The weird tales,spicy detectives,and startling stories of Irish-America: Irish characters in American pulp magazines

The pulp magazines that dominated early twentieth-century American popular culture helped shape popular understandings of Irish-American identity. Several notable types of pulp hero (cowboy, detective, G-Man, masked hero) were defined in part by Irish stereotypes and counter-stereotypes. They played upon notions of the Irish as figures straddling the border between civilisation and savagery to evoke an image of a new kind of American who was well equipped for the rapidly changing and chaotic American century. Irish-American pulp stories often lack explicitly Irish cultural or historical references and instead focus on describing Irishness as a more generic Americanness. Similarly, the Irish-American character moved further from ethnic stereotype to become a generic masculine ideal. In several ways, the pulp magazines chronicle the formation of an assimilated Irish identity in the USA.     

Diasporic identifications: exile,nostalgia and the Famine past in Irish and Irish North-American popular fiction, 1871–1891

During the nineteenth century, “exile” became a key term to describe the Irish-diasporic community in North America. More recently, scholars in the fields of diaspora studies and Irish studies have described this community as a “victim diaspora” with connotations of forced expulsion, exile, and nostalgia for the homeland. Moreover, among scholars and within the Irish-American community, the notion exists that the Great Irish Famine (1845–1851) constitutes the Irish-American “charter myth”, that it was the starting point of an Irish-American identity. This article sheds a different light on these (self-)identifications by discussing the concepts of origin myth, exile and nostalgia and also considers the concept of diasporic belonging in the context of Irish and Irish North-American works of popular “Famine fiction” written between 1871 and 1891. Consequently, the impact of these late nineteenth-century literary considerations on present-day conceptualisations of the Irish-American community as a victim diaspora are discussed.     

Coarse cloth and clerical tailoring: negotiating Boston-Irish cultural imperatives in the Famine era

Recent calls for updated approaches to the Irish-American historical experience recommend more systematic attention to complexities inherent in Irish immigration and settlement. They also seek further contextualisation of the history of the Irish in the USA within broader North American, transatlantic and global frameworks. The need to review and potentially reappraise longstanding, essentialist perspectives on Irish arrival and assimilation is equally evident. This article expands on foundational narrative histories of the Boston Irish to re-examine Famine-era settlement and contending agendas within spheres of religious affiliation and political activism. The character and evolution of Irish-American ethnic identity, and the tragic imprint of the Famine under consideration here pave the way for new readings of traditional orthodoxies. Collectively, they reveal Boston's Irish historical terrain to be more complex than the record currently suggests.     

Filibusters,Fenians, and a Contested Neutrality: The Irish Question and U.S. Diplomacy, 1848–1871

Abstract

The period from the late 1840s to the early 1870s represented a distinct one in Irish-American politics. This article frames Irish-American nationalists active in this period as nonstate actors seeking to influence the course of U.S. foreign relations to serve their own interests. In particular, it focuses on the activities of the Fenian Brotherhood and an earlier, less well-known organization, the Robert Emmet Club. The actions of both highlighted the looseness of U.S. neutrality legislation and, ultimately, provided a compelling argument for Anglo-American rapprochement. Simultaneously, in the immediate postbellum years, U.S. statesmen had reason to manipulate the Irish question to further their own ends. As Anglo-American relations improved, however, the geopolitical value of Irish nationalism declined; Irish-American nationalists were left marginalized in the calculations of U.S. diplomats.     

American propaganda and Ireland during world war one: the work of the Committee on Public Information

Soon after America entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI) which used the tools of propaganda and persuasion to fight the war in the US and in allied, enemy and neutral foreign countries. This article examines the CPI’s work in relation to Ireland and Irish issues during the First World War. Among the questions examined are: What was the nature of the CPI’s Irish work between 1917 and 1918? What does it reveal about first, the CPI and second, Wilson’s view of Irish-American loyalty during the war? Why did the CPI’s British and Irish services become involved in Irish military recruitment? Was there any contact between the CPI officials in London and their British counterparts in the Ministry of Information to co-ordinate the push to encourage Irishmen to enlist? How did the CPI negotiate a space for its messages in post-rising Ireland where home rulers, republicans, unionists and British authorities pursued their respective agendas? The article seeks to add an American dimension to the narrative of Ireland and the First World War and examines themes relating to Anglo-American co-operation on the Irish question and diasporic identity.     

Illegible ethnicity and the invention of Scots-Irish narratives on the stages of Belfast and Appalachia

Theatrical stages have long been home to performances of identity, creating and sustaining legible visions of various peoples and groups for their audiences. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, the playwright/actor Dion Boucicault popularised the “stage Irishman” for Irish and American audiences alike, thus contributing to the invention of “Irish-America”. This paper examines a similar attempt in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to query the definition of a distinct group of Irish-Americans: the Scots-Irish. Productions from Belfast, Northern Ireland, as well as from the southern Appalachian Mountains, demonstrate how the illegibility of the Scots-Irish – in other words, their status as a non-recognisable, incoherent segment of the white population in the USA – allows for narratives about this group to be highly malleable. Contemporary productions of the Scots-Irish story demonstrate the ways in which ethnic identities emerge as constructions of past and present, memory and history, and politics and culture.     

The texted and textured construction of Irish identity in the theatrical world of Charleston,South Carolina

On the eve of the American Civil War, the Irish who had immigrated to the United States as a result of the Great Famine were in the process of constructing an Irish working-class identity in Charleston, South Carolina. A “legacy” for such construction had been created in the previous century: those who had come from Ireland then had used public displays of celebration and concomitant rhetorical devices to create the impression that they were willing and eager to assimilate. Their rituals at banquets and other public occasions “set the stage”, so to speak, for the next century's generation of immigrant Irish who also found it necessary to articulate publicly their claim to an ethnic American identity. Theatrical venues and staged performances served the Famine Irish well in this endeavour.     

International Celebrities and Irish Identity in the United States and Beyond, 1840–1860

This article uses Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to analyze how a relatively small Irish-American bourgeoisie legitimated its authority over the broader Irish ethnic community during the antebellum era. As part of the massive wave of immigrants that left Ireland during and after the Great Famine of the mid-1840s, the Irish Catholic middle class was saddled with a dually marginal status. On the one hand, its members maintained only tenuous authority over the hundreds of thousands of peasants and laborers that made up the bulk of the Irish-American community. On the other hand, they were deeply distrusted by important elements of native American society that associated them with the supposed superstition, laziness, and violence of their lower-class fellow countrymen. The bourgeoisie responded by using the celebrity status of Irish political exiles to achieve the twin project of simultaneously obscuring intra-ethnic class tensions while proving its suitability for American domestic politics. Famous personalities and the editors who lauded them employed celebrity to consolidate their leadership status in America.     

The historical significance of President Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963

President John F. Kennedy's visit to Ireland in June 1963 was the first by a serving American President. Using materials from archives in London, Dublin, and Boston, this article re-assesses the motives behind Kennedy's decision to visit Ireland and concludes that it was largely a personal journey. However, the trip was not without wider historical and political significance and was surrounded by controversy. The visit was unpopular in the United States, proved a security nightmare, and provoked much discussion amongst the political leadership in Belfast, Dublin and London over Kennedy's attitude to partition. The visit marked a major development in the history of Irish-American relations as it eased tensions over Ireland's neutrality, marked a shift towards White House activism in Irish affairs, boosted Irish tourism, and fostered increased trading and cultural links between the two countries.     

“A log-rolling,Irish-American politician,out to raise votes in the United States”: Tip O’Neill and the Irish dimension of Anglo-American relations, 1977–1986

The Irish dimension of Anglo-American relations is a relatively marginalized aspect of the historiography of transatlantic studies. Historians have focused on the role of the Clinton administration in the Northern Ireland “peace process” but previous American contributions also warrant attention. As the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill was one of the most prominent Irish-American politicians. This article demonstrates O’Neill's attempts to ensure that the American contribution to the Anglo-Irish process steadily increased, despite the transition from arguably his natural political ally in the President Jimmy Carter administration to President Ronald Reagan in 1981. O’Neill's interest in Northern Ireland and position as speaker helped ensure that Carter's promise of financial aid to Northern Ireland in 1977 following progress in the political process was fulfilled in March 1986.     

Defining the nation: Recent historiography and Irish nationalism

This article considers problems raised in recent historical scholarship concerning the definition of Irish national identity. Catholicism's growing importance in this identity is shown by comparing the eighteenth century United Irishmen, who combined secular and sectarian republicanism, the romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century Young Ireland movement, and the almost exclusively Catholic Irish Republican Army of this century. However, this Catholic, Gaelic, separatist identity excluded Protestant, non‐Gaelic and unionist Irish people. The author concludes by rejecting the notion of ‘an immemorial Irish nation, unfolding holistically through the centuries’, to stress discontinuities over time and the wider geographical setting of the British Isles.     

Home stories: immigrant narratives of place and identity in contemporary Ireland

This paper discusses immigrant identity and place in contemporary Ireland. It draws from a longitudinal research project that involved recent immigrants to Ireland. Participants in the project came from 18 different countries, and ranged in age from 22 to 68. Their reasons for moving to Ireland were varied, and included work, adventure, and personal relationships. Combining insights from sociolinguistics and human geography, the paper first considers the different ways in which immigrants to Ireland narrate place and identity, paying particular attention to content and linguistic strategies. It then provides a more detailed discussion of the relationship between immigrant identity and place through a focus on the concept of “home,” highlighting the linguistic strategies and means that immigrants used to discursively construct notions of home and identity in their interviews. The paper concludes by arguing that detailed discourse level analysis of people's narratives of place offers new insights into the relationship between immigrant identity and place.     

Southern Irish Protestants: an example of de‐ethnicisation?

ABSTRACT. The study of minorities is central to research in ethnicity and nationalism. But there are cases where the precise nature of the minority is not easy to determine. One view of Southern Irish Protestants is that in the decades after independence they transformed themselves (or were transformed) from British nationals to Irish nationals or, alternatively, from a British ethnic to an Irish religious minority. This paper argues that treating the (past) British dimension of Irish Protestant identity as ethnic or national misconceives it and overlooks the historically deep Irish context of Protestant identity. One consequence of this is the neglect of the specifically Irish roots of residual tensions in Catholic–Protestant relationships. The themes of the paper are exemplified with case material drawn from research on Protestants and Catholics in rural West Cork.     

COMMUNITY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SOCIAL ORDER ON THE CANADIAN FRONTIER IN THE 1840s AND 1850s: AN ENGLISH IMMIGRANT’S ACCOUNT

Abstract

This article draws on the letters of a young immigrant doctor, Francis Codd, who arrived in British Canada in the I84os. Many of the one million migrants, mainly of British and Irish origin, who arrived in Canada in the mid-I9th century, benefited from the availability of land and absence of social barriers to mobility. This enabled them to think and feel like citizens of the new country,in a way denied them at home. Francis Codd’s account throws light on the part played by the appreciation of nature and ‘wilderness’ in this process, as well as describing the beginnings of a new civil society and the development of ‘community’ institutions. However, at the same time as a ‘Canadian’ identity was being constructed for the white settler population, that of the indigenous population was accorded little recognition or respect.     

Performing identities: music and dance in the Irishcommunities of Coventry and Liverpool

This article will examine how British-born second- and third-generation Irish people use Irish music and dance in the production of an Irish cultural identity. The article draws on research undertaken with members of the Irish communities in the English cities of Coventry and Liverpool. The research was conducted with music and dance practitioners in Liverpool who strongly identify as Irish and also with schoolchildren in Coventry whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. The paper first explores the comments of the Liverpool respondents and points to how music and dance can offer a space in which different generations can mark out their affiliation or embody their Irishness. Secondly, the paper considers interview work with schoolchildren in Coventry, concentrating on their responses as listeners to Irish traditional music. Their comments point to the capacity of this music to resonate with multiple, even conflicting, productions of Irishness. The comments of all the respondents raise key debates about authenticity and the construction of identity.     

Multiculturalism and the immigrant “Irish woman” after the Celtic Tiger: marginalisation,gender-based violence and family dysfunction in Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls

This article breaks new ground in examining how “new Irish” immigrant women have responded to the collapse of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy and the different forms of gender discrimination and marginalisation they face both within their minority ethnic communities and the Irish host society. It approaches Ebun Akpoveta’s Trapped: Prison Without Walls (2013) as an exemplary work of fiction which exposes unresolved injustices and inequalities suffered by immigrant women. Akpoveta creates a narrative that complicates previous representations of cultural encounters between newcomers and long-established members of Ireland’s host society, not least because her Nigerian female protagonist arrives as a postgraduate student rather than an asylum seeker or refugee. She fictionalises female experiences of marginalisation, gender-based violence and family dysfunction within an all-Nigerian family that outwardly appears to be a model of integration and social inclusion in an open and welcoming Irish multicultural society.     

Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850–1900

This essay looks at the role that Anglo‐American women played in governing their Irish immigrant domestic servants and at the racial and gendered meanings that were attached to servitude. In the second half of the nineteenth century, female Irish Catholic immigrants predominated in domestic service employment in the north‐eastern United States. Newspaper and magazine articles portrayed the home as a site of conflict where Protestant, middle‐class families clashed with Irish Catholic ‘peasant’ girls newly arrived in the US. Employers depicted ‘Bridget’ or ‘Biddy’, the collective nickname given to Irish domestic servants, as insubordinate, unrefined and prone to violent outbursts. While reliant on domestic service for wages, female Irish immigrants understood that service represented racialised labour in the United States and was viewed as an occupation befitting non‐white populations.     

“新移民文学”：“新”的悖谬？

分析了“新移民文学”术语的权宜性特征;从定义和身份认同两大层面对“新移民文学”概念和内涵进行剖析,认为“新移民文学”概念蕴含了很大的悖谬,从身份认同角度考察,则尤其明显;探讨了“离散华文书写”和“华语语系文学”替代的可能性。     

Symbols, Myth-Making, and Identity: The Red Hand of Ulster in Late Nineteenth-Century Paterson, New Jersey

Symbols are manipulated to express social identity and to reaffirm or create a sense of place. Smoking pipes recovered from late nineteenth-century privies in the Dublin Section of Paterson, New Jersey, bear the symbol of the Red Hand of Ulster. Today, the Red Hand of Ulster is ubiquitous on Unionist murals throughout Northern Ireland symbolizing Northern Irish Protestant identity. Originally, the Red Hand symbolized the dawn of the Irish High King of Ulster. In late-nineteenth-century Paterson, it is argued here, the symbol was embedded in ethnic politics involving the Irish Diaspora and Irish–American identity developed through the Gaelic revival and Irish–American organizations and labor unions.     

Fitting into a New Place: Irish Immigrant Experiences in Shaping a Canadian Landscape

Escaping one heritage of British colonialism for another, Irish immigrants to Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth century helped to shape the image of Canada and Canadian nationalism. In this paper, I compare the diversity of Irish immigrant experiences in Canadas urban and wilderness landscapes. The Irish immigrant experience in major urban centers is well documented. Community neighborhoods, Church activities and domestic and manual labor constitute just part of the stories of urban Irish Canadians in cities such as Toronto. The popular conception of the Irish as strictly city people is strengthened by the lack of discussion of the Irish immigrant role in taming (and ideologically shaping) the wilderness of Western Canada. It is argued that this has to do with the colonial image of the Irish from which British imperialist Canada sought to distinguish itself.