Spring 2016: 198, Section 3

Directed Group Study — Writing Ireland 2: Emigration in Modern Writing in Irish

2 units
Tu 9-11
B29 Dwinelle
Instructor: Louis DePaor, National University of Ireland in Galway

This course will look at how the experience of migration is represented in Irish language writing in the twentieth century. It will consider how writers have dealt with the themes of exile and displacement within Ireland and internationally. Through a close reading of selected extracts from the Blasket autobiographies, and from the work of Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Domhnall Mac Amhlaigh, Micí Mac Gabhann, we will consider both the positive and negative aspects of twentieth-century emigration.

Core texts
Brown, Terence Ireland: a social and cultural history 1922-2002 (London: Harper Perennial 2004)
Cowley, Ultan The men who built Britain: a history of the Irish navvy (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 2001)
Moreton, Cole Hungry for home (New York: Viking 2000)
Mac Amhlaigh, Donall An Irish navy: the diary of an exile (Cork: Collins Press 2003)
MacGowan, Michael The hard road to Klondike (Cork: Collins Press 2003)

Core texts will be supplemented with critical and other weekly readings.