RECONSIDERATIONS
OF IRISH HISTORY AND CULTURE
Introduced & Edited by
Daltún Ó Ceallaigh
Published July 1994
ISBN 0-9518777-2-0
Paperback, 188 pages.
RECONSIDERATIONS OF IRISH HISTORY AND CULTURE is a selection of major papers from the Desmond Greaves Summer Schools since their inception in 1989 to 1993. Its scope is no less than history, culture and politics. In the literal sense of the term, it is a radical as well as an uncompromising examination of the most prominent intellectual and national concerns of our day - historiography, language, identity, feminism, and political stance - and not least as they all interrelate.
In large measure, it is a rigorous scrutiny of what has come to be called ‘revisionism’ and looks both at contemporary myth-breaking and myth-making, variously suggesting that cherished views of the past may have to be rethought and that much of our history is being reconstructed to protect the conservatism of the present
CONTENTS
RECONSIDERATIONS Daltún Ó Ceallaigh
1. REVISING IRISH HISTORY Brendan Bradshaw
2. THE COLONISED MIND -
IRISH LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY Tomás MacSiomóin
3. PAST EVENTS AND PRESENT POLITICS -
ROY FOSTER’S ‘MODERN IRELAND’ Brian P Murphy
4. POST-COLONIAL IRELAND -
“BEING DIFFERENT” Declan Kiberd
5. HISTORY WOMEN AND HISTORY MEN -
THE POLITICS OF WOMEN’S HISTORY Mary Cullen
6. HISTORY REVISIONS - GOOD AND BAD Donal McCartney
C DESMOND GREAVES -
POLITICIAN AND HISTORIAN Anthony Coughlan
References and Notes
About the Contributors
Daltún Ó Ceallaigh - An Arts graduate of Trinity College Dublin and writer on historical and political affairs, author of the books Labour, Nationalism and Irish Freedom (1991) and Sovereign People or Crown Subjects? - the case for articles 2 and 3 (1993); by profession, General Secretary of the Irish Federation of University Teachers.
Brendan Bradshaw - Director of Studies in History at Queens’ College, Cambridge; Lecturer in History at the University; also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Tomás MacSiomóin - A science graduate of the National University of Ireland and a doctoral graduate of Cornell University, New York. An Irish-language poet, essayist, critic and journalist. Editor of Comhar, the leading current affairs and literary magazine in Irish, and Lecturer in Applied Biology at Dublin Institute of Technology.
Brian P Murphy - A graduate of Oxford University and the National University of Ireland. Author of Patrick Pearse and the Lost Republican Ideal (Dublin, 1991).
Declan Kiberd - A teacher of English at University College Dublin and a weekly columnist with The Irish Press. Among his books are Synge and the Irish Language, Men and Feminism in Modern Literature, An Crann Faoi Bhláth: Irish Poetry and Verse Translations, The Student’s Annotated Ulysses, and Idir Dhá Chultúr. He has lectured on Irish culture in over twenty countries and held academic posts at the Universities of Kent, Minnesota, California, and in Trinity College Dublin. He was educated at TCD and Oxford University.
Mary Cullen - A Senior Lecturer in Modern History at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. Her major research interest is in women’s history. She has published a wide range of articles and is editor of Girls don’t do honours: Irish women in education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Dublin: WEB, 1987). She is a founder member and the current president of the Irish Association for Research in Women’s History.
Dónal McCartney - A Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin. Among his publications is The Dawning of Democracy: Ireland 1800-1870. His most recent book is W E H Lecky: Historian and Politician 1838-1903.
Anthony Coughlan - A Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He is Desmond Greaves’ literary executor and a committee member of the Greaves Summer School.