britain and America: An Initial Review - Edmundo Murray: Homing the Irish Diaspora: Correspondence and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century Latin America - Pedro L.V. Welch: Poor Whites in Barbadian History - Tara Manning: 'The Forgotten Migrant': Itinerant Preachers of the Irish Methodist Connexion - Mícheál Ó hAodha: 'Fighting To Be Heard': Migrant Self-Representations and the Discourse of Resistance Amongst the Migrant Irish - Róisín Nic Dhonncha: Emigration, Oral Discourse and Traditional Song in Connemara.
About the author
Mícheál Ó hAodha lectures in the Department of History, University of Limerick. He has published widely on Irish migration, the Irish diaspora, social geography and oral history. His books include
American 'Outsider': Stories from the Irish Traveller Diaspora (2007, with T.J. Vernon),
'The Turn of the Hand': A Memoir from the Irish Margins (2010, with Mary Ward) and
'On the Run': The Diary of an Irish Republican (2011, with Ruan O'Donnell).
John O'Callaghan lectures in modern Irish and European history in the Department of History, University of Limerick. He is interested in processes of imperialism, decolonisation and post-colonialism. His publications include
Teaching Irish Independence: History in Irish Secondary Schools, 1922-1972 (2009),
Revolutionary Limerick: The Republican Campaign for Independence in Limerick, 1913-1921 (2010) and
The Battle for Kilmallock (2011).
