Northern Ireland Literature

More so than other regions within the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s deep-seated religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant alike, have shaped the roles and structures of both the public and private lives of men and women.  Within the legal and political spheres, both religions (and governments) find common ground on issues such as abortion and contraception, which is evidenced in the strict controls placed on abortion in Northern Ireland (the only region in the UK to have such limits) and the late arrival of legal contraception in the Republic of Ireland, where it also remains illegal to perform abortions, and until recently to even disseminate information on obtaining an abortion.  In addition, reforms to domestic violence legislation in Northern Ireland in 1980 was applicable to “married couples only and not to cohabitees, since the latter ‘chose to live in sin they would have to face the consequences’”, though this legislation was subsequently amended to include those women cohabitating with their partners (McWilliams in Hughes, 83).  In essence, such laws place a woman’s bodily and reproductive rights second to men’s, a legal status that echoes the domestic reality of many Northern Irish homes.  While the rest of the UK was moving forward (the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and the workplace became more female-friendly with the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975), Northern Ireland lagged behind with regards to prioritizing issues concerning women.  While similar legislation was passed in Northern Ireland soon after the British originals (with the aforementioned exception of the Abortion Act), the sectarian nature of the Troubles meant that “[s]ubsequent legislation in the field of employment rights has shifted the emphasis to tackling religious and political discrimination”, rather than gender discrimination (Mahon and Morgan in Galligan et.al, 61).  Such legislation perhaps further discouraged working-class women from speaking out for their own rights, as it would have significantly affected their working-class male counterparts.  Thus, the struggle simply to gain an active role in the male-dominated political process has meant that raising women’s concerns is often postponed or avoided: for example, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) put such issues as abortion on the backburner, seeing their priority as solely “woman’s participation, and campaigning on reproductive choice would not have contributed strategically to that end” (Fearon 27).  The odds have surely been stacked against the women of the province.
Following from this, my paper will consider the policing of women by men within the home and the workplace, as well as the policing of women by other women, in three plays by Gary Mitchell: As the Beast Sleeps, The Force of Change, and Loyal Women.  Within these plays, it is evident that Mitchell ultimately reflects distinct and separate spheres for men and women in his drama, as gendered space exists both within and without of the home.  There also exists an underlying desire, on behalf of the male characters, to keep the women confined to the private, domestic sphere, rather than the public, political sphere.  Within the home of Kyle and Sandra in As the Beast Sleeps, Sandra reigns supreme, though she is firmly excluded from the paramilitary undertakings of her husband; in the Antrim Road Police Station, the setting of The Force of Change, Caroline comes up against one obstacle after another as she tries to navigate her male-dominated workplace and maintain order in her own home; while in Loyal Women, the Women’s UDA is shown to have no autonomy from its father organization, and wind up perpetuating violence against their own at the behest of men.  But although these women are constantly met with challenges from male, as well as female, characters, they remain determined, strong, and resilient. Indeed, when considering the majority of female characters in Gary Mitchell’s plays, it is hard to imagine that he “‘found it hard to take women seriously. […] I took years fighting against it in my own psyche, this thing of not respecting women’” (quoted in McKay, 117).  If anything, the women in Mitchell’s plays are more deserving of respect than the men, as they constitute some of the strongest characters in his oeuvre. 

Works Cited
Fearon, Kate. Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999.

Galligan, Yvonne, Eilís Ward and Rick Wilford, eds. Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999.

Hughes, Eamonn, ed. Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.

McKay, Susan. Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2005.

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These structuralist and behaviourist attitudes displayed by the P-CROs (Peace -Conflict Resolution Organizations) 1 studied, paralleled the wider academic debate surrounding the dynamics of the Northern Ireland conflict and possible approaches to managing or resolving it. These are those who argue, on the one hand, that the rival ideologies of Irish nationalism and Ulster 2 unionism can be transcended through behaviourist mechanisms such as greater contact, communication, dialogue, and new modes of thinking. Others take the structural perspective that these rival ideologies are separate and antithetical identities which cannot be integrated but must be recognized and accommodated through political mechanisms such as consociationalism. This debate is ongoing within the academic community, and is reflected by several contributions within this volume. 3

a high-ranking advisor from the Engineering faculty, and generally been welcomed to campus as a potential next Bill Gates. This was during the height of the dot-com era, when the material rewards of a high-tech career mesmerized the region. After the first year, I told my guidance counselor that I wanted to transfer into the English department, in order to pursue something more "human." She suggested that I instead consider a career in the exciting new field of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.

The study focuses on the republican murals painted on the walls of two cities, Belfast and Derry, in May 2009. The idea for the study was born during a trip to Northern Ireland during which I had the opportunity to observe the murals and to talk with some of the authors and with persons who had actually experienced
the events represented in the murals.
The nationalist murals have been studied by the author under different perspectives: language, iconography, political symbolism and social environment. Murals are, for sure, the community’s reaction to the British political and violent domination on Northern Ireland and they become instruments of rebellion representing
a collective request for freedom and independence. But they also represent a more complex phenomenon as they embody values and perspectives of the entire nationalist community in Northern Ireland. The study analyses the murals both as single artworks and as a collective phenomenon.A strong focus is given at all the political and social themes represented in the murals and at the different linguistic and iconographic styles of communication
as well as how different themes and styles combine. The nationalist murals are also examined under an artistic perspective with a special focus on the figure of the “artista armato”, the artist as a warrior that uses art as an instrument for communicating higher, collective (moral, social, religious, political) values. This
perspective brings the author to draw and analyse a parallel between the phenomenon of nationalist murals and Futurist art: a comparison based on the themes represented in the artworks, on the placing of the art pieces and on the social role of the artists.
If words, pictures and colours used in the nationalist murals become, as analysed in the study, the voice of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland, a voice not so often listened in the EU, it becomes crucial to understand what the artists
want to communicate, why and how. This study aims also to open up to a new research perspective based on a multidisciplinary approach through the integrated use of semiotics and semantics in ethnography in order to offer a more complete and holistic interpretation of the phenomenon of the Northern Irish republican
murals.

This article examines the effect of C.S. Lewis's Irish background on his work. It attempts to contradict the assumption that this Belfast-born writer should be included in the English and not the Irish canon. It emphasises that Lewis saw himself as Irish, was seen by others as Irish, and that his Irish background, contrary to what some have written, was important to him throughout his lifetime. It goes on to demonstrate the ways in which his work was influenced by his youth in Ireland and by the Irish mythology that he loved. Furthermore, this article maintains that, as a child of pre-partition Ireland with roots throughout the island, Lewis was influenced by the country as a whole, not just his native Ulster. Finally, it attempts to understand why Lewis, a proud Irishman, did not do more to promote himself as an Irish writer.

This document provides short excerpts from the Culture Wars in British Literature book.  The past century's culture wars that Britain has been consumed by have resulted in revised notions of Britishness and British literature. Yet literary anthologies remain anchored to an archaic Anglo-English interpretation of British literature. This generalist cultural study is a fascinating glimpse into Britain's changing identity as reflected in 20th and 21st century British literature. Conflicts have played out over specific national vs. British identity (some residents prefer to describe themselves as being from Scotland, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland instead of Britain), in debates over immigration, race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and in arguments over British literature. These debates are strikingly detailed in such chapters as: "The Difficulty Defining 'Black British'," "British Jewish Writers" and "Xenophobia and the Booker Prize." Connections are also drawn between civil rights movements in the U.S. and UK.


Reviews:
"Tracy Prince's book brings an impressive set of voices into dialogue on the complexity of community-building and national identity--analyzing important aspects of British culture which are not fully represented in anthologies or literary histories."
R. Victoria Arana, Professor of English, Howard University

"Writing with great lucidity and welcome originality, Tracy J. Prince explores how an increasingly multicultural Britain defines itself, and is defined, through literature and a literary establishment still dominated by an Anglo-English elite."
Tamar Heller, Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati

"It is precisely in its analysis of this 'Anglo centeredness' and its sensitive treatment of the many other voices that comprise modern British writing that this books strength lies. We have no hesitation in recommending 'Culture Wars in British Literature' to anyone with an interest in the complexities of modern British culture and in particular the difficulty of establishing a separate and distinct Anglo-Welsh identity within the mainstream."
Ceri Shaw, AmeriCymru's "Welsh Magazine"

T]his book is near flawless…an incredible source of information. Using literature as a starting point, Prince delves into [Britain’s] history with many forms of discrimination. She does an exceptional job detailing each of these histories and explaining how they affect Britain today. Whether you are actively studying British literature or are just interested in how another country deals with (and continues to justify) racism, classism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, you will find lots of useful, surprising, and relevant information in 'Culture Wars in British Literature.' -"San Francisco Book Review"


Contents:
Foreword by Thomas C. Caramagno
Introduction: Mind the Gap

1. The Imploded Empire: Literary Reactions to Britain's Changed Empire
2. The Difficulty Defining British Literature
3. The Difficulty Defining "Black British"
4. Two Nations: Class Issues in Contemporary British Literature
5. British Jewish Writers
6. Xenophobia and the Booker Prize
7. Britain's "New" Multicultural Identity

Appendix I: Man Booker Prize Winners
Appendix II: International Man Booker Prize Winners
Appendix III: Orange Prize Winners

On 27 March 2017, I was invited to give a presentation introducing the German-Irish Society Saarland e.V. (GISS) at a trinational colloquium at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. At that event, in addition to students and staff from the English Dempartment of Saarland University, there were groups of MA & PhD students and lecturers from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and the University de Lorraine in Metz, France. This presentation is meant to help deepen the partnership especially between Metz and Saarbrücken, both academically as well as offside campuses, and to start initiating joint projects about all things Irish paticularly between the students of the respective English Departments.

This book uncovers a new genre of ‘post-Agreement literature’, consisting of a body of texts – fiction, poetry and drama – by Northern Irish writers who grew up during the Troubles and published their work in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. In an attempt to demarcate the literary-aesthetic parameters of the genre, the book proposes a selective revision of postcolonial theories on ‘liminality’ through a subset of concepts such as ‘negative liminality’, ‘liminal suspension’ and ‘liminal permanence.’ These conceptual interventions, as the readings demonstrate, help articulate how the Agreement’s rhetorical negation of the sectarian past and its aggressive neoliberal campaign towards a ‘progressive’ future breed new forms of violence that produce liminally suspended subject positions.

Debates over the nature, significance and legacy of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement tend to stress its Catholic and irredentist character. This article takes a different approach by examining the role of those activists from a Protestant and socialist background who played important roles in agitating for redress of socio-economic and political grievances. In particular, the article focuses on the involvement of individual members of the bi-confessional Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It considers the NILP's relationship to other civil rights bodies, such as the Campaign for Social Justice and the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, and asks how its approach differed. Drawing on extensive empirical research - including previously untapped archival sources and oral histories - the article also sets out to challenge the orthodox public and academic interpretation of the civil rights movement as ostensibly anti-partitionist in political orientation or devoid of significant Protestant and socialist participation. The central argument is that the NILP remained ill-equipped to become the political vanguard of the radical street politics, not because it was tethered to a narrow non-sectarian agenda but because it was deeply wedded to the process and fundamentals of British parliamentary democracy.

Stacey Gregg was born in Dundonald, a Protestant, working class, and broadly Loyalist area of east Belfast. Dealing with the entangled issues of sectarianism, gender oppression and class inequality, her work as a playwright is informed deeply by these beginnings. Gregg grew up in a social context that tended to shun both her interest in theatre and sense of queerness, two orientations that, so the stereotype goes, Loyalism has regarded historically as ungodly, unproductive and frivolous. [1] At the very least, her childhood reflects what research has identified as a relative disengagement with the theatre in working class, Loyalist areas. [2] Instead of attending performances as a youngster, Gregg encountered theatre through reading, an experience that, when coupled with her queer identity, has resulted in an abiding interest in difficulties of expression and the expression of difficulty. Though refreshingly diverse in their thematic concerns and geographical focus, her plays are populated by those who, when they try to communicate their discontent or dissent, are marginalised for the improper forms of expression they use. This interview took place in March 2018 following the international tour of Scorch (premièred in 2015 at the MAC in Belfast), Gregg's critically-acclaimed monologue play exploring the politics of gender non-conformity through the lens of a legal case of 'gender fraud'. What our conversation reveals, and what makes Gregg's work as a playwright from Northern Ireland so interesting, is an ethic of questioning those who would pass judgement upon others they refuse to understand. As Kes, the gender non-conforming protagonist of Scorch, tells the audience: "it's just as likely you are all aliens, and I am the earthling. There's just more of you." [3] Like many of her female contemporaries, including Lisa McGee and Abbie Spallen, Gregg's career has been shaped as much by the theatrical tastes of Dublin and London than the North. Her career to date reflects the push and pull of creative experimentation and established notions of what 'Irish drama' is supposed to look like. It was at the University of Cambridge that she wrote her first play Ismene (2006), a play inspired by the McCartney sisters that followed in the established tradition of Northern writers adapting Greek drama to address issues relating to the 'Troubles' and its aftermath. [4] Despite beginning with the familiar, Gregg's breakthrough successes were the product of a failure to get more ambitious work produced. In 2009 she wrote Shibboleth, a Brechtian exploration of masculine anger and the socioeconomic forces contributing to the expansion of Belfast's 'interface barriers'. The play failed to find a home, perhaps because it constituted a rare critique of the social and economic inequalities that underwrite the post-Agreement settlement. Gregg instead wrote two pieces that cleaved closer to the established tastes of Dublin and London audiences. Perve (2011), described here by Gregg as "the most commercial thing" she had written at that stage, avoided the North entirely in its realist exploration of moral panic about the impact of pornography on the sexualisation of children. Lagan responded to the penchant in London for Irish monologue drama. A poetic survey of contemporary Belfast life, the play consisted of a series of interweaving plots, with characters voicing their interior monologues via direct address. Not only did these productions launch Gregg's career, but they paved the way for work of formal and thematic ambition, including a science fiction play Override (Watford Palace Theatre, 2013) and I'm Spilling My Heart Out Here (National Theatre Connections, 2013), a play for young audiences. Shibboleth was finally produced in updated form in 2015 when Abbey director Fiach Mac Conghail launched a programme of writing about the North. Produced alongside

This article assesses the policy approaches to social inclusion and cohesion in Northern Ireland by exploring a case study of victim support groups and their social capital potential.  This assessment begins by uncovering the origins of the social inclusion and cohesion agenda in the European Union policy framework, as evidenced in the PEACE programs, that contributed to the development of two key social inclusion and cohesion strategies: A Shared Future and Cohesion, Sharing and Integration.  In this exploration of Northern Ireland’s social policy, an ethnography of victims’ group leaders will reveal some of the gaps between social policy and the social capital development in victim support groups.  Drawing on the work of Putnam (2000) and other social capital theorists, this article will reveal the high levels of bonding, but low levels of bridging social capital inherent in victim support groups as discovered by the Compromise After Conflict study at The University of Aberdeen, suggesting possible links between the lack of an agreed social inclusion and cohesion policy and low levels of bridging forms of social capital in victims’ groups.  Since victims’ groups are a part of wider civil society, these findings could have broader implications for Northern Ireland’s social capital and social inclusion and cohesion.  Consequently, this article offers some conclusions on the challenges to an effective social inclusion and cohesion strategy and seeks to promote social capital as an instrument for building social inclusion, cohesion and integration in Northern Ireland’s civil society.

The work of Belfast poet Padraic Fiacc is an important but critically neglected contribution to the canon of Northern Irish poetry. This article explores Fiacc's work, giving particular attention to the collections published during the bloodiest years of the Northern Ireland conflict and to the anthology of poems on the subject of the conflict which he edited and published in 1974 with the Blackstaff Press. Beyond the intrinsic value of Fiacc's poems themselves, his work has the benefit of causing us to reconsider issues of canonicity in the Irish poetic tradition and to revisit some of the assumptions about the relationships between poetry, history, and politics which have become dominant in our understanding of this tradition. Fiacc's poetry, while located in a distinctly Irish cultural context, bears important resemblances to the work of continental figures such as Rimbaud and Celan. In addition, Fiacc's work raises crucial questions about the relationship between violence, poetry, and language at a more general level. The article addresses some of these questions through the insights of philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin.

This article begins by briefly surveying relevant international human rights law concerning the right to education and critiques its failure to guarantee children an education which is free from parental and/or religious domination. It then makes a positive case for guaranteeing children the right to ‘education for humanity’, meaning an education which equips them to be citizens of the world rather than captives of a particular creed, view of history or community tradition. It argues that conflicts could be reduced if schools were to focus on conveying an understanding of a wide range of beliefs and cultures. The piece then tests this position by considering the current education system in Northern Ireland, looking at six dimensions to the ongoing influence of religion on that system. It makes some suggestions for reform and ends with a more general proposal for a guaranteed right to education for humanity worldwide.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) led to a major realignment in Unionist politics in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), hitherto the dominant force within the Protestant-British tradition, was usurped in electoral popularity by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In its post-GFA rise, the DUP garnered majority support from members of the Orange Order, the largest organisation in Protestant civil society. Drawing upon the first membership survey of the Orange Order, this article examines the demographic and attitudinal bases of support for Unionist political parties amongst its members, and tests whether the locus of support for the DUP is evenly distributed, or instead biased towards particular age groups, social classes or Protestant denominations within the Order, as well as assessing whether attitudinal variations may be influential in determining party loyalties.

This blog post for the Gotham Center for New York City History explores the efforts of the Irish Theatre of America, the Irish Players, and the Celtic Players to establish an Irish national theater in New York City.  All of the companies, active between 1915 and 1920, took their cues from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Ulster Literary Theatre of Belfast.  The New York troupes struggled to survive, in part because Irish Americans were disinterested in seeing brutal or realistic depictions of Irish life.  Nevertheless, the piece raises questions about the transnational dimensions of the rise of modern Irish drama and brings to light ties between the thespians and local Irish Republican activism.  Those interested in Northern Ireland, or Ulster, and its influence on the Irish in America should find the post useful.  It also highlights the efforts of individuals such as Mollie Carroll, John P. Campbell, Whitford Kane, Eileen Huban, Eileen Curran, Padraic Colum, and Deborah Bierne. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/for-an-irish-national-theater-in-new-york

Dr. Tracy Prince's interview with Ceri Shaw from AmeriCymru, a Welsh cultural organization that teaches Welsh history, language, literature, and culture. She discusses her book Culture Wars in British Literature and her thesis that teaching more multicultural literature in the UK must also include more regional authors, including Welsh authors.

Exploration of proto-digital modes and postnational identity in the writing of Ciaran Carson. Focuses on the socio-technological, coterminous evolutions of writing and identity in relation to structures of nationalism. Emphasis on how “Carson’s Belfast is part oral story (tribal and pre-textual) and part metamedial (global and posttextual).” The author characterises a post-conflict Irish identity as one of complex interdependency, with a unique awareness and use of technology with respect to writing.

The article presents an attempt at reconstructing the changes of the image of Europe in the poetry of the Irish Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. The changes are presented metaphorically as a process of map-making of which the poetry is the testimony. Europe is perceived here both as a geographical entity and in a broader context as a cultural construct. Heaney’s Europe surpasses geographical limitations and with the passage of time starts to include elements of mythology and history. The analysis uncovers gradual changes visible in Heaney’s lyrics from youthful concentration on his immediate surroundings, through his native Ireland to the discovery of historic and cultural connections linking him and his homeland with Europe.

More so than other regions within the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s deep-seated religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant alike, have shaped the roles and structures of both the public and private lives of men and women. Within the legal and political spheres, both religions (and governments) find common ground on issues such as abortion and contraception, which is evidenced in the strict controls placed on abortion in Northern Ireland (the only region in the UK to have such limits) and the late arrival of legal contraception in the Republic of Ireland, where it also remains illegal to perform abortions, and until recently to even disseminate information on obtaining an abortion. In addition, reforms to domestic violence legislation in Northern Ireland in 1980 was applicable to “married couples only and not to cohabitees, since the latter ‘chose to live in sin they would have to face the consequences’”, though this legislation was subsequently amended to include those women cohabitating with their partners (McWilliams in Hughes, 83). In essence, such laws place a woman’s bodily and reproductive rights second to men’s, a legal status that echoes the domestic reality of many Northern Irish homes. While the rest of the UK was moving forward (the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and the workplace became more female-friendly with the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975), Northern Ireland lagged behind with regards to prioritizing issues concerning women. While similar legislation was passed in Northern Ireland soon after the British originals (with the aforementioned exception of the Abortion Act), the sectarian nature of the Troubles meant that “[s]ubsequent legislation in the field of employment rights has shifted the emphasis to tackling religious and political discrimination”, rather than gender discrimination (Mahon and Morgan in Galligan et.al, 61). Such legislation perhaps further discouraged working-class women from speaking out for their own rights, as it would have significantly affected their working-class male counterparts. Thus, the struggle simply to gain an active role in the male-dominated political process has meant that raising women’s concerns is often postponed or avoided: for example, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) put such issues as abortion on the backburner, seeing their priority as solely “woman’s participation, and campaigning on reproductive choice would not have contributed strategically to that end” (Fearon 27). The odds have surely been stacked against the women of the province. Following from this, my paper will consider the policing of women by men within the home and the workplace, as well as the policing of women by other women, in three plays by Gary Mitchell: As the Beast Sleeps, The Force of Change, and Loyal Women. Within these plays, it is evident that Mitchell ultimately reflects distinct and separate spheres for men and women in his drama, as gendered space exists both within and without of the home. There also exists an underlying desire, on behalf of the male characters, to keep the women confined to the private, domestic sphere, rather than the public, political sphere. Within the home of Kyle and Sandra in As the Beast Sleeps, Sandra reigns supreme, though she is firmly excluded from the paramilitary undertakings of her husband; in the Antrim Road Police Station, the setting of The Force of Change, Caroline comes up against one obstacle after another as she tries to navigate her male-dominated workplace and maintain order in her own home; while in Loyal Women, the Women’s UDA is shown to have no autonomy from its father organization, and wind up perpetuating violence against their own at the behest of men. But although these women are constantly met with challenges from male, as well as female, characters, they remain determined, strong, and resilient. Indeed, when considering the majority of female characters in Gary Mitchell’s plays, it is hard to imagine that he “‘found it hard to take women seriously. […] I took years fighting against it in my own psyche, this thing of not respecting women’” (quoted in McKay, 117). If anything, the women in Mitchell’s plays are more deserving of respect than the men, as they constitute some of the strongest characters in his oeuvre. Works Cited Fearon, Kate. Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999. Galligan, Yvonne, Eilís Ward and Rick Wilford, eds. Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999. Hughes, Eamonn, ed. Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991. McKay, Susan. Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2005.

"""In recent years, Jennifer Johnston's fiction has received significant critical attention, which has changed the perspective on her work. Literary scholars have undertaken new readings of her novels in the light of postcolonial and poststructuralist theories. This article will engage with this growing critical dialogue by applying Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection to one of Johnston's later texts, The Gingerbread Woman (2000). The novel explores the major concerns in Johnston’s work – female identity, Irish politics, the maternal, and Self-Other relations – yet, it continues to be underdiscussed in criticism.

The Gingerbread Woman presents an ambiguous narrative of abjection that troubles both personal and national borders. At the intersection of these borders, Johnston's novel positions a narrative of the North, which surfaces as a hated and polluting object, or an 'abject', in Kristevian terms. Through the process of abjection, in which the North occupies a key position, Johnston's protagonists come to a reconciliation with their private pasts, while also resolving the tension in the self-narratives of the two Irelands that they represent – north and south of the border. What is revealed in this process is the ambiguity of abjection itself, which verges on jouissance, and hence the permeability of borders and boundaries."""

In asymmetric conflicts the state can prevail only if its security forces can carry the fight to the non-state belligerent and at the same time maintain permanent dominance over the affected regions. This requires manpower in very large numbers. The best way to obtain the necessary numbers is to raise local self defense volunteer forces. Through brief case studies (Northern Ireland, Punjab, Basra) the author analyzes the organization and employment of militias and shows the advantages and risks involved.

This adventure details an account of a student who turned short-term study-abroad program into a" reconnaissance" mission in Belfast and Dublin by gathering information, photographing sites of interest and making contacts. Through the course of the mission, he finds himself in police stations, castles, two prisons, a royal garden, the opera and of course, a night or two at the tavern.

21st-century Ireland: Culture and Critique
Abstracts welcome on responses in Irish literature, journalism, performance, film, and new media to recent and/or current uncertainties in Ireland, post-Brexit UK, and post-Trump America. 300-word abstracts by March 10, 2017. Mary Burke (panel chair) mary.burke@uconn.edu

The intellectual and cultural impact of British and Irish writers cannot be assessed without reference to their reception in European countries. These essays, prepared by an international team of scholars, critics and translators, record the ways in which W. B. Yeats has been translated, evaluated and emulated in different national and linguistic areas of continental Europe. There is a remarkable split between the often politicized reception in Eastern European countries but also Spain on the one hand, and the more sober scholarly response in Western Europe on the other. Yeats's Irishness and the pre-eminence of his lyrical work have posed continuous challenges. Three further essays describe the widely divergent reactions to Yeats in his native Ireland, during his lifetime and up to the most recent years.

The founding of truth commissions, legal tribunals, and public confessionals in places like South Africa, Australia, Yugoslavia, and Chile have attempted to heal wounds and bring about reconciliation in societies divided by a history of violence and conflict.

This volume asks how many of the popular conclusions reached by transitional justice studies fall short, or worse, unwittingly perpetuate the very injustices they aim to suture. Though often well intentioned, these approaches generally resolve in an injunction to "move on," as it were; to leave the painful past behind in the name of a conciliatory future. Through collective acts of apology and forgiveness, so the argument goes, reparation and restoration are imparted, and the writhing conflict of the past is substituted for by the overlapping consensus of community. And yet all too often, the authors of this study maintain, the work done in assuaging past discord serves to further debase and politically neutralize especially the victims of abuse in need of reconciliation and repair in the first place.

Drawing on a wide range of case studies, from South Africa to Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda and Australia, the authors argue for an alternative approach to post-conflict thought. In so doing, they find inspiration in the vision of politics rendered by new pluralist, new realist, and especially agonistic political theory.

Featuring contributions from both up and coming and well-established scholars this work is essential reading for all those with an interest in restorative justice, conflict resolution and peace studies.

Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, large sums have been invested in community theatre projects in Northern Ireland, in the interests of conflict transformation and peace building. While this injection of funds has resulted in an unprecedented level of applied theatre activity, opportunities to maximise learning from this activity are being missed. It is generally assumed that project evaluation is undertaken at least partly to assess the degree of success of projects against important social objectives, with a view to learning what works, what does not, and what might work in the future. However, three ethnographic case studies of organisations delivering applied theatre projects in Northern Ireland indicate that current processes used to evaluate such projects are both flawed and inadequate for this purpose. Practitioners report that the administrative work involved in applying for and justifying funding is onerous, burdensome, and occurs at the expense of artistic activity. This is a very real concern when the time and effort devoted to ‘filling out the forms’ does not ultimately result in useful evaluative information. There are strong disincentives for organisations to report honestly on their experiences of difficulties, or undesirable impacts of projects, and this problem is not transcended by the use of external evaluators. Current evaluation processes provide little opportunity to capture unexpected benefits of projects, and small but significant successes which occur in the context of over-ambitious objectives. Little or no attempt is made to assess long-term impacts of projects on communities. Finally, official evaluation mechanisms fail to capture the reflective practice and dialogic analysis of practitioners, which would richly inform future projects. The authors argue that there is a need for clearer lines of communication, and more opportunities for mutual learning, among stakeholders involved in community development. In particular, greater involvement of the higher education sector in partnership with government and non-government agencies could yield significant benefits in terms of optimizing learning from applied theatre project evaluations.

This adventure details an account of a student who turned short-term study-abroad program into a "reconnaissance" mission in Belfast and Dublin by gathering information, photographing sites of interest and making contacts. Through the course of the mission, he finds himself in police stations, castles, two prisons, a royal garden, the opera and of course, a night or two at the tavern.

Includes over 100 pages of photos and the Museum of Free Derry.

More info: http://www.createspace.com/3490388 or http://www.amazon.com/dp/1453871888