Description

This volume of essays is based upon papers that were delivered at Quinnipiac University's Great Hunger Conference in September 2000. It considers the Great Hunger both as a historical moment that had a devastating and enduring impact on Ireland, and as a social, political, and demographic process that shaped the culture and people of both Ireland and North America. The chapters are grouped thematically into three parts. The first, Silence, takes as its point of departure the ways in which the Great Hunger created silences, both at the time of the Famine and in the subsequent historical memory of the Irish people. The second section, Memory, addresses the legacy of the Famine in the lives and work of the generation that lived through it and those who came after, both in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora. The final section, Commemoration, considers how the Famine has become a focal point during the past decade in popular memory, particularly through varied efforts to memorialize the Famine and to integrate it into educational curricula. The book also includes an introduction by Christine Kinealy that discusses recent historical scholarship on the Famine, and a preface by David A. Valone that describes the ongoing educational and scholarly activities related to the Great Hunger at Quinnipiac University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 List of Table and Figures
Chapter 2 Acknowledgments
Chapter 3 Preface
Chapter 4 Introduction
Chapter 5 Silence:
Chapter 6 Famine Lifelines: The Transatlantic Letters of James Prendergast
Chapter 7 The "Unborn and Unburied Dead:" The Rhetoric of Ireland's An Gort Mor
Chapter 8 Irish Immigrants and African Americans: Tangled Roots
Chapter 9 An Agenda for Researching the Famine Experience of Kilglass Parish, County Roscommon
Chapter 10 W.B. Yeats's Politics of Proximity: or the Famine's Absence in Yeats's Poetry
Chapter 11 Silent Hunger: The Psychological Impact of the Great Hunger
Chapter 12 Memory:
Chapter 13 Seamus Heaney's "At a Potato Digging" Revisited
Chapter 14 Easing Integration: The Impact of the Great Famine on the American South
Chapter 15 Performing the Famine: A Look at Contemporary Irish Dramatists
Chapter 16 The Great Hunger: Act of God or Acts of Man?
Chapter 17 "I will sone be home:" Maggie Maher, Emily Dickinson, and an Irish Trunk Full of Poems
Chapter 18 Commemoration:
Chapter 19 Famine Commemorations: Visual Dialogues, Visual Silences
Chapter 20 Le Mémorial: An Irish Memorial at Grosse Île in Québec
Chapter 21 (De)Constructing the Irish Famine Memorial in Contemporary Québec
Chapter 22 Reflections on the Grosse Île Memorial in Contemporary Québec: A Response
Chapter 23 The MacGilligan Family and the Great Hunger: Collaborative Strategies in an Irish History Course
Chapter 24 Designing the New York State Great Irish Famine Curriculum Guide
Chapter 25 List of Contributors

Product details

Published Jul 23 2002
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 416
ISBN 9780761823452
Imprint University Press of America
Dimensions 206 x 142 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

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