A Backward Glance: My Quarter Century in the IAAS Philip McGowan Articles Rather than inflict another piece of my torturous critical prose on anyone, I have opted for a more personal reflection on some of the Association’s h... Read More...
(Dis)Connections: Civil Rights and Discrimination in America and Northern Ireland Melissa L. Baird Articles My early interest in American history originated in what I now realise was my woefully incorrect and naïve impression that, unlike Northern Ireland, A... Read More...
Reading Transatlantically in the Era of Trump Dolores Resano Articles According to a comprehensive study of the year 2018 published in the journal Democratization (“State of the World 2018”), democracy is in decline arou... Read More...
But It Is Your Problem Kimberly Reyes Articles George Floyd was the latest in a long line of Black Americans killed by white police officers in the United States. The horrifying video of his killin... Read More...
Two Roads Diverged Sue Norton Articles For a little over two decades, I have been teaching American literature and other subject matter in an institution of higher learning with a technolog... Read More...
Lonely, But Not Alone: Studying America in Ireland in the Time of COVID-19 Kelsie Donnelly Articles This is not the article I had intended to write. I had planned to write about a conference I co-organised with friends in Irish and American studies i... Read More...
Some Comments on Irish American Studies Lee M. Jenkins Articles In its early iterations, Irish American Studies focused almost exclusively on Irish American writing, on literature produced by Americans of Irish des... Read More...
The Shock of Recognition: Reading American Fiction in Celtic Tiger Ireland Adam Kelly Articles In the spring of 2002, as a second-year undergraduate at University College Dublin, I took a course called “Contemporary Irish Literature: Excavating ... Read More...
From Dangerous Outsiders to Beloved Innocents: Irish Servant Figures in American Gothic Dara Downey Articles In Georgia Wood Pangborn’s 1911 short story “Broken Glass,” the narrator, a fussy mother living somewhere in rural America, is reproached by a mysteri... Read More...
On Becoming an Americanist Kevin Power Articles The private roots of scholarship are seldom very respectable. I bring this up because I’ve been thinking about the two small events that made me an Am... Read More...
IAAS 50th Anniversary Special Issue on Irish American Studies Tim Groenland Editorials In October 1970, Richard Nixon—then approaching the end of his second year as US President—landed in Shannon Airport to commence a three-day visit to ... Read More...
Review: Ernst, Matter-Siebel, and Schmidt, eds., Revisionist Approaches to American Realism and Naturalism Alan Gibbs Reviews Jutta Ernst, Sabina Matter-Siebel, and Klaus H. Schmidt, editors. Revisionist Approaches to American Realism and Naturalism. Universitätsverlag Winter... Read More...
Review: Bernice M. Murphy, Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction Yves Laberge Reviews Bernice M. Murphy. Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Students and academics always need keywords and ... Read More...
Issue 8 Editorial David Coughlan Editorials Welcome to the eighth issue of IJAS Online, the official journal of the Irish Association for American Studies. After two special issues in 2017 and 2... Read More...
The Long Civil Rights Narrative of Show Me a Hero Mikkel Jensen Articles Despite the important civil rights legal victories of the 1960s (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act... Read More...
A Conflict-Laden Consensus: Is the U.S. a One-Party System in Disguise? Olga Thierbach-McLean Articles With Donald Trump as U.S. President and leader of the Republican Party, the ideological divide between American conservatives and liberals seems great... Read More...
The Underground Frontier: Norman Mailer’s An American Dream Kevin Power Articles earning to know dread is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known dread or by sinking ... Read More...
“To Be Murdered”: Simulations of Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Violence in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood Steffen Wöll Articles “This is the Real World”: Introduction We will come to the water’s edge and lie on the grass and there will be a small, unobtrusive sign that says, ... Read More...
Liminal Spaces and Contested Narratives in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Parámo and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh Articles The IAAS W. A. Emmerson Lecture 2019 Both Juan Rulfo and George Saunders evoke the power of a literary text to challenge received narratives of the p... Read More...
Review: Michael J. Lewis, City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning Jan Frohburg Reviews Lewis, Michael J. City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning. Princeton UP, 2016. There are rare instances when historical scholarship g... Read More...
Review: Jesús Blanco Hidalga, Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community: Narratives of Salvation Jennifer Daly Reviews Hidalga, Jesús Blanco. Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community: Narratives of Salvation. Bloomsbury, 2017. Jonathan Franzen has written five ... Read More...
Review: Eileen T. Lundy and Edward J. Lundy, eds., Practicing Transnationalism: American Studies in the Middle East Marcus Walsh-Führing Reviews Lundy, Eileen T., and Edward J. Lundy, editors. Practicing Transnationalism: American Studies in the Middle East. U of Texas P, 2016. Practicing T... Read More...
Review: Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism Tomás Dodds Reviews Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera. After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism. Routledge, 2018. On the 1st of October 2018,... Read More...
Review: Laurence W. Mazzeno and Sue Norton, eds., European Perspectives on John Updike Daniel Picker Reviews Laurence W. Mazzeno and Sue Norton, eds. European Perspectives on John Updike. Camden House, 2018. European Perspectives on John Updike presents tw... Read More...
Review: Joe B. Fulton, Mark Twain Under Fire Clair A. Sheehan Reviews Joe B. Fulton. Mark Twain Under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy 1851-2015. Camden House, 2018. With his latest publicatio... Read More...
Review: Samuele F. S. Pardini, In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans and Modernity Christian O'Connell Reviews Samuele F. S. Pardini. In the Name of the Mother: Italian Americans, African Americans and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen. D... Read More...
Issue 7 Editorial: Special Postgraduate Issue Rosemary Gallagher Editorials Taking its inspiration from the Great Seal of the United States, the November 2015 Irish Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium consi... Read More...
“The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here”: Writing American Identity in Liberia, 1830–1850 Carmel Lambert Articles In the early winter of 1821, a ship called the Nautilus sailed from Richmond, Virginia, to West Africa. Aboard were thirty-three “free people of colou... Read More...
Race and Protest in New Orleans: Streetcar Integration in the Nineteenth Century Hilary McLaughlin-Stonham Articles At the outbreak of the Civil War, New Orleans expanded the city’s streetcar service and, for the use of black patrons, incorporated Star cars into the... Read More...
Hawthorne’s “Dangerous Soul” and Jacksonian Individualism: Artistic Isolation in Fanshawe and “The Artist of the Beautiful” James Hussey Articles In his seminal American Renaissance, Frances Otto Matthiessen points to the development by Nathaniel Hawthorne of tragic elements of character, noting... Read More...
Ego Pluribus Unum: How One Man, Speaking for Many, Changed Hip-Hop Andrew Duncan Articles “King of the Assholes, drama queen, Red Bull’d 12-year old, Next Chappelle, strangely relatable Megaman,” Black supremacist, hypocrite, poet, social c... Read More...
“Before You Come Alive, Life Is Nothing; It’s Up to You to Give It a Meaning”: Making Meaning in James Sallis’ Death Will Have Your Eyes Kelsie Donnelly Articles Following Jean-Paul Sartre’s claim that “efore you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning” (Existentialism and Human Emotion... Read More...
The Viewer Society: ‘New Panopticism’, Surveillance, and the Body in Dave Eggers’ The Circle Jennifer Gouck Articles Winner of the 2016 WTM Riches Essay Prize According to Thomas Mathiesen, “In a two-way and significant double sense of the word, we live i... Read More...
Empty Constructs: The Postmodern Haunted House in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves Seán Travers Articles Special Mention in the 2016 WTM Riches Essay Prize According to Dale Bailey, “since Poe first described the House of Usher in 1839, the mot... Read More...
Review: Marc Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia Miranda Corcoran Reviews Leeds, Marc. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia. Revised and updated ed., Delacorte, 2016. The novels, plays and short stories of Kurt Vonnegut can be said ... Read More...
Review: Catrin Gersdorf and Juliane Braun, eds., America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment Sarah Cullen Reviews Gersdorf, Catrin, and Juliane Braun, eds. America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment. Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016. American Studies 270... Read More...
Review: Jon C. Teaford, The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise and Reality Lucy Cheseldine Reviews Teaford, Jon C. The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise and Reality. 3rd ed. John Hopkins UP, 2016. The title of the third edition of... Read More...
Issue 6 Editorial: Special Issue on Marilynne Robinson Jennifer Daly Editorials With the publication of Housekeeping in 1980, Marilynne Robinson announced herself on the literary stage as a writer of singular fiction – and then pr... Read More...
“His soul is marching on”: Suppressing John Brown in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Elizabeth Abele Articles The trail across the sky retraces periodically, for as a universal force, outside of history, Brown is an archetype or prototype, a meteor that recurs... Read More...
Vision as Creation and Alternative: The Role of the Author Function in Marilynne Robinson’s Plural Text Gospels of Gilead Daniel Muhlestein Articles And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shal... Read More...
The Nature of the Horizon: Genealogy in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Adrianna Smith Articles The structural and literary symbolism of the horizon/horizontality is one of the most powerful and versatile devices in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gil... Read More...
Unaffected: Marilynne Robinson’s Postmodern Sentimentalism Lisa Mendelman Articles The opening lines to Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel Housekeeping famously locate the novel in two literary genealogies. Evoking the opener of Melvill... Read More...
“The Empty Mirror”: Selfhood and the Utility of Language in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping Andrew Cunning Articles We remain unknown to ourselves. Nieztsche, On the Genealogy of Morals 3. Nietzsche places this declaration right at the beginning of his Genealo... Read More...
Those Same Trees: Narrative Sequence and Simultaneity in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels Rachel Sykes Articles In 2014, the publication of Marilynne Robinson’s fourth novel, Lila, completed a trilogy of books set in the small fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. Th... Read More...
Democracy, and Other Fictions: On the Politics of Robinson’s Non-Fiction Tim Jelfs Articles Since the publication of her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), Marilynne Robinson has built up a large body of non-fiction that sits beside, and in di... Read More...
(Sub)merged Worlds in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping Kelsie Donnelly Articles Special Mention in the 2016 W.T.M Riches Essay Prize This essay explores the (sub)merged worlds depicted in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping (... Read More...
Review: Stephen Burt, the poem is you: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them Philip McGowan Reviews Burt, Stephen. the poem is you: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them. The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2016. 432 pages. ISBN 9780674737... Read More...
Issue 5 Editorial David Coughlan Editorials Welcome to the fifth issue of IJAS Online, the official journal of the Irish Association for American Studies. Our contributions this issue include ar... Read More...
Thirty-Six-Point Perpetua: John Updike’s Personal Essays in the Later Years Sue Norton and Laurence W. Mazzeno Articles Laurence W. Mazzeno (Alvernia University) Sue Norton (Dublin Institute of Technology) Posterity In his Preface to Due Consideration... Read More...
Winner of the 2015 WTM Riches Essay Prize: Diagnosing Kurt Vonnegut: A Response to Susanne Vees-Gulani on the Subject of Slaughterhouse-Five Ciarán Kavanagh Articles Ciarán Kavanagh University College Cork In “Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: A Psychiatric Approach to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five,” S... Read More...
Review: Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings, eds. Kevin McDonnell and R. Kent Rasmussen Clair A. Sheehan Reviews Review: Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings. Edited by Kevin MacDonnell and R. Kent Rasmussen (Bloomsbury, 2016) Buy here. Clair... Read More...
Review: Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, Post-Jungian Psychology and the Short Stories of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut Miranda Corcoran Reviews Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, Post-Jungian Psychology and the Short Stories of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut (Routledge, 2016) Buy here Miranda Corcora... Read More...
Review: Stephen Matterson, Melville: Fashioning in Modernity Johanna Hoorenman Reviews Review: Stephen Matterson, Melville: Fashioning in Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2014) Johanna Hoorenman Utrecht University Melville: Fashioning in Mo... Read More...
Issue 4 Editorial: Special Postgraduate Issue Jennifer Daly Editorials In November 2014, the IAAS welcomed postgraduate and early-career scholars from across Ireland and the UK to Trinity College Dublin for the annual pos... Read More...
Consuming Beauty: Mass-Market Magazines and Make-up in the 1920s Rachael Alexander Articles Consuming Beauty: Mass-Market Magazines and Make-up in the 1920s Rachael Alexander University of Strathclyde Now, it would be an over... Read More...
“No such thing as a ‘Canadian'”: Memory, Place, and Identity in Mavis Gallant’s Linnet Muir Stories Kate Smyth Articles “No such thing as a ‘Canadian’”: Memory, Place, and Identity in Mavis Gallant’s Linnet Muir Stories Kate Smyth Trinity College Dublin ... Read More...
“To Make For Myself a Person”: Immigrant Identities in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers Katie Ahern Articles “To Make For Myself a Person”: Immigrant Identities in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers Katie Ahern University College Cork Anzia Yezierska was... Read More...
The Poetics of the Sentence: Examining Gordon Lish’s Literary Legacy Tim Groenland Articles The Poetics of the Sentence: Examining Gordon Lish’s Literary Legacy Tim Groenland Trinity College Dublin In September 2008, Gary Lutz, autho... Read More...
“She it was to whom ads were dedicated”: Materialism, Materiality and the Feminine in Nabokov’s Lolita Laura Rose Byrne Articles “She it was to whom ads were dedicated”: Materialism, Materiality and the Feminine in Nabokov’s Lolita. Laura Rose Byrne Trinity College Dublin ... Read More...
WTM Riches Essay Prizewinner: The Search for a Mother in Toni Morrison’s Paradise Sarah Cullen Articles The WTM Riches Essay Prize was established in 2004 to recognise and reward high-quality work being done by younger scholars in many of the areas that ... Read More...
Review: Edward Clarke, The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens Karolina Vancurová Reviews Review: Edward Clarke, The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens Karolina Vancurová Charles University, Prague Edward Clarke’s Th... Read More...
Review: Dara Downey, American Women’s Ghost Stories in the Gilded Age Ann Patten Reviews Review: Dara Downey, American Women's Ghost Stories in the Gilded Age Ann Patten Critics of American gothic fiction often have noted s... Read More...
Review: Lee M. Jenkins, The American Lawrence Gillian Groszewski Reviews Review: Lee M. Jenkins, The American Lawrence Gillian Groszewski Lee M. Jenkins’s The American Lawrence is an arresting book. The title is print... Read More...
Issue 4 Contributors Jennifer Daly Contributors Katie Ahern is a PhD candidate in the School of English, University College Cork. Her research interests include the works of Edith Wharton, Anzia Yez... Read More...
Editorial: Issue 3 Alex Runchman Editorials Editorial Stephen Matterson and Alex Runchman We apologize for the belatedness of this issue of IJASonline. This is in part due to circumstances wit... Read More...
Last Vegas? Philip McGowan Articles Last Vegas? Philip McGowan (Queen’s University Belfast) This article, and the research out of which it springs, has a number of points of origin; i... Read More...
ALAN GRAHAM MEMORIAL LECTURE: Politics and Principle: Jimmy Carter in the Civil Rights Era Robert A. Strong Articles ALAN GRAHAM MEMORIAL LECTURE Politics and Principle: Jimmy Carter in the Civil Rights Era Robert A. Strong Washington and Lee University April 2... Read More...
“This is said on tiptoe”: Stanley Cavell and the Writing of Philosophy Áine Mahon Articles “This is said on tiptoe”: Stanley Cavell and the Writing of Philosophy Áine Mahon University College Dublin Introduction So we are here, knowing ... Read More...
“E Unibus Pluram”: David Foster Wallace and the Voices of a Fragmented Nation Clare Hayes-Brady Articles “E Unibus Pluram”: the short story and the voices of a fragmented nation. Ignite article, IJAS online 2 One of the truisms of American studies seems... Read More...
“Emily Grimes is me”: Anxiety, Feminism, and the Masculinity Crisis in Richard Yates’s The Easter Parade Jennifer Daly Articles “Emily Grimes is me”: Anxiety, Feminism, and the Masculinity Crisis in Richard Yates’s The Easter Parade Jennifer Daly Trinity College Dublin ... Read More...
Real Journeys of the Imagination: Carson McCullers and Ireland Rebecca Pelan Articles Real Journeys of the Imagination: Carson McCullers and Ireland Rebecca Pelan University College Dublin American author Carson McCullers visited Ire... Read More...
Review: A Journey Through American Literature, Kevin J. Hayes Clare Hayes-Brady Reviews Review: Kevin J. Hayes, A Journey Through American Literature, Kevin J. Hayes (Oxford: OUP, 2012) Clare Hayes-Brady University College Dublin A blu... Read More...
Review: Lawrence P. Jackson, The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 Gavan Lennon Reviews Lawrence P. Jackson, The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960. (Princeton and Oxford: Prin... Read More...
Review: Amy Hungerford, Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960 Hanna Bingel Reviews Amy Hungerford, Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) Hanna Bingel Que... Read More...
Review: Desirée Henderson, Grief and Genre in American Literature, 1790-1870 Dara Downey Reviews “[…] the many genres of grief underscore the magnitude of the challenge of making death meaningful, as the unique and individual nature of loss runs up against the dominant conventions that shape memorial traditions and practices” (4).
Review: Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s Irreverent Apparition Donna Maria Alexander Reviews Review: Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma López (eds), Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s Irreverent Apparition Donna Maria Alexander University Col... Read More...
Review: Edward Ragg, Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction Alex Runchman Reviews Review: Edward Ragg, Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) $135 262 pp Alex Runchman Trini... Read More...
Issue 3 Contributors Jennifer Daly Contributors Donna Maria Alexander is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar in the School of English and Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin Ameri... Read More...
Editorial: Issue 2 Philip Coleman Editorials Editorial Philip Coleman Welcome to the second issue of IJASonline, the official journal of the Irish Association for American Studies. This ... Read More...
Tributes to Emory Elliott (1942-2009) Louise Walsh Articles Tributes to Emory Elliott (1942-2009): Compiled and introduced by Louise Walsh
What if the Government Schooling Campaigns (1820s-1920s) to Americanize the Indians and to Anglicize the Irish had never taken place? Michael C. Coleman Articles What if the Government Schooling Campaigns to Americanize the Indians and to Anglicize the Irish had never taken place?
Crooning, Catering, and Changing Careers: Anne Tyler’s and Don Cherry’s Bands (and Bonds) of Gold Cecilia Donohue Articles Crooning, Catering, and Changing Careers: Anne Tyler’s and Don Cherry’s Bands (and Bonds) of Gold
[R]epeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise Gillian Groszewski Articles [R]epeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise: Robert Lowell’s Elegiac Poetry
David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline Adam Kelly Articles David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline
“Tierra entre medio”: Borderlands of Knowledge in the Art of Frida Kahlo Melanie Otto Articles “Tierra entre medio”: Borderlands of Knowledge in the Art of Frida Kahlo
Rubbish: Don DeLillo’s Wastelands Margaret Robson Articles DeLillo’s Underworld is one of the most celebrated of all modern American novels, and perhaps the most complex. This complexity is a product of its extraordinarily precise yet oblique chronological structure, which, in its attempt to account for the entire second-half of the twentieth-century, has challenged all its readers, confused many of them, and alienated some.
“I Wish I had Some Indian Blood”: Hemingway’s Primitivism and the Ojibwa Pimadaziwin Paradigm Peter Rooney Articles “I Wish I had Some Indian Blood”: Hemingway’s Primitivism and the Ojibwa Pimadaziwin Paradigm
Tap Dancing on the Racial Boundary Hannah Durkin Articles “Tap Dancing on the Racial Boundary”: Racial Representation and Artistic Experimentation in Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s Stormy Weather Performance
Delmore Schwartz’s Genesis and ‘international consciousness’ Alex Runchman Articles Delmore Schwartz’s Genesis and ‘international consciousness’
From Mitchelstown to Michigan: Kevin Roche’s Formative Years Ellen Rowley Interviews From Mitchelstown to Michigan: Kevin Roche’s Formative Years
Issue 2 Contributors Jennifer Daly Contributors Piya Chatterjee is an Associate Professor of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and Women’s Studies at University of California, Riv... Read More...
Imagined America: Walt Whitman’s Nationalism in the First Edition of Leaves of Grass Nathanael O'Reilly Articles Nathanael O'Reilly Critics often describe Walt Whitman as America’s national poet, and many have concerned themselves with how Whitman came to hold... Read More...
“If there is such a literature”: Thoughts on Teaching American Literature in Ireland / Irish Literature in America Peggy O'Brien Articles “If there is such a literature”: Thoughts on Teaching American Literature in Ireland / Irish Literature in America
Invented Irishness: The Americanization of Irish Identity in the Works of Joseph O’Connor Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh Articles Invented Irishness: The Americanization of Irish Identity in the Works of Joseph O’Connor
“Irish by descent”? Marianne Moore’s American-Irish Inheritance Tara Stubbs Articles “Irish by descent”? Marianne Moore’s American-Irish Inheritance
“Why Don’t You Write About America?” Victoria Kennefick Articles Frank O'Connor's Representations of Relations between Ireland and America
Jazz, Identity and Sexuality in Ireland during the Interwar Years Johannah Duffy Articles Jazz, Identity and Sexuality in Ireland during the Interwar Years
Review: Arthur Drooker, American Ruins (New York and London: Merrell, 2007) Kit Fryatt Reviews Review: Arthur Drooker, American Ruins (New York and London: Merrell, 2007)
