Ireland's Great Hunger

by Valone, David A.; Kinealy, Christine; McCarron, Ed; Smart, Robert A.; Hutchenson, Michael R.; Matthews, Mary Ann; Dunn, Mary Lee; Khalifa, Rached; Peck, Deborah; O'Grady, Thomas; Gleeson, David T.; Day, Jerome Joseph; Rogers, William; Kirk, Connie Ann; O'

• ISBN13: 9780761823452
• ISBN10: 076182345X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-23
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Summary

This volume of essays is based upon papers that were delivered at Quinnipiac University's Great Hunger Conference in September 2000. It considers the Great Hunger both as a historical moment that had a devastating and enduring impact on Ireland, and as a social, political, and demographic process that shaped the culture and people of both Ireland and North America. The chapters are grouped thematically into three parts. The first, Silence, takes as its point of departure the ways in which the Great Hunger created silences, both at the time of the Famine and in the subsequent historical memory of the Irish people. The second section, Memory, addresses the legacy of the Famine in the lives and work of the generation that lived through it and those who came after, both in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora. The final section, Commemoration, considers how the Famine has become a focal point during the past decade in popular memory, particularly through varied efforts to memorialize the Famine and to integrate it into educational curricula. The book also includes an introduction by Christine Kinealy that discusses recent historical scholarship on the Famine, and a preface by David A. Valone that describes the ongoing educational and scholarly activities related to the Great Hunger at Quinnipiac University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction ``The Famine Killed Everything'': Living with the Memory of the Great Hunger	1	(40)
Christine Kinealy
PART ONE: SILENCE
Famine Lifelines: The Transatlantic Letters of James Prendergast	41	(22)
Edward McCarron
The Unborn and Unburied Dead'': The Rhetoric of Ireland's An Gorta Mor	63	(19)
Robert A. Smart
Michael R. Hutcheson
The Tangled Roots of Irish Immigrants and African Americans: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives	82	(17)
Mary Ann Matthews
An Agenda for Researching the Famine Experience of Kilglass Parish, County Roscommon	99	(22)
Mary Lee Dunn
W. B. Yeats's Politics of Proximity: or The Famine's Absence in Yeats's Poetry	121	(21)
Rached Khalifa
Silent Hunger: The Psychological Impact of the Great Hunger	142	(41)
Deborah Peck
PART TWO: MEMORY
Seamus Heaney's At a Potato Digging'' Revisited	183	(10)
Thomas O'Grady
Easing Integration: The Impact of the Great Famine on the American South	193	(20)
David T. Gleeson
Performing the Famine: A Look at Contemporary Irish Dramatists	213	(22)
Jerome Joseph Day
The Great Hunger: Act of God or Acts of Man?	235	(22)
William B. Rogers
``I will sone be home'': Margaret Maher, Emily Dickinson, and an Irish Trunk Full of Poems	257	(14)
Connie Ann Kirk
PART THREE: COMMEMORATION
Famine Commemorations: Visual Dialogues, Visual Silences	271	(23)
Kathleen O'Brien
Le Memorial: An Irish Memorial at Grosse Ile in Quebec	294	(17)
Sylvie Gauthier
(De)Constructing the Irish Famine Memorial in Contemporary Quebec	311	(19)
Lorrie Blair
Reflections on the Grosse Ile Memorial in Contemporary Quebec: A Response	330	(4)
Gregory P. Garvey
The MacGilligan Family and the Great Hunger: Collaborative Strategies in an Irish History Course	334	(27)
Karen Manners Smith
Holly Gillogly
Jim Riordan
Designing the New York State Great Irish Famine Curriculum Guide	361	(32)
Maureen Murphy
Maureen McCann Militta
Alan Singer
List of Contributors	393