Irish Female Emigration in the 1930s: Transgressing space and culture

Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, the continuing levels of emigration from Ireland came as a disappointment to many who believed that British colonialism had caused and perpetuated the emigration problem. Within this context, there was a need to explain emigration in ways that deflected blame away from the new state authorities. In this article, the author contributes to a gendered analysis of these shifting constructions of emigration. Drawing upon Irish newspapers of the period, she suggests that the figure of the 'emigrant girl' was central to post-colonial discourses on emigration. During the 1930s, the emigration of thousands of young Irish women to English cities such as London sparked widespread comment and criticism. The Irish press and the Catholic hierarchy in particular propagated an image of these vulnerable young women as lost and alone in the big, bad cities of England. The author analyses the ways in which the 'emigrant girl' embodied specific representations of place, culture and gendered identity; the 'emigrant girl' embodied an Irishness marked by religion, culture and landscape. Through her transgression of physical, cultural and religious spaces, she encountered loneliness, danger and the risk of denationalisation.     

The Irish Sandow school: physical culture competitions in fin-de-siècle Ireland

ABSTRACT

Beginning with an examination of Ireland’s turn of the century interest in physical culture, this article highlights the case of Eugen Sandow’s “Great Competition” and its Irish contestants. Seen as a precursor for today’s bodybuilding competitions, Sandow’s contest enjoyed submission photographs from hundreds of half-naked men – many of whom were Irish – posing in Greco-Roman pose. In studying this topic, the article addresses two pressing issues. In the first instance, the article examines how and why physical culture competitions became a competitive outlet for Irishmen in the first decade of the twentieth century. Secondly, it argues that these contests were often connected to broader societal ideals surrounding acceptable forms of masculinity. The article thus examines a previously unexplored but nevertheless important part of sporting and athletic behaviour in early twentieth-century Ireland.     

Transnational artifacts: Grappling with fluid material origins and identities in archaeological interpretations of culture change

There has been a gradual shift in historical archaeology towards interpretive approaches to material culture, including recognition of the potential for multiple functions and meanings in local contexts. It is argued here that artifacts can also maintain multiple, fluid origins and identities that affect our understanding of the nature of cultural persistence and change among migrant, indigenous and other ethnic groups. However, predefined classification schemes are often rigid and do not allow for this kind of fluidity, including the potential for artifacts from one culture to be indigenized into another. Data drawn from recent research on Japanese migrants in British Columbia, in conjunction with an approach rooted in transnationalism and diaspora, are used to highlight the nature of these ambiguities and to suggest methodological and theoretical means of overcoming them. These solutions include the need to develop contextual classification schemes that incorporate multiple artifact identities and to conduct detailed material culture histories that trace shifting origins and identities both before and during periods of migration or displacement.     

Architectures of youth: visibility,agency and the technological imaginings of young people

This article investigates what we call the architectures of youth. Drawing on the ‘unofficial’ audio-visual recordings from an ongoing research project, and contrasting this footage with the new building that ‘houses’ our project, we argue that the young people are being constructed in a range of problematic ways that continue to emphasise visibility. The school building, complete with its panopticon tower, is premised on the symbolic power of the visual. When pupils are given visual technology and asked to film around the school, however, negotiations with, and disruptions of, the visual become evident. This raises questions not only around the wider relationship between youth, place and space, but also around the imagined and lived dimensions of youth, which are brought to the fore through this project.