Comhaltas na gCumann Staire - Irish History Students' Association

 Panel 1: Labour histories

 

Conor McFall (QUB): ‘Set the World Ablaze’: The British Labour Party, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the Year of Crisis

This paper will examine the multifaceted response to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising from the British Labour Party, analysing this in the context of both wider international crises in this period and deepening ideological divisions within the party. There is no detailed historiographical writing on Labour’s response to this crisis, although the brief coverage that exists agrees that the party was united on the issue. This paper will examine how this came about, especially given that the left and right of the party were factionalised as ‘Bevanites’ and ‘Gaitskellites’ in this period and had converging attitudes towards the USSR as the conflict began in October 1956. The paper will examine the multifaceted response to the crisis; identifying major themes that influenced the party’s evolving position, contextualising this with wider historical themes prevalent to the era. In particular, five key areas will be examined; humanitarians efforts, solidarity with other social democratic parties, attitudes towards the Soviet Union, attitudes toward British Communists and the influence of the concurrent Suez Canal invasion. A range of source material will be examined in this paper including National Executive Committee reports, House of Commons speeches, Labour factional newspapers and periodicals and Trades Union Congress annual conference reports. In bringing this material together, this paper will chart how the party dealt with this crisis and how the attitudes of divergent wings of the party coalesced, using this event as a prism through which to discuss wider historiographical themes regarding the Cold War, foreign policy and the British left.

Biography: Conor McFall is a PhD student at Queens University Belfast, researching a thesis that examines the attitudes of the British left towards the Soviet Union and the wider communist world from 1956-79. He completed an MA at Queens in 2016 on the influence of Keith Joseph MP and the Centre for Policy Studies on the politics and policies of Thatcherism and presented a conference paper on this work in 2017. He has also taught undergraduate modules that examine contentious historical topics and assess the role of public history and commemoration in contemporary society.

 

Matthew Gerth (QUB): Cryptos and Lost Sheep: The Fear of Communist Infiltration in the British Labour Party during the Early Cold War

Starting in July 1945 one of the earliest concerns of the new British Prime Minister dealt with the clandestine penetration of communists into the nation’s parliament. Although two Communist MPs, openly served in the House of Commons, Clement Attlee worried that many in his own party held secret allegiances of similar kinds. Termed ‘crypto-communists’ these individuals supported the aims of the CPGB and were potential security risks due to their sympathies for the Soviet Union. Attlee, alongside the leadership of the Labour Party, considered these types as a key menace to the security of the nation. My paper will examine the motives and methods of the Attlee Government (1945-1951) and the Labour Party (1945-1959) in their efforts to purge these supposed ‘crypto-communists’ and ‘fellow- travellers’ from both the Parliamentary Party as well as the constituency Labour Parties. It will seek to answer why Attlee viewed communist infiltration as such a major threat and how this attitude affected the running of the nation and the internal politics of the Labour Party. I will also contextualize these efforts by showing how they fit into the larger framework of anti-communist activities in the United Kingdom during the same time period. My paper will draw mostly from research conducted in the National Achieves and the Labour Party Achieves, as well as contemporary news outlets of the period. By combining both the public and the private dimensions to this paper I hope to showcase how Attlee and the Labour Party used the mechanisms of the Government to conduct an ideological purge of their own party members and how it played to the general public and the nation as a whole.

Biography: I am a PhD student at Queens University Belfast, my thesis research is on British anti-communism during the early Cold War period. I completed my MA at Eastern Kentucky University. During my masters I taught undergraduate modules and have presented at various history conferences here in Europe and in the United States.

 

Panel 2: Murder, death and burial histories

 

Geraldine Brassil (MIC): For Early Modern Populations in the British and Irish Isles, funerals were about the living as well as the dead

For early modern populations, dying, death and, consequently, funerals were very real living concerns, belief systems informing the relationship between the living and the dead in the funerary context. The expectation for Catholics was that time spent by the soul in purgatory could be reduced by the prayers of the living. To this end, the structure of the funeral, centred as it was on the sacrifice of the mass and prayers for the dead, provided the ideal opportunity for collective and active intercession on behalf of the deceased. For post-reformation Protestants, who believed that nothing was to be achieved by praying for souls, the funeral was instructive: confronted with the reality of death, the funeral rituals reminded people of the need to prepare for death. The vast majority of funerals in the British and Irish Isles were those of ordinary people, buried privately, leaving scant evidence for the historian of death, documented heraldic funerals providing evidence of practices only in the upper sections of society. However, from primary sources that still exist and from research for this paper into traditions, religious rituals, practicalities surrounding death and remaining material culture, it will be shown that funeral and burial practices were a construct of the needs of early modern society at all levels, a crucible out of which the dead were honoured, the living were comforted, and crucially, social order in its various manifestations was maintained.

Biography: Gerry Brassil, registered Pharmaceutical Assistant, graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1981, having completed a four-year apprenticeship which combined practical pharmacy-based training with taught modules at the then School of Pharmacy, Shrewsbury Road, Dublin. Subsequently, Gerry worked in Community pharmacy until 2014. Having made the decision to return to full time study, Gerry was offered a place on the B.A. Liberal Arts programme at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick in September 2015, Gerry is currently in the final year of a four-year degree programme majoring in History and English.

 

Chloé Lacoste (Sorbonne Université): Fenian political funerals – the use of ritual and memory to claim national space and sovereignty, 1858-1916

« I think that death is not and has never been a mystery; the mystery is our capacity as a species, as collectivities and as individuals, to make so very much of absence. »1 The feat of the Fenians in the second half of the nineteenth century was indeed to make their presence and influence most felt on these occasions when they were celebrating the death – therefore the absence – of those they deemed worthy of national homage. The deeply cultural character of the funerary ritual has led me to use post-colonial theories of space and of cultural memory. This paper will be at the crossroads of these three issues – absence, space, and memory in a colonial context. Influenced both by the long term legacy of ancient funerary customs and the unprecedented population loss the country had just suffered, the Fenians were acutely aware of the symbolic power of funerals. The bodies they ceremoniously carried to their graves represented the absence not only of the dead individuals they were actually burying, but also of the Famine dead, of the exiled diaspora, and even of the Irish people's sovereignty over their own land. I propose to analyse the Fenians' claims to the national land through the rhetoric they used (in newspapers, placards, obituaries...) as well as through their (actual) ritualistic occupation of space during highly political funerals.

Biography: I graduated in English and Art History at Sorbonne Université in 2007. I then wrote three Masters theses related to Ireland, two for my English graduate studies focusing on cultural nationalism in the 19th century – Young Ireland and the IRB – and one in Art History focusing on early Christian art in Ireland. For my Ph. D., I have chosen to focus on the political uses of public funerals by the Fenians. Since 2012 I have taught at Junior school, High school and currently at Université du Mans.

 

John A. Phayer: ‘Man judges man’s actions, God judges a man’s heart.’ The murder of Peter Nash: Conspiracy or Loyalty?

The purpose of this presentation focuses upon discussing the controversy surrounding the shooting of Peter Nash, a land bailiff, from Garden Hill, Castleconnell in 1847 and the circumstances pertaining to charges placed on John Frewen, a local neighbour accused of this atrocity. Information is given illustrating the backgrounds of both men. An analysis of Peter Nash’s murder and John Frewen’s trial is then provided. The final part of the presentation offers a discussion of other additional issues connected with this murder.

Biography: B.Sc, M.A. in Ed. (Research), Specialist Diploma in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship (First Class Hons) Limerick Education Centre; Former post-graduate student University of Limerick.

 

Panel 3: Visual histories

 

Siobhán Osgood (TCD): Brick-Branding: Architectural Archaeology of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland)

This presentation introduces the aesthetics of railway architectural design in Ireland and its impact on Irish society. The GNRI was founded in 1876 and was an amalgamation of four earlier railway companies. A myriad of architectural styles from Neo-Classical to Gothic Revivalist were inherited by the new company and its first chief engineer, William Hemingway Mills, was responsible for streamlining the company’s infrastructure. Mills used polychromatic yellow, red and black brickwork to create a company identity, incorporating influences from his early career in England, Scotland, Spain and Mexico. Alongside the architectural histories of style evolution, social implications for communication connectivity, trade, emigration, employment and gender equality were all played out on Ireland’s railways. This presentation will provide illuminating visuals from site visits, photographic collections and beautifully illustrated original architectural drawings held by the Irish Railway Record Society archives, alongside literary excerpts and audio-visual film to deliver an engaging session on Ireland’s overlooked railway architectural history.

Biography: Siobhan Osgood is a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin, researching the architecture of the Great Northern Railway Ireland across its original network. She accomplished a master’s with distinction in Irish Art History at Trinity College Dublin and her thesis was awarded the UK’s Industrial Archaeology Association’s Dissertation Prize in 2017. Siobhan has presented her research and written articles for architectural, railway, and history publications. For more information see her blog: www.irishrailwayarchitecture.blogspot.com, Instagram (@irishrailarch) and Twitter (@IrishRailArch).

 

Úna Kavanagh (NUIG): Aesthetics, Identity Politics and the Dillon family through the lens of the Clonbrock Photographic Collection (1860-1930)

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Biography: Úna Kavanagh is currently researching Augusta Dillon, Lady Clonbrock (1839-1928) as part of her PhD research at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI, Galway entitled ‘Framing Anglo-Ireland: Augusta Dillon (1839-1928), Lady Clonbrock, Ahascragh.’ In 2018, she completed the MA in History at NUI, Galway and completed her BA Connect with Irish Studies NUI, Galway in 2017. She has been the recipient of many scholarly awards including the P. J. Mara MA in History award (2017), NUI Galway School of Humanities MA Scholarships (2017), and the Irish Studies Fellowship to the Yeats International Summer School in 2014. Her 2017 MA dissertation focused on autograph book contributions of anti-Treaty internees at Tintown in the Curragh during 1923.

 

Panel 4: Irish Agricultural histories

 

Declan O’Brien (MIC): The Mighty Quinn – the story of Ireland’s first beef baron

When Frank Quinn died in 1989 the Irish Farmers’ Journal recorded that one of the founding fathers of the country’s modern beef industry had passed. It was generous praise for a man raised on a small farm at Rossan in south Leitrim whose first involvement in the meat industry was supplying pigs for slaughter in Dublin. This paper will discuss the pivotal role played by Quinn in the development of beef processing in Ireland between 1948 and 1969, when he sold his meat business that included factories at Grand Canal Street in Dublin and Leixlip, Co Kildare. It will examine the part Quinn played in restructuring and modernising the sector after the fledgling industry encountered serious trading and financial difficulties in the mid-1950s. In addition, it will explore how the Leitrim-man grew his business from a small meat processing facility in Dublin’s Liberties in the early 1950s, into one that boasted the most modern slaughter plants in Europe. Indeed, by 1961 Quinn’s factories generated a turnover in excess of £6 million and were killing over four thousand cattle a week or seventy-five per cent of the national throughput. Using correspondence with the Department of Agriculture and successive agriculture ministers, as well as extracts from oral interviews and newspaper reports, this presentation will seek to give a clearer picture of Ireland’s first beef baron, and assess his impact on the country’s largest indigenous industry and his legacy in the business.

Biograhpy: Declan O’Brien is a PhD student at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and an Irish Research Council scholar. His research, which employs both oral and documentary sources, explores how meat processing companies came to dominate the Irish cattle industry between 1960 and 1985, and the consequences of this development for Irish farmers and their representative bodies, the live cattle export trade, and Irish agricultural policy. Declan is a former editor of the Farming Independent, the weekly farming supplement of the Irish Independent.

 

Anna Devlin (TCD): National self-sufficiency: Agriculture and government in Ireland, 1932-8

To mitigate the impact of the Economic War, the effects of the Great Depression and at the mercy of Britain’s move away from free trade, the Fianna Fáil government’s policy for the export-based agricultural sector included a national programme for agricultural self-sufficiency as well as compensation measures for farmers. As a result, government intervention in Irish agriculture in the 1930s, as elsewhere in Europe, reached levels never previously contemplated. This paper examines the implementation of Ireland’s agricultural self-sufficiency during the Economic War period. It was a policy that also found favour at the time in other European counties. In common with the concurrent industrialisation initiative, a key component was the replacement of certain products that had been imported in large quantities. Increased domestic consumption of home-produced products underpinned the plan, which also foresaw significant change in the Irish landscape to accommodate a greater variety of agricultural output. Though providing farmers with alternatives to troubled sectors, such as cattle production, this self-sufficiency policy, at one level a seemingly achievable goal, quickly ran into problems. Examination of products such as sugar beet and tobacco will illustrate how the ambitious drive for Irish agricultural self-sufficiency ran up against reality and conflicting ideals. Also explored is the impact that agricultural self-sufficiency had on the Irish diet.

Biography: Anna Devlin recently completed an MPhil in Modern Irish History at TCD and will shortly be starting a PhD, also in TCD. Her main research interests are the economic and societal development of modern Ireland and Irish women’s history. She previously worked as a film/TV producer and prior to that in strategic business development and management consultancy. She qualified as a mechanical engineer (TCD), has a history degree (TCD) as well as an MBA (UCD).

 

Panel 5: Music, Myth and Medieval histories

 

Jodie Shevlin (UU): ‘Supernatural Visitings:’ Poltergeist Phenomenon in Nineteenth and Twentieth century Ireland

In nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland all sorts of inexplicable hauntings and happenings were reported. Among the reports of everyday ghosts, those non-threatening spectres and apparitions commonly associated with dilapidated houses and people who died with unfinished business, the more sinister phenomenon of Poltergeists is found. Genuine Poltergeist activity, which usually entailed inexplicable noises and violent throwing about of household items, was reported in both Catholic and protestant communities throughout Ireland. Poltergeist phenomenon is widely believed to be centred on adolescent girls, although cases discussed will demonstrate this was not always the case. Furthermore, communication is often made with the entity through a coded system of knocking, for these reasons; poltergeist activity is closely associated with the related phenomena of demonic possession and spiritualism. Due to the nature of Poltergeist phenomenon however, it was not unheard of for imitations and fraudulent reporting to occur- quite possibly for personal or financial gain and notoriety. While fraudulent cases do occur in Ireland, they are less frequent than ‘genuine’ reports of the phenomenon. This paper will explore popular and elite attitudes to Poltergeist phenomenon in relation to the Irish Catholic Church and the effects of the growth of the Spiritualist movement on Poltergeist phenomenon in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Biography: Jodie Shevlin is a PhD researcher in History at Ulster University. Her research focuses on Catholic attitudes to the supernatural, such as, ghosts, fairies, astrology, fortune-telling and demonic possession in nineteenth-century Ireland.

 

Aoife Cranny Walsh (UCD): Historical Truth and Literary Embellishment: The Historical and Legendary Perceptions of Queenship in Early Medieval Irish sources

When examining Irish queenship the question which must be asked is whether a queen is in fact a legendary or historical figure? This is difficult to answer as there is relatively little material on historical queenship as opposed to legendary queens. For Irish medieval queenship the material is heavily based on legendary and semi-historical queens, such as Queen Medb, set in highly literary contexts. However, by approaching Irish literature on queenship in a nuanced comparative context it will be possible to separate and unravel the historical and legendary. The objective of this paper is to separate the historical truth from literary embellishment to create a stronger narrative surrounding historical queenship in medieval Ireland. This will be achieved by examining the portrayals of queenship in the sources, both legendary, historical, and legal. The sources will shed light on what role queenship had in society from the role of women in literary sources and how their portrayal is contradicted in legal and historical sources. The dichotomy in the sources between legend and history which surrounds this scholarship can be complicated further when the attributes of the sovereignty goddess is placed on historical queens. This imbalance in the sources results in the queens in the literary material overshadowing the queens in the historical sources, leaving them voiceless and forgotten over time. The aim of this paper is to reintroduce historical queens in the sources back into the scholarship narrative of early medieval Ireland.

Biography: Aoife Cranny Walsh is a current PhD student in the UCD School of History under the supervision of Dr Elva Johnston. Studying queenship in early medieval Ireland, in particular the representation of legendary and historical queenship and examining the gap in literature between the representation of queenship in both Irish and European sources.

 

Catherine Barnwell (TCD): Saints and Song: The role of Devotional music at Medieval Christian Heritage Sites

One need only think of the countless abbatial ruins dotting the Irish countryside to conclude that medieval Christian monasticism remains a part of Ireland’s cultural heritage landscape. Today, a number of monastic heritage sites have adopted public history practices and opened their doors to visitors. In the academic world, recent scholarship on medieval manuscripts containing proper Divine Offices written for Irish saints has furthered our understanding of the cult of saints in medieval Ireland, and provides us with a source of musical heritage that complements written sources and archaeological findings. However, this scholarly knowledge of devotional music has not necessarily been translated into narratives about Irish saints at cultural heritage sites; music does not figure prominently, if at all, in medieval public histories. This paper proposes a critical analysis of the public narratives about Irish saints, through a case study of St Brigid of Kildare. Many sites in and around Kildare maintain connections to St Brigid, telling stories of her life to tourists and pilgrims. The Office of St Brigid, contained in two 15th-century antiphonaries (TCD MSS 78 and 80), reveals a rich tradition of musical devotion to Ireland’s most prominent female saint, centuries after her death. Using the Office of St Brigid as a source for creating public history narratives would render medieval monasticism more accessible to visitors, bring to the fore a relevant discussion about women’s inscription within the Church canon, and highlight the complexities of St Brigid as a historical individual. Drawing upon field research findings, I advance concrete ways of integrating the Divine of St Brigid at Kildare’s cultural heritage sites. By nuancing narratives and allowing a distant past to come alive through music, the proper Divine Offices could prove a valuable resource in public history practice, and bridge the gap between the scholarly study of music composed for Irish saints and the popular stories told about these saints at medieval Christian heritage sites.

Biography: Catherine Barnwell will obtain her M.Phil. in Public History and Cultural Heritage from Trinity College Dublin in April 2019. During her time at Trinity, she completed her dissertation about women’s economic histories within public history narratives, and published a paper about rural electrification under the New Deal in the Trinity Postgraduate Review (vol. XVII, 2018). She continues to work on the use of music at monastic heritage sites with Dr Ann Buckley of the Trinity Medieval Research Centre. Catherine holds a B.A. in History and Economics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

 

Panel 6: Biographical histories

 

Michael Loughman (NUIG): Oliver J. Flanagan – Monetary Reformer

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Biography: My name is Michael Loughman from Co. Laois and I have recently completed a MA in history at NUIG and before that I completed a BA in mathematics and history at NUIG as well. For my MA, I did my thesis on the early political career of Oliver J. Flanagan when he was a self-declared ‘monetary reformer’. For my work I received a first-class honours and my thesis was very well received. In fact, it was so well received, I was invited to give an hour long talk in the Moore Institute at NUIG, which I gladly gave.

 

Stephen Griffin (UL): ‘Avec distinction, zele, fidelité et attachement’: Count O’Rouerke and service, patronage and social advancement in the duchy of Lorraine, 1698-1727

The sovereignty of the duchy of Lorraine was restored by France in compliance with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The duchy had been ravaged by war and occupation for much of the seventeenth century and the restored duke Leopold was faced with repopulating his lands. A cosmopolitan court was established comprising of Lorrainers, Germans, French, Swiss, Italians, Hungarians and Irish amongst others. In particular, a number of Irish soldiers who had recently been demobilised from the Stuart army in France were enlisted in the duke’s bodyguard. Of these, the captain of the regiment, Owen O’Rouerke, would gradually rise to become a prominent member of Leopold’s court and eventually became an agent of the Stuart court in exile in Vienna from 1727 to 1743, the position for which he is most well-known. The influence of noble culture upon ancien régime diplomacy has frequently been remarked upon and as the late Rohan Butler once remarked: ‘Aristocratic existence at court was a natural school for diplomats.’ Long before he ever served the Stuarts in Austria, O’Rouerke was fulfilling a prominent role as an officer of the Lorrainer court and agent of the duke at home and abroad. Therefore, this paper will explain how through patronage, service and his own initiative and ambition, O’Rouerke rose to prominence at Leopold’s court and how this chain of events would lead him to become the Stuart man in Vienna from 1727 onward.

Biography: Stephen Griffin is a PhD candidate with the Department of History at the University of Limerick where he is supervised by Dr Richard Kirwan. He is a former awardee of a Richard Plaschka pre-doctoral fellowship (2017-18) which allowed him to undertake a year of archival research in Vienna. His most recent publication is ‘"Irlandois de Nation": Duke Leopold’s Irish subjects and Jacobitism in Lorraine, 1698-1727’ published in History Ireland (2018).

 

Tracy McCarthy (MIC) Morty Óg O’Sullivan Beare, c. 1710-1754

My proposed paper extends from my Undergraduate Dissertation about the little known character of Morty Óg O'Sullivan Beare (c. 1710-1754) from the Berehaven Peninsula in South Cork. Morty Óg was an exceptional character in the mid-eighteenth-century who descended from a prestigious Catholic family. He was a well-known smuggler in the South, carrying clandestine goods to and from France, while also recruiting Ireland’s youth for foreign military service. In March 1754, the toxic relationship between Morty Óg and his former smuggling partner, John Puxley, reached its zenith when Morty Óg murdered Puxley while on his way to church. Two months later, Morty Óg was subjected to a politically charged, non-judicial execution by a garrison led by Lieutenant Appleton that was sent from Cork to apprehend him. This paper offers a rebuttal to Vincent Morley’s claim that Morty Óg Ó Súilleabháin Beare ‘should not be associated with other causes célèbres of the period’.1 Morley maintained that Morty Óg’s death resulted exclusively from a long standing ‘local turf war’ between the O'Sullivans and the Puxleys. Whereas it is the contention of this paper that his death was not simply the consequence of Puxley’s murder, but Morty Óg’s military career, smuggling activities and recruitment agency all contributed to his extra-judicial execution. This argument is supported by Louis Cullen who placed Morty Óg in the same bracket as two other tragic figures of eighteenth century Ireland, James Cotter and Arthur O'Leary, whose deaths had also occurred in controversial circumstances.

Biography: I graduated from the Bachelor of Arts Degree at Mary Immaculate College last year, majoring in History and Philosophy. I am now in my first year of the Masters by Research Programme with the Department of History under the supervision of Dr Liam Chambers. My thesis focuses on disaffection, politicisation and rebellion in Connaught between 1775 and 1800. It offers a transnational perspective of this remote region of Ireland by placing it in the context of transatlantic revolutions, i.e. the American and French Revolutions. I am also a tutor for the History Department at MIC, teaching second year BA students.

 

Panel 7: Women’s histories of Ireland

(Kindly sponsored by Women’s History Association of Ireland)

 

Morgan Wait (TCD): Conspicuous Absence: Irish Women and the formation of Teilifis Éireann

The creation of the first native Irish television service, Teilifís Éireann, marked an important transition in Contemporary Irish History. The introduction of TÉ into Irish homes in 1962 has been examined by historians such as Robert Savage and John Bowman, both of whom assert that the introduction of television to the Republic contributed to the transformation of Ireland into a more ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ society. However, none of the limited studies on Irish television consider women or their role in this moment. This paper, thus, addresses this gap in the literature and examines women’s role in Irish television history between 1958 and 1962. Particularly, it examines the proceedings of the Television Commission and the discourse around women and television, in the popular press, between 1958, the year the Television Commission was formed, and 1962, the year TÉ went to air. It asks whether or not women, their needs, and their interests, were considered during the formation of TÉ. It will note the conspicuous absence of women’s voices and concern for their interests, during this period. This paper argues that as the station was formed with little to no concern about, or input from, women, TÉ as an institution was in line with most other Irish institutions of the period that worked to maintain the status quo, and subordination of, women, in Irish society. This paper, thus, complicates notions about TÉ’s role as a ‘progressive’ agent of change by considering the role of women in the station’s formation.

Biography: Morgan Wait is a second year PhD student at Trinity College, Dublin in the School of Histories and Humanities. She is currently working on a thesis entitled ‘‘An unspoken power’: Women and Irish Television 1958-1973’ that examines multifaceted ways that television impacted upon women during this time frame, and vice versa. Originally from Bel Air, Maryland, Morgan holds a master’s degree in Modern Irish History from Trinity College, Dublin and a bachelor’s degree in History from Salisbury University.

 

Susan Byrne (TCD): Keeping company with the enemy: Gender and sexual violence during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War (1919-1923)

Historical consensus on sexual and gender violence during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War is that, while it occurred, it was rare and did not form part of any wider policy of strategy of war. This paper will explore what narratives do exist of sexual/gender violence to appreciate both the contemporary framing and understanding of these occurrences. For example, while print media reports of attacks on women, such as hair cutting, were relatively common, these reports were in effect bulletins. This undoubtedly increased the level of tension and fear among the female population and probably served as a ‘warning’ to many. These reports tell us relatively little about the ways in which both such gender and sexual violence were handled or how the authorities and the wider community reacted to such attacks. This paper will explore the incidence of ‘hair-cutting’ and how it contributed to the wider threat of violence against women during this period. In this context, I will focus on a case known as the ‘Kenmare Case’ which occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War. This incident involved an attack on two young women by, allegedly, three Free State officers. It was a high-profile case and I wish to explore what it reveals about the contemporary, particularly the state and military, response to such cases of gender violence. This paper will present this case as a micro study of the ways in which violence against women was perceived and managed.

Biography: My name is Susan Byrne and I am a first year PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. My research area is ‘Women’s experience of the Free State justice system 1922-1937’. I completed a joint honours BA in History and Linguistics at University College Dublin in 2016 and completed my MA in modern Irish history, also at UCD, in 2017. My paper is based on my MA thesis.

 

Judy Bolger (TCD): ‘A hopeless case’: the representation of mothers and the workhouse in Irish newspapers (1870-1910)

A central aspect of any study of motherhood, past or present, is the role of identity. Yet, such an identity is often a social construct which is deeply impacted by the society in which it was moulded. During the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early decades of the twentieth, great attention was placed upon the significance of the mother and child relationship and the maternal responsibility of women to ensure their children’s physical and moral wellbeing. Women were often deemed maternally ignorant and therefore, responsible for the high rate of infant mortality during the period. A specifically vulnerable cohort of this rhetoric were mothers from the lower-classes of Irish society. The linkage between inadequate mother and poverty were solidified once such women were bound to mother within the workhouse. Nineteenth-century institutions, like the workhouse, lasted a long time in Ireland and therefore, tracing the transformation of depiction of motherhood within these facilities is vital to engage with the contemporary societal influences that poverty had on such an identity. For those reliant on relief provisions and subsequently under the surveillance of social authorities, the line between private and public assumptions of motherhood were blurred as their ability to mother was often construed. Many such cases were reported to the wider public. Therefore, this paper seeks to question the depiction of inadequate mothers through the reports of contemporary newspapers to dissect the social construct of Irish motherhood during the period. What can these examples of mothering within the workhouses tell us about nineteenth-century female identity? Was such a concept of identity fluid or based on personal experiences and social constructs?

Biography: Judy Bolger is currently a PhD student in the department of Modern Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin. Her PhD seeks to examine women’s experiences of maternity and motherhood Irish workhouses during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and this project is being fully-funded by the Trinity College, Dublin 1252 Postgraduate Research Scholarship. She holds a first-class M.Phil. degree in Modern Irish History from Trinity College, Dublin and a first-class Honours B.A. in English and History from Carlow College. Her areas of interest are primarily in the social and cultural histories of Ireland from the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Panel 8: 19th Century health and body histories

 

Shelby Zimmerman (TCD): The South Dublin Union and Cork Street Fever Hospital’s Response to the Smallpox Epidemic of 1871-3

The Smallpox Epidemic of 1871-3 provided insight into how the Irish poor law and medical institutions responded to epidemic crisis. This paper will address how the South Dublin Union Workhouse and the Cork Street Fever Hospital responded to the epidemic and how the administration’s delayed and chaotic response in conjunction with strict budgets with lack of funding hindered the efficacy of treatment and containment of smallpox. Medical charities were primarily financially motivated, in which poor law guardians implemented the cheapest alternative to satisfy demand for additional hospital accommodation at the expense of the patients. This research draws upon the South Dublin Union minute books, the Chief Secretary’s registered papers, the Cork Street Fever Hospital collection, and the Dublin Sanitary Association collection. The scramble to construct temporary wards during the epidemic resulted in the South Dublin Union’s Board of Guardians collaborating with local institutions to accommodate smallpox patients while attempting to create provisional wards at the expense of financially reluctant Poor Law Guardians. Administrations adopted a reactive approach to the epidemic and sought to increase resources when it became a necessity. Rather than attributing the spread of smallpox to unsuitable facilities, the institutions chose to blame each other for the introduction of smallpox into city districts. This paper seeks to determine how the ad hoc response to crisis management demonstrated poor administration regarding medical relief in Ireland at the expense of patient welfare and public health.

Biography: Shelby Zimmerman is originally from the US, where she earned a Bachelors of Science in History and Museum Studies from Towson University and published an article on 19th century working class children in Towson Journal of Historical Studies. Shelby received her MPhil in Modern Irish History from Trinity College. Her dissertation examined the passive nature of the South Dublin Union’s Board of Guardians in delivering medical relief during the outbreak and how physicians’ understanding of smallpox comprehension influenced vaccination and sanitation policies. Shelby will begin her PhD in March and will research death and dying in Irish workhouses from 1872-1920.

 

Joyce-Elena Ní Ghiobúin (TCD): ‘I was sick, and ye visited me’. Re-evaluating the role of Protestant lady visitors in Irish healthcare and social welfare (c.1850-1920)

By the latter half of the 19th century in Ireland, lady almoners and health visitors had an established role in offering communal welfare in urban and industrialised centres. In the words of social historian F. Prochaska, they ‘represented the most significant contribution made by organised religion to relieving the ills of society’ (2006). Yet they could be either revered or repulsed among the people they sought to reach, depending on local perceptions of their patronage or proselytising the urban poor. This group of women have been overlooked in social histories that stress the growth of women’s ‘professionalised’ careers in nursing and medicine at the cost of downplaying the importance of vocations in this period. Communal and oral memories of these mostly Protestant almoners were similarly downplayed in a society increasingly influenced by the Catholic Church. This paper aims to clarify the parameters and nature of their unique services in a period marked by ‘maternalism in politics’, where women often advised other women in matters of health and welfare in the home. By correlating their charitable societies’ records and pamphlets, together with some external accounts, their work will be understood as an important stage in the expansion of social work and district nursing within Irish communities.

Biography: Joyce Elena Ní Ghiobúin is a graduate of Reconciliation Studies (MPhil, TCD Belfast) and has completed an Advanced Diploma in Local History (Oxford) to continue investigating transnational networks in nursing history. Her interests lie in denominational aspects of Irish-British nursing history and group biography (c. 1850-1920). She looks forward to commencing her doctoral research at Trinity College Dublin in 2019.

 

Connor Heffernan (UCD): Marching Forwards or Backwards? Drill, Physical Education and the Army in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland

Writing to a friend in 1911, the then educationalist Patrick Pearse lamented the lack of Irish trained gymnastics teachers capable of teaching in his school, St. Endas. Surveying the availability of teachers in Dublin, Pearse bitterly complained that all seemed to have been trained by the British military. While Pearse’s disappointment was linked to a wider sense of Irish nationalism, his observation about the military’s importance in Ireland was nevertheless correct. From the late nineteenth-century and well into the twentieth-century, public and private schools in Ireland displayed a remarkable dependency on military instructors and military systems of exercise to train Irish schoolchildren. Surveying the period, 1890 to 1939, the following presentation seeks to examine what systems of physical education were implemented in Ireland during this time, what their underlying messages were and where these systems came from. As will be shown, the systems used to train children’s bodies were not value neutral programmes. Rather, they reflected wider societal ideals surrounding health, fitness, warfare and modernity. To illustrate this, the presentation examines the introduction of two systems of physical education into Irish schools. The first came in the opening decade when systems of military drill, taken from the British Army, were brought into Irish classrooms. The second arose in the 1930s when the Irish Free State Army adopted the Sokol System of Physical Culture from Czecho-Slovakia. In examining these systems, the presentation not only highlights the importance of the military in Irish schools during this time but analyses the messages and expectations surrounding these forms of martial exercise for children.

Biography: Funded by the Irish Research Council and Universities Ireland, Conor Heffernan is a current PhD student at University College of Dublin. Studying the role of physical culture in Ireland from 1890 to 1939, Conor’s work is deeply concerned with the importance of exercise and bodily expression in identity formation.

 

Panel 9: Irish Revolutionary histories

 

Leona Armstrong (Independent): ‘Donegal Amazon’: the Extraordinary Role of Eithne Coyle in the Revolutionary Period

This research paper aims to investigate the unique role of Eithne Coyle during the revolutionary period in Ireland. In history one must let the authentic voice shine through and thus this paper will try to bring to life Eithne Coyle’s authentic voice in such a revolutionary time. It strives to bring to the forefront how one woman had such an influential role in both Cumann na mBan and the Gaelic League not only in her home county of Donegal but also in Tyrone, Longford, Roscommon and Ireland in general. Therefore, it aims to push aside the misconceptions that women held passive roles in society. As in the case of Eithne, she was far from a passive republican woman as we will later see. As Eithne herself depicted, ‘it is a curious fact that women as women, got a very meagre place in the pages of history. And Irish history, I am sorry to say, is no exception to this rule’. Thus, I will begin to provide a snapshot of the life of Eithne Coyle.

Biography: Leona Armstrong a native of Galway and is currently an independent scholar. She completed her BA Arts (Joint Honours) in History and Sociology from the University of Limerick. Her BA thesis was titled ‘The Forgotten Voices of Killeeneen Cumann na mBan’ and was awarded the Brian Faloon prize. Two chapters of this thesis subsequently were published in the Galway County Council publication ‘Centenary Reflections on the 1916 Rising - Galway County Perspectives’. In 2017 she graduated with a MA in History from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Leona’s research interests include world and Irish women’s history, Irish revolutionary history, local, social and cultural history.

 

Cian Flaherty (TCD): Lucky escapes, rising damp or something else entirely? Why so few Co Waterford big houses were burned in the Irish Revolution

This paper asks why most Waterford ‘big houses’ were not burned during the Irish Revolution. The use of arson in the period has been written about before, notably by Gemma Clark. Thus far the focus has been on the experience of big house burning and the motives behind it. Less attention has been paid to the reasons why houses were not burned. Taking Waterford as my case study, I ask why the vast majority of big houses managed to escape the arsonist’s torch. The paper will take a qualitative, kaleidoscopic approach to the question, utilising a wide range of sources, including compensation files, witness statements, oral interviews and memoirs. I will show that arson was not widely used as a weapon of war by the IRA in Co Waterford during this period, but that despite this, the occupants and owners of Waterford big houses feared arson from early in the War of Independence and took steps to guard against it. I will also show that while for some houses, survival seemed fortuitous (for instance a house being taken over by Free State troops just before the anti-Treaty IRA got there), they may well have been destined for survival in any case. I will also discuss the implementation and impact of the IRA’s big house levy, which is credited with ensuring the survival of many properties.

Biography: Cian Flaherty graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BA (Mod) in History in 2018. He is currently reading for an MPhil in Modern Irish History at Trinity. His research interests include aspects of violence and unrest during the revolutionary period and the history of Irish ecumenism.

 

Eilish Kavangh (GMIT): A Silk Blouse, a Spy and a Priest: A Brief Overview of Key Incidents in 1920-1921 that led to the escalation of ‘Terror’ in County Galway’s War of Independence

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921. In County Galway, a significant number of incidents and clashes took place during the war, with many impacting on civilians going about their daily lives. The level of violence escalated in mid-1920, when a force of special reserve temporary constables (the Black and Tans) arrived in Galway. This resulted in what both David Fitzpatrick and Conor McNamara have referred to as the ‘terror’ in County Galway. These events were the subject of scrutiny in both the House of Commons and The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. By listing these incidents as part of a bigger study on the local history of County Galway, it has emerged that each attack became more undisciplined and began to take the form of acts of vengeance rather than policing. Hence the misconception that these were English convicts or ‘war-damaged’ veterans. These killings and vengeful events led to a deep dissatisfaction within the English establishment on the Irish question and finally contributed to the desire for talks, and ultimately a Truce.

Biography: Eilish Kavanagh is a graduate of the BA (Hons) in Heritage Studies. A member of GMIT’s Heritage Research Group (see: www.gmit.ie/heritage-research-group), Eilish is conducting research for a PhD thesis on ‘The Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) in County Galway: Compiling Local Histories, Recording Memories & Developing Post-Conflict Heritage Initiatives’. Eilish was presented with GMIT’s Heritage Studies Alumni Award in 2016 and is a contributor to ‘Centenary Reflections on the 1916 Rising: A County Galway Perspective' (Galway County Council, 2016). She produces, researches, edits and co-presents her own show, ‘Scattered Showers’, every fortnight on the local community radio station, Kinvara FM.

 

Panel 10: The Irish Abroad

 

Robert Keenan (Utrecht University): Catholic and Protestant Integration in Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool, 1850-1975

The Great Irish Famine exacerbated the large-scale flow of migrants from Ireland to new labour markets and new homes overseas. While not all Irish migrants were Catholic, those who were Protestant found integration to be an easier task than their ‘papist’ counterparts. This was largely due to their comparative wealth, anti-Catholic prejudice and the confessional structure of their new surroundings. The purpose of this paper then, is to investigate the successes and failures of these Irish Catholic migrants in integrating into their communities by making a cross comparison of three cities, Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool. Each is a major seaport city which, in the 19th and early 20th centuries particularly, acted as the heart of highly industrialised local economies. Each was fuelled by strong private investment in industry and largely dependent on overseas trade and each developed to become a major trade union centre in the early 20th century. Despite these commonalities, integration proved to be more successful in Liverpool and Glasgow than in Belfast. In seeking to address why we shall see that the development of trade union movements in both Glasgow and Liverpool provided cross-confessional solidarity for Irish Catholics in their new communities. In contrast, Belfast, despite a few major cooperative moments never overcame the sectarian divide to create a labour movement to parallel those others. It will become clear that the interplay of associational life, social capital and the labour movements in each city respectively, whether fortifying or dysfunctional, is a key component in the success and failure of Irish Catholic integration today.

Biography: My name is Robert Keenan. I am an Irish Masters Student at Utrecht University reading History of Politics and Society. My research interests include the history of industrialisation and labour movements in 19th and 20th century Europe, postcolonial movements throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America and more broadly, socio-economic inequality within capitalist structures. I am currently writing a Masters thesis on comparative industrialisation across the Pearl River Delta in Hong Kong and Macau and in February will begin in a role as a research assistant for an ERC funded project on the historical dynamics of industrialisation in North West Europe and China that operates out of the International Institute of Social History an Amsterdam.

 

David Collopy (MIC): ‘The Fighting Irish, A most unholy row:’ The controversy between John Mitchel and John Hughes, Archbishop of New York in The Citizen newspaper of 1854

This paper will argue that John Mitchel’s rejection of the authoritarian influence of Archbishop Hughes and the Catholic Church upon the Irish American community was not sectarian in nature and was instead founded upon a desire to better the experience of the Irish in a hostile environment. The church in Mitchel’s opinion by accentuating ethnic Catholicism was proving to be a divisive influence regarding assimilation. Mitchel a Protestant, protested against what he perceived to be a barrier to the Irish gaining acceptance in the know nothing dominated, American society of the 1850s. The controversy was articulated in the Irish American press between two sons of Ulster, born fifty miles apart and each famed for their militancy in defence of their respective causes. It emanated from Mitchel’s criticism of the temporal power of the pope in his newspaper the Citizen. Published in New York, it boasted a readership of 50,000 weekly during 1854.It was Mitchel’s first journal in America and was concerned primarily with affairs relating to the Irish in the new world. As a Young Ireland refugee in America, Mitchel and his fellow Young Irelanders were largely anti-clerical owing to the belief among nationalists that the rebellions of 1798 and 1848 had been betrayed by the clergy. Accordingly Mitchel was viewed with suspicion by John Hughes, then regarded as the Irish Catholic prelate in America.

Biography: David Collopy is a second year PhD postgraduate student in History at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. He earned his BA in Irish and History at MIC and was awarded a Presidential Scholarship Award based on his undergraduate results. He completed the PGDE at NUIG and since 2010 has been teaching at Ardscoil Rís, Limerick. He is currently working on the contested transnational ideology of John Mitchel.

 

Liam Barry-Hayes (MIC): 'A veritable palace of journalism, unequalled by any newspaper establishment in New York': Richard K. Fox's National Police Gazette building, Franklin Square

Richard Kyle Fox arrived in the United States from Belfast in 1874. Having started his career in the advertisement departments of the Banner of Ulster and later the Belfast News-Letter, Fox’s grounding in the publishing industry afforded him the necessary skills to quickly become the proprietor of the then struggling National Police Gazette. Within less than five years the new owner had established the weekly Gazette as the leading sports and sensationalist weekly in the world, and his premises at Franklin Square, Manhattan, the sporting centre of the world.

Biography: Liam Barry-Hayes is a second year doctoral candidate and departmental assistant at the Department of History, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His research focuses on the career and influence of the New York based Irish publisher and sports promoter, Richard Kyle Fox (1846-1922). Liam graduated with a BA from MIC in 2016 and an MA in 2017, also from MIC.

 

Panel 11: Contextualising history through literature

 

Adele Hannon (MIC): A Monster’s Lesson on History: Examining the Political and Cultural Agendas of the Literary Villain

Traditionally, the fictive monster functions as a reminder of social groups that exist on the margins of society, whom, to many observers, are viewed as the ‘graphic smear’ or the ‘Other’, a distortion that interrupts the normative progression of the homogenous space. The monster can be seen to act as a metaphor for those who transcend the limits of acceptable behaviour, and subsequently become identified as ‘abnormal’, victimised by inflexible expectations and intolerant stereotypes. Where the Latin verb ‘monere’ means to ‘demonstrate’ or to ‘warn’, the monster becomes a warning, the prophetic embodiment of a nightmare of progress, the visual emblem of momentous change. The literary monster, therefore, evolves from the cultural anxieties of the context it is born from, and becomes a significant tool in understanding psychological and social impressions of the past. Not only does the Gothic provide an understanding of the inner mechanisms of the mind, but it also allows for a reimagining of how society views ‘evil’ and its socially constructed monsters. From traditional monsters such as Frankenstein’s Creature that embodies the Victorian fear of science, to the modernised monster Regan MacNeil who demonstrates the deterioration of religious values in 1960s America, each literary villain serves a different purpose. The evolution of imaginary monsters represent projections created from the repressed urges in the human mind, and further, that society is informed by these fictional personalities of what is socially incorrect or what is ‘acceptably human’.

Biography: Adele Hannon is a PhD student at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland. Her current field placement is in Mary Immaculate College as a departmental assistant in the Department of English Language and Literature. Her PhD thesis is entitled The Untold Story of the Monster: A Psychoanalytic Look at the Monster through the Anamorphic Lens. Last year, she co-organised, with PhD student Jade Dillon, the international conference ‘Villainous Victims: Redefining the Antihero from a Postmodern Perspective’ in 2018. Adele’s most recent publication is with ‘Otherness: Essays and Studies 6.2’ entitled Othering the Outsider: Monstering Abject Bodies in Wuthering Heights. She has a broad range of research interests in the fields of Gothic studies, the gendered body, monster theory, adaptation, popular culture, anamorphic perspective, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction.

 

Jade Dillon (MIC): Reflected Realism: How Children’s Literature Simultaneously Reflects and Deconstructs Social Ideologies

This paper explores the simultaneous reflection and deconstruction of social ideologies in children’s literature, particularly the historical portrayal of girlhood in Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Examining Peter Hunt’s assertion of the relationship between dream and reality, the alternate realms are laced with social realism. In this sense, the real can be reimagined in a dynamic sphere of fantasy, thus embodying the connection between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘symbolic’. Throughout the alternate worlds, there is an uncanny sense of social realism, wherein the essence of what represents socio-normativity lies in the abstract and the Other – an inverted resolution of reality. Examining children’s literature in light of social and political ideologies is pivotal to the construction of individual narratives, particularly those of gender and class distinctions. Victorian and Edwardian novels are interwoven with in-depth social constructions of hegemonic discourse, wherein the protagonists are ideologically challenged by government politics and monarchical rule. Due to the didactic nature of children’s literature, the child reader is more susceptible to being interpellated by the ideological message of the text on an unconscious level. In terms of social and cultural ideology, the class distinction of the protagonists will be analysed as well as the gendered roles that they inhabit.

Biography: Jade Dillon is a doctoral researcher and English tutor within the Department of English Language and Literature in Mary Immaculate College, Ireland. Jade’s thesis is entitled ‘Through the Looking Glass: Analysing Children’s Literature through the Theoretical Lens’. Jade’s most recent publication is to feature in The Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television: Theory and Practice’ (2019) with Palgrave Macmillan. She was the co-organiser of Mum's The Word (a gender-based conference founded on the female experience in Popular Culture, 2017) and Villainous Victims (a conference which focused on the demonization of the “Other” in the image of the anti- hero, 2018). She is a peer reviewer for Continuum Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, and actively publishes in areas of cinematography and critical literary analysis with Fantastika Journal and the IRSCL. She tweets from the account @jade_dillon.

 

Ian Hickey (MIC): Repeating the Past: Hauntology, History and the Poetry of Séamus Heaney

This paper seeks to examine the repetitive and circular nature of history through the haunting presence of the bog in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx will be used as a lens through which to view the poetry. The paper argues that the present and future are influenced by spectres of the past through what Derrida would term hauntology, with Derrida himself noting that ‘a ghost never dies, it always remains to come and to come-back’ (Derrida 2006, p.123). In the bog poems Heaney uses the bog as a way of viewing contemporary violence from a wider, older, Northern European perspective. Similarities are drawn between contemporary Northern Ireland and that of Scandinavia in the poetry and it is the circular, repetitive nature of history that enables the poet to locate a plateau, outside his primary world, to view the events of his present world. Historical instances of Scandinavian violence and sacrifice repeat themselves in the present of Heaney’s Northern Ireland. The spectres voice influences and guides the unconscious of the poet, and society, in a manner that makes history repeat itself, albeit under a different guise with Derrida noting that ‘we inherit the very thing that allows us to bear witness to it’(Derrida 2006, p.68). This inheritance of history manifests itself as analogous representations of the past, but in a different time and a different place. The paper will discuss three of Heaney’s major bog poems: ‘Punishment’, ‘The Tollund Man’ and ‘Bogland’.

Biography: Ian Hickey is a Ph.D research student in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His current field placement is in Mary Immaculate College as a departmental assistant in the Department of English Language and Literature. He is interested in Modern Irish Poetry and Fiction, Irish Theatre, Hauntology and Literary Theory.

 

Panel 12: Irish Institutional histories

 

Victoria Anne Pearson (UCC): ‘We saw a Vision.’ The Cork Charitable Society, 1791-1815

In the winter of 1775, Nano Nagle and three companions, founded the Society of Charitable Instruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This congregation, which would become the Presentation Order, was the culmination of an ambitious and progressive mission committed to educating the city’s Catholic poor. Nano had been the impetus. Yet, it was her friendship and collaboration with Fr. Francis Moylan, future Catholic Bishop of Cork, that led to the formalisation and consolidation of her educational vision. After Nano’s death, Moylan dedicated his bishopric to the survival, continuation and expansion of this vision. A vision that was realised by the Cork Charitable Society, who established, funded and maintained a number of Roman Catholic Poor Schools. Aided by the city’s Catholic middle class, the scope of Bishop Moylan’s philanthropic venture reflected the emerging self-confidence of the community in the wake of legislative relief. Furthermore, the organisation and extensive fundraising efforts of the Society reveals a complex and sophisticated network that protected and permitted the transfer, by Catholics, of concealed wealth, through donated monies and property, despite enduring societal restrictions. This paper purposes to look at the beginnings and growth of the Cork Charitable Society, it members, their contributions, both financially and socially and will discuss the central role of Bishop Francis Moylan in the in the Society’s purpose and success.

Biography: Victoria Anne Pearson is in the final year of a MPhil study with the School of History, University College Cork. Her research focuses on the life and work of Bishop Francis Moylan, 1735-1815, a significant figure in in emergence of a renewed and reinvigorated Catholic community in late Eighteenth Century Ireland. Victoria graduated with a BA (First Class) from UCC in 2003. She currently works in second level education in Derry City.

 

Jane O’Brien (NUIG): An analysis of Managers’ Diaries and correspondence from the Irish Industrial School System: 1868-1920

The Irish Industrial School System was established in 1868. At its height in 1898 there was a total of 71 industrial schools in operation in the country which were certified by the state and run by local managers. Despite remaining a controversial and topical subject, there is limited awareness of how the schools initially operated in practice or of how and why families used these institutions. My research explores the rich and untapped sources within convent archives that reveal the intimate workings of the Irish Industrial School System from the inside out. Surviving Managers’ Diaries can be extensive, covering many years, with often detailed and illuminating entries on many aspects of human relations and life within the institutions. Surviving personal correspondence relating to particular children can be hugely revealing not just for its primary content but also for the light it can shed on the attitudes and circumstances of the time. These letters, notes and diaries often lay bare the thoughts, emotions and motivations from a very human perspective of not only the families that were forced to use the system but also the religious orders that ran the schools. This paper explores how these sources aid our understanding of the social conditions and class struggles faced by society during this time in Irish history and of the continuity of human emotions.

Biography: Jane O’Brien is a second year PhD History Candidate at NUI Galway and is a recipient of the Galway Doctoral Scholarship under the supervision of Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley. Her research topic is the role of family and society within the Irish industrial school system from 1868 to 1936. She previously completed a Masters in Local History at the University of Limerick where her dissertation examined the industrial school child of Ennis from 1880 to 1911. She has published two articles from this work and presented on the topic for various groups. She also runs a historical walking tour company.

 

Christopher Costigan (TCD): The Irish Big House and the 1837 Slave Compensation Act

This paper examines the links between links between slavery and the Irish Big House in the University College London ‘Legacies of British Slave Ownership’ database. The British government agreed to compensate slave owners for their lost “property” following the abolition of slavery and paid out 20,000,000 million pounds. Records of all of these payments have been catalogued by the University College London Legacies of British Slave Ownership Database. Work has been done on the connections between those listed in the database and the British Country House but nothing substantive has been written on the links between Irish Big Houses and those listed in the database. The paper is a provisional examination of the relationship between slavery and the big house in Ireland, looking at Irish absentee slave owners found in the UCL database and their property in Ireland. From this I sketch a tentative list of the big houses in Ireland with provable ties to slavery and place this within the context of wider Irish involvement with slavery. I ask where were these houses, to what extent can we link slave wealth with either their construction or alterations and what is their current status? Finally I look at the legacies of these houses in Ireland and the complications that their connections to slavery may bring to our understanding of them.

Biography: I am currently studying an M. Phil in Modern Irish History in Trinity College. I graduated last year with a degree in History and Political Science also from Trinity. I am interested in the relationship between Ireland and the British Empire, particularly in how Irish involvement in the Empire impacted Ireland domestically.

 

Panel 13: The Material Culture of Revolutionary Ireland

 

Timothy Ellis (Teesside University): ‘Putting the blue shirt back into the Blueshirts’: Politics and clothing in 1930s Ireland

One of the most significant political phenomena, internationally, in the 1930s were the infamous ‘shirted movements’, commonly, though not exclusively, associated with Fascist and para-Fascist organisations. The significance of coloured shirts in the politics of the 1930s, for instance, has attracted scholarly interest, notably in Phillip Coupland’s (2004) and Perry Wilson’s (2013) work on the British and Italian black-shirts respectively. The significance of clothing in the contemporary Irish ‘Blueshirts’ has received very little attention from scholars, however. This paper argues, that, the ‘Blueshirts’ like many contemporary organisations, invested their uniform with many practical functions and imbued it with multiple symbolic meanings. The colour blue, for instance, connoted the symbolism of St. Patrick and thus constituted a conservative, Catholic-nationalist statement. Like many other contemporary right-wing movements, the Blueshirts contrasted their ‘practical’, ‘modern’ uniform with the ‘outdated’ and ‘stiff’ shirts of mainstream politicians, regarding their uniform as a metaphor for action and discipline. Blueshirt leaders also noted that the uniform made members “so very conspicuous,’ and thus, easier to surveil and discipline. Opponents of the Blueshirts also recognized the significance of the shirt. In street confrontations, left-wing republicans were known to set fire to blue shirts that had been captured. As a result of these confrontations, a nervous Irish government in 1934 proposed legislation which sought to ban the blue shirt. As a result, the shirt prompted a debate which questioned the very nature of Irish democracy itself.

Biography: I gained a first-class BA degree in History from the University of Oxford (St. Hugh’s College) in 2014, and then went on to study for an MA in History (Irish Strand) at Queen’s University Belfast, graduating with a distinction in 2016. Since 2016, I have worked and studied as a Graduate Tutor and PhD Candidate at Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK. My research explores the significance of visual culture in the politics of the Irish Free State, 1922-39. I have presented my research, so far, at conferences in Dublin, Bradford, London, Belfast and Galway.

 

Niall Murray (Independent): Printing the Irish Revolution: The life and work of Cork nationalist and printer, Patrick Corcoran

The private printing press was one of many elements of what John Borgonovo has termed the “guerilla infrastructure” that supported the military campaign of the Irish Volunteers/IRA in the War of Independence. Many other factors in that support network – like safe houses, prisons and professionally-organised communications systems – have received some consideration in the historiography of the Irish Revolution (1913-1923). But little research exists on how the propaganda material, ephemera or stationery of the proscribed political and military organisations found their way into circulation. Through the story of one Cork printer, this paper will seek to begin redressing that imbalance. It will reveal for the first time the personal and political backgrounds of Patrick Corcoran (1855-1920), one of the heretofore anonymous ‘propagandists of advanced nationalism’ whose contribution to the Irish Revolution has been more broadly surveyed by Ben Novick. Although his first – and only known – foray into publishing was the short-lived 1914 Cork Celt anti-conscription newspaper, his imprisonment three years later for producing a Sinn Féin pamphlet was not his first term behind bars for printing political content. This paper will also consider how evidence from the life story of Corcoran – who had a very short-lived career in local politics – and his contemporaries, raises questions about some recent historiography of inter-generational attitudes to advanced nationalism.

Biography: Niall Murray is an independent researcher whose main interest is in the Irish Revolution (1913-1923), with a particular focus on Co Cork. He was awarded an MA in Local History from University College Cork in 2017. He is a contributor to the award-winning Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Cork University Press, 2017), which featured his case study of the Dáil Courts in Mid-Cork, 1920-1922. He is currently pursuing further research on the revolution in Mid-Cork, examining public engagement with revolutionary government and the IRA military campaign. In his career as a journalist at the Irish Examiner, Niall conceived and edited a 16-week feature series on the 1916 Rising, and contributed regular features on subjects of Irish historical interest.

 

Caitlin White (TCD): ‘A heady mixture of the big business, the state, and the local’: Irish public history in Dublin and Nenagh after the civil war

What can a study of public history tell us that history can’t? An area that emphasises the ordinary person and the collective over the political agendas or factions, public history reveals to us how the general public received and generated their history to reflect their identity. After the bitter civil war of 1922-23, Irish society found itself in a precarious situation. Cosgrave’s pro-Treaty government were keen to avoid further violence and wanted to portray Ireland as a dignified nation. But did their perception of what Ireland should be reflect the reality outside of the capital? Using two case studies (the Cenotaph in Leinster Lawn, Dublin, erected in 1923 and the Republican Monument in Banba Square, Nenagh, erected in 1931) this paper will consider what the history of public history reveals about Irish society.

Biography: Caitlin is a PhD student at Trinity College, Dublin, in her first year. She is from Nenagh in Co. Tipperary. Caitlin completed a Masters in Public History and Cultural Heritage at Trinity last year, and spent four years at the National University of Ireland, Galway, studying English, history, and theatre. She has written and delivered talks for the Abbey Theatre, where she works, on the history of the theatre. She presented her research at the IHSA Conference in 2018 and New Directions in Irish History Conference in 2019. In 2015 her work was published in the Irish Defence Forces Review presenting her research on the life of Kit Cavenaugh, an Irish soldier.

 

Panel 14: 20th Century health and body histories

 

Ruth Coon (UU): ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ Healthcare during the Troubles

Speaking on the period in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles one member of medical staff quoted A tale of Two Cities, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ From 1968-1998 a violent conflict raged in Northern Ireland which led to the death of over 3,600 people and injured more than 40,000 others. The paradoxical statement made that despite the dangers and destruction of the period it was ‘the best of times’ has been suggested by more one person, and the contradictory nature of staff experience is the subject of this paper. During the conflict the health service had to provide care for those injured, as well as, continuing to provide services for the general population. New challenges medically had to be faced including injuries not previously seen by professionals there, caused by bullets, bombs, as well as the often-distressing results of paramilitary punishment methods. Staff at hospitals such as Altnagelvin (Londonderry) and the Royal Victoria (Belfast) had to learn on the job as an influx of patients with violence related injuries arrived at their doors, changing completely what was the ‘norm’ day-to-day in the A&E departments and theatres. Staff also had to face many dangers, even travelling to work, having to navigate checkpoints, barricades, and snipers as well as on occasions riots and bombs. Hospitals were also not immune to the violence and the presence of the security forces, paramilitaries, and civilians at times caused problems. Yet, many staff look back fondly on the period. Particularly to the teamwork and camaraderie of the time. The rewards of their hard work and being able to save lives. As well as pointing to the benefits brought by their experience, the skills, as well as, the new techniques and technologies developed.

Biography: Ruth Coon is a second year PhD student at Ulster University. Her PhD project is investigating the effects of the Northern Ireland Troubles on healthcare, staff and medical development. It involves oral history interviews with medical professionals.

 

Eugenie Hanley (UCC): Public Health Nurses and the expansion of Maternal and Infant Provision, 1922-1960

This paper traces the expansion of the public health nurse’s role in maternal and infant provision including health visitation and the operation of Maternity and Child Welfare Centres, 1922-1960. It highlights how these services helped to educate mothers from all social classes in urban and rural parts of Ireland on infant health and nutrition with the aim of reducing the high infant mortality rate in Ireland during the twentieth century. This paper outlines the main causes of infant and maternal deaths and examines the measures introduced by the Department of Local Government and Public Health and the County Medical Officer from the 1920s to reduce the infant mortality rates including vaccination programmes, ante-natal clinics and the Free Milk Scheme. It analyses how the outbreak of the ‘Emergency’ impacted Irish health services in Ireland. Significantly, after the ‘Emergency’, ante-natal services and immunisation programmes against infectious diseases such as whooping cough and diphtheria were promoted by the Department of Health thus impacting infant mortality. Additionally, it also traces educational developments in public health nurse training between 1919 and 1960.

Biography: Eugenie Hanley recently graduated with first class honours in the MA in History at University College Cork. Her main research interests include the history of health and welfare, the history of childhood, infancy and institutions in Ireland. In 2017, she was awarded the John. A. Murphy Prize for achieving the highest grade for her research dissertation in Irish History in UCC upon achieving the highest result in an undergraduate history dissertation. She also writes an academic blog, HealthHistoryIreland.

 

Aisling Shalvey (University of Strasbourg): The Eight Amendment in Historical Perspective

The referendum to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution involved medical discussion, but also involved discussion of bodily autonomy, morality and historical narratives. The discussion of these issues often draw on past arguments about birth control and the interests of the state in the protection of the family. Contemporary issues such as the eighth amendment can be contextualised and better understood through a historical perspective, illuminating how the foundation of the state and the discussion on the role of family, motherhood, religion and the state combined to create the enduring discussion that emerges in the present day. While the introduction of the eighth amendment introduced legislative control of women's’ bodies, this control can be traced back to the foundation of the Irish Free State. These problems can be analysed through questions of inherent worth based on heredity, eugenics, morality and social status which are confronted in the debate about access to abortion services. The Emigration and Rural Depopulation Commission of Inquiry (1948-54) elaborated on census statistics for the Irish Free State and also indicated a concern for the preservation of the Irish race as population decline continued. It noted that the ‘family is the core unit of society, and steps should be taken to ensure its survival.’ Numerous medical journals discussed the issue of abortion during the Irish Free State era, and these discussions continued largely unchanged into the present day. This paper will address these discussions and the manner in which the eighth amendment was repealed.

Biography: Aisling completed her undergraduate in English and history in Maynooth University, and her Erasmus at the University of Vienna. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on the history of medicine. This led her to study a masters in the history of medicine in Oxford Brookes University where, she specialised in the study of medical ethics, eugenics and biopolitics. She is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Strasbourg and is funded by the Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah. She is also a member of the Historical Commission for the Medical Faculty of the Reichsuniversität Straßburg, 1941-1944.

 

Panel 15: 20th Century Political histories

 

Seán Donnelly (Teesside University): Purging the ‘Slave Mind’: Cumann na nGaedheal and the Philosophy of Irish-Ireland

Historiographical debate regarding the relation of the W.T. Cosgrave-led Cumann na nGaedheal Executive Council to Irish-Ireland ideology has focused traditionally on the extent to which the Government sought to differentiate the fledgling Free State from England with respect to language and national symbols. John M. Regan and Gavin M. Foster, for instance, portray the Cosgrave administration as a snobbish, Anglophile élite content to merely mould the state in the image of British society; Ciara Meehan and Jason Knirck have challenged such perceptions, arguing for a greater continuity with pre-Treaty nationalist ideals. However, both such judgements overlook the fact that Irish-Ireland nationalism was a hybrid ideology composed of both assimilative and separatist traditions, one that rebuffed the language and symbols of Victorian England on the one hand, while emulating many of its core moral and social values on the other. Drawing from the insights of Irish Studies scholars like Brian Ó Conchubhair and Sinéad Garrigan Mattar, I propose to deliver a paper exploring how the colonial dynamics of the Anglo-Irish relationship intersected with the broader, transnational intellectual climate of the European fin de siècle in shaping Cumann na nGaedheal’s reception of Irish-Ireland ideology. Pro-Treaty revivalist intellectuals like D.P. Moran and Arthur Griffith were deeply concerned to refute negative colonial perceptions of the Irish "race" as off-white, effeminate and unfit for self-government; such remained at the ideological core of Treatyite politics throughout the 1920s.

Biography: My name is Seán Donnelly (Irish, 26). I graduated from University College, Dublin with a First-Class Honours BA International in 2014 and obtained an MPhil in Public History from Trinity College, Dublin the following year. I was awarded a doctoral scholarship in Modern Irish History at Teesside University in October 2016 where I am presently researching the evolution of Treatyite political thought through the lens of postcolonial theory

 

Ronan Francis Doheny (TCD): Patrick McGilligan and his infamous quote: ‘Characteristic or out of context?

On 30 October 1924, Patrick McGilligan made an infamous quote concerning unemployment that would be used for decades by historians and politicians to define or attack McGilligan’s and Cumann na nGaedheal’s attitude to unemployment. Its usage has made it synonymous with the traditional view of Cumann na nGaedheal as a cold, emotionless, and draconian party with McGilligan the perfect embodiment of this view. However, when we consider the context for this quote, we find that there is a need for a reassessment and greater study into the period as the historiography written about McGilligan and Cumann na nGaedheal is still relatively limited. Through proper examination of the quote within its context, new conclusions can be drawn which complicate the assumed narrative surrounding McGilligan and Cumann na nGaedheal. One outrageous quote was taken out of context with the rest of the debate left largely unstudied. Through thorough study of the quote within its proper context, we can conclude that McGilligan’s infamous quote was a mistake in a highly charged parliamentary debate, rather than a cold-hearted attack on the unemployed. By examining McGilligan’s time in office we conclude that while he could and should have done more to relieve unemployment, the times he governed in and the government he was a member of, dictated his actions. The chief criticism that should be levelled at McGilligan is that his methods to relieve unemployment were reactionary.

Biography: My name is Ronan Doheny from Kilkenny, based in Dublin. I am a 24-year-old MPhil Modern Irish History Graduate, achieving a Distinction from Trinity. I completed a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and History in UCD. Much of my research interests centre on the politics and culture of the early twentieth century in Ireland with a focus on Cumann na nGaedheal and the 1920s. Recently, I have become interested in the 1932 Eucharistic Congress and the history of the Diocese of Ossory and its Bishops in the twentieth century.

 

Brian Daly (GMIT): Electoral Politics in the Irish Free State Constituencies of Galway, Mayo South and Mayo North: A Study of the 1923 General Election and the Political Parties and Politicians who contested it

With the upcoming centenary in 2022 of the establishment of the 26-county Free State, the time seems ripe to offer a wide-ranging historical exploration of the rivalries that dominated constitutional politics in the west of Ireland during the decade that followed the granting of independence. This paper will provide an analysis of political developments during the formative General Election of 1923, focusing on the political parties and the candidates that they ran in three constituencies along the Atlantic seaboard – Galway, Mayo South and Mayo North. The role of independents will also be scrutinised. The chosen areas are significant for a number of factors; not least the variations in the human and physical geographies of the three constituencies, their different sizes and the urban/rural divide. The paper will scrutinise the campaigns and records of accomplishment of the various candidates that contested the election. In this election, the three constituencies elected 18 TDs to Dáil Éireann. The election result saw Cumann na nGaedheal win the majority of the seats available, but Sinn Féin and the other parties also won seats. Biographical profiles will be furnished for some of those who were elected and assessments will be made about their contributions to society and politics in the fledgling state. The paper concludes by arguing that the political parties were unfamiliar with the new proportional system of voting and the establishment of multi-member seats. This led to them making poor decisions, which cost them seats at the election.

Biography: Brian Daly is a graduate of the BA (Hons) in Heritage Studies and MA in Heritage Studies at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. A member of GMIT’s Heritage Research Group (see: www.gmit.ie/heritage-research-group), Brian is conducting research for a PhD thesis on ‘Electoral Politics in the Irish Free State Constituencies of Galway, Mayo South and Mayo North, 1923–1933: A Study of Five General Elections and the Political Parties and Politicians Who Contested Them’. To mark last year’s centenary of the 1918 General Election, Brian was interviewed by Kinvara FM’s ‘Scattered Showers’ programme. This is now available as a podcast at https://www.mixcloud.com/KinvaraFM/scattered-showers-with-brian-daly-on-the-1st-dail-1919-and-aine-bird-discusses-burren-winterage-fest/

 

Panel 16: Northern Irish histories

 

Noel Lindsay (MIC): Belfast, ‘The Good Old Days?’ Conditional Relations and Government

For my undergraduate dissertation I had intended to explore the experiences of non-combatants in Belfast, throughout the, euphemistically termed, ‘Troubles’. While carrying out interviews for the dissertation, one interviewee suggested that ‘before the Troubles started Belfast was just, just a lovely place to live’. Questioning the accuracy of this sentiment meant that the remit of the research was recalibrated to include 1930 – 1960. Additional oral testimonies from the era strongly support that there was a history of unrest and sectarian tensions throughout this era. The evidence suggests that the nature of Belfast society meant that, particularly within working class communities, people developed what this paper terms, ‘conditional relationships’ with members of the other political and religious community. This meant that a personal relationship with a member of an opposing community would always be secondary to, and usurped by, a person’s loyalty to their own community’s religion, national identity or politics. This paper will address the necessity for conditional relationships, within class, religious and political contexts, to interrogate the manner in which everyday life was shaped and experienced by the interviewees. In conclusion, it will consider if the unionist government had a vested interest in encouraging and maintaining sectarian narratives as a means of controlling and perpetuating the divide between two predominantly working class communities. Its overarching aim is to consider and challenge the notion that pre-conflict Belfast was a peaceful, harmonious place to live.

Biography: Noel Lindsay is a first year master’s research student at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. His research is funded by Mary Immaculate College where he is also a Departmental Assistant with the Department of History. By examining the nature of Protestant and Catholic relationships with government bodies, his work, ‘Just a lovely place to live’: government and people in Belfast, 1920–1939’ wishes to contribute to the gap in the historiography of the decades under review. Noel had the honour of being awarded the prestigious College Medal for achieving 1st Place in both his chosen disciplines; History and Philosophy.

 

Aleja Allen (UCD): Under the Wrong Banner: Springtown Camp and the Peaceful Fight for Better Housing

In late 1960 residents from Springtown Camp, an abandoned U.S. Army base turned squatter camp, occupied the Guildhall in Derry in order to protest the almost third world conditions they were living in as a result of local councils refusing to address the housing crisis in Derry. Then, in January of 1964, roughly two hundred citizens marched from Springtown to the Guildhall to once again protest the housing shortage. Although these actions did not generate any immediate change, they indicated that Northern Ireland was on the brink of drastic change. However, despite these obvious precursors to Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement, which has been attributed to 5 October 1968 by most historians, Springtown has almost become a footnote in history with only a handful of histories mentioning the camp and its activism in the 1960s. It is possible that this historical silence is due to the fact that these acts did not cause an explosive reaction from the police or Unionist community in Derry, unlike the 5 October march. However, the historical significance of these events should not be ignored. In this presentation I argue that the activism to come out of Springtown paved the way for the civil rights movement in 1968 and played a key role in Derry’s political awakening. The actions of the residents from Springtown show that, even before the rise of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association later in the decade, there was a movement for peaceful political change in the North.

Biography: Aleja Allen is currently in the first year of her PhD at University College Dublin. She received her Masters of Arts from the University of New Mexico, U.S.A. in May of 2018. Her research includes the Irish and Irish American experience post-World War II, with an emphasis on the civil rights era, as well as national identity formation. For her dissertation she is examining the different reactions to the civil rights debate between the cities of Derry, Northern Ireland, and South Boston, Massachusetts.

 

Elisa Cofini (QUB): The definition of Terrorism as a bullet in the war of words: The legacy of Operation Demetrius in Northern Ireland

Situations involving conflict confer a great political weight on ideology and identity issues. In this regard, taking into consideration the instrumental usage of language in war situations, this paper starts from the suggestion to see conflicts as «Wars of words». For instance, taking into consideration the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, it can be noticed how paramilitary prisoners protested in order to be recognised the status of Prisoners of War, while the State considered them criminals, and, due to the lack of definitional common ground within international law, all these terms can be seen as nothing but bullets in the war of words. Given the lack of an adequate and workable definition of the term of terrorism, this paper aims to portray a theory according to which the terrorism paradigm should be abandoned, as both a descriptive term and an empirical category. Indeed, the continued use of this label not only contrasts with all the efforts to solve the problem of political violence, but it also makes the path of reintegration of former politically motivated prisoners more difficult. Instead, this work suggests an alternative point of view to investigate this phenomenon: the one of “radicalism”. To do this, the group of former politically motivated prisoners in Northern Ireland is taken as an example of a new-born community, bound around the demands linked to their judicial and social status, and their rehabilitation is suggested as a tool for healing the wounds of a post-conflict reality.

Biography: I have a marked interest in Political History, Sociology and Legal Theory related with post-conflict experiences and peacekeeping. In 2018, I graduated in Law at the University of Trento (Italy), with a dissertation on the topics of insularity as a key to interpretation of the nationalistic claims which originated the Troubles. I am currently attending the MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at the Mitchell Institute of QUB. At the meantime, I work as a legal researcher for the Human Rights firm Ó Muirigh Solicitors within the Legacy department, focused on internment and prison protests cases.

 

Panel 17: Textual analysis of Irish history

 

Maelle Le Roux (UL): Three nationalist women in the Capuchin Annual (1930-1977): the representation of Constance Markievicz, Miss Pearse and Mrs Pearse

The Capuchin Annual was an Irish periodical published between 1930 and 1977 by the Capuchin Franciscans in Dublin. It was a major cultural and literary periodical of its time. It is known to have held nationalist views, and scholars have used its 1942 and 1966 Easter Rising commemorative issues widely. Various scholars, when analysing the position of women in twentieth century Ireland, have described a shift between their positions in society in the revolutionary period and their positions after the independence, in part due to the political influence of the Catholic Church. This paper aims to understand how this impacted upon their representations in this periodical, published by a male Roman Catholic order. The representations of three nationalist women, Constance Markievicz, Miss Pearse and Mrs Pearse, respectively sister and mother of Patrick Pearse, will be analysed through interdisciplinary methods. As the Capuchin Annual is digitised, this study’s methods will derive from digital humanities, using corpus linguistics and history of representations, but also critical discourse analysis. By focusing on these three women, and more specifically on the adjectives and adverbs used to describe them, this paper aims to determine the impact of Catholicism on contemporary representations of femininity, and to understand why these specific women, despite their differences, were among the most represented in a periodical that did not often promote nationalist women. By analysing the criteria used for these three women, this study aims to provide a better understanding of the absence of representations of some other nationalist women.

Biography: Maelle Le Roux is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Limerick. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the representations of Irish nationalist figures in the Capuchin Annual (1930-1977), using digital humanities and history of representation methods, under the supervision of Dr Ciara Breathnach (Department of History, UL) and Dr Máiréad Moriarty (School of MLAL, UL). She was awarded an MA in History by the Université Paris-Sorbonne (France) for her research on masculinity representations in French children’s literature (1960s-1980s) and on the representations of the Easter Rising for children in Ireland (1922-2015).

 

Natasha Dukelow (UCC): Sex, Sin and Social Concern in the Liber Exemplorum

This paper addresses the treatment of sexual transgressions presented in the medieval preaching aid known as the Liber Exemplorum. The Liber Exemplorum is a Franciscan exempla collection, exempla being short edifying stories which could be incorporated into sermons to illustrate points, underline moral lessons and maintain the interest of the audience. It was compiled between c.1275-1279 by an English Franciscan friar who served as a master of theology, general advisor and lector at the Franciscan friary in Cork. As a collection of preaching tales to be broadcast to the laity it helps us to determine the types of ideas and moral lessons that Irish women and men were exposed to. Through an exploration of the Liber Exemplorum this paper will:

1. Examine instances of improper sexual conduct and the result of that sin.
2. Compare the occurrence of sexual transgressions between the clergy and the lay community.
3. Investigate the frequency and portrayal of sexual sin committed by both sexes.
4. Discuss the significance of these tales in relation to social concerns and lessons of morality contained in the exempla.

Biography: I have completed both my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in University College Cork. For my BA degree I majored in history with a minor in archaeology, while I undertook my MA degree in medieval studies. For both BA and MA dissertations I focused on the text of the Liber exemplorum, the former examining the wider treatment of women in the manuscript and the latter focusing on the role of the Virgin Mary. My prime interest area is the Franciscan order, particularly preaching culture and the friars’ impact on a wider social context. My PhD studies will commence in September 2019.
 

James Greaney (TCD): Richard Cox’s History of Ireland, Hibernia Anglicana, on William of Orange’s Reformation and Godly War

Written in the midst of the Williamite Wars in Ireland, while its Anglo-Irish author Richard Cox was in exile in England, Hibernia Anglicana (1690-1) presents the history of Ireland from the perspective of the protestant ‘New English’. Cox dedicated his history to William and exhorted the Dutch prince to speedily resolve the conflict against James II, recover Ireland, and propagate the protestant faith in this third Stuart kingdom. This paper will show how Richard Cox used a contemporary language of reformation – which had developed around William and the Glorious Revolution in England – in the context of Ireland and Irish history. Borrowing from Anthony Claydon, who described William’s portrayal in England as that of ‘the providential agent of Protestant renewal’, this paper will examine this in the context of Cox’s Irish history. The enduring ethnic and confessional struggle in Ireland, for Cox, could only be resolved by a complete reformation of both faith and manners and Hibernia Anglicana suggests William as the long-desired agent of this reformation.

Biography: James Greaney is an Irish Research Council postgraduate scholar and third year doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, a graduate of NUI Galway and the London School of Economics. His research focuses on the formation of identity in historical writing in Restoration Ireland, between 1660 and 1691.