Issue 9 2020 – Irish Journal of American Studies

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 Ireland, announcing upon his arrival that he could “proudly ... 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 Americanist. They happened in adolescence, when we are at our ... 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 mysterious figure for having scolded her young Irish nursemaid. As ... 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 the Present.” I still remember vividly its opening lecture, ... 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 descent (for example, James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy ... 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 in collaboration with the QUB Centre for the Americas, which ... 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 technological orientation. Unlike those who study English in most uni... 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 killing sparked worldwide protests in the middle of a pandemic wit... 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 around the world. A retreat in democracy implies a weakening of ... 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, America’s past was uncontested. In my teens, I read To Kill a... Read More...

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 history as it has intersected with my own academic career to ... Read More...

Moses Roper, The First Fugitive Slave Lecturer in Ireland, 1838

Fionnghuala Sweeney and Bruce Baker

Articles

Born into slavery in North Carolina around 1815, Moses Roper is a significant if understudied figure in Irish studies, Black Atlantic studies, and American studies more generally. His flight to the United Kingd... Read More...

Kindred Spirits: Solidarity Between the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Ireland

Jessica Militante

Articles

Growing up in California, I often heard stories of my ancestry. There were the ones I heard from my maternal grandmother, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Then there were the ones I heard from my pat... Read More...

“[N]ow There Ought to Be a Watchman”: Curfews and Race in U.S. Literature

Sarah Cullen

Articles

Caroline Lee Hentz’s 1854 pro-slavery novel The Planter’s Northern Bride was one of the many responses to the sensational success of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (published two years earlier). In H... Read More...

What a Difference a Word Makes: Reconsidering Language in Huckleberry Finn

Clair A. Sheehan

Articles

As a lifelong lover of Mark Twain’s writing and his ironic humour, I came to American studies abroad assuming Twain’s work would be one of the foundation stones of most of the American Literature modules taught... Read More...

American Wakes and the Global Troubles: U.S. Collapse Fiction and the Irish Future

Dorothea Gail

Articles

Arnold Toynbee reminds us that all civilizations fall (cf. also Diamond). We are arguably at a cliff edge, over which the U.S. is by many accounts already tumbling in slow motion, possibly dragging much of West... Read More...

Undecided: Nixon, Trump, and the Risks of Counting on the Silent Majority

Sarah Thelen

Articles

In the midst of what might well be the most significant election in US history, it’s more than a little surreal to be (a) an American abroad, (b) an historian, and (c) a Nixon scholar. I know I’m not the only o... Read More...

“The Conviviality of Thinking Together”: Personal Notes & Recollections for IAAS@50

Philip Coleman

Articles

1. From Academy Street to Academia On the thirtieth of June, 1993, I took a bus to Cork from Cahir, my hometown in Tipperary, to collect the results of my first year exams at UCC. During that year I had develo... Read More...

A Transatlantic Conversation: Poetry, Politics, and Violence

Peggy O'Brien

Articles

In September of 1967, I boarded a ship in New York and sailed to Cobh in County Cork. I somehow found my way up to Dublin and eventually to Earlsfort Terrace, where UCD was then, and enrolled in a graduate cour... Read More...

“The Fire Is Not in the Future”: Reflections on American Studies in a Year of Crisis

Andrew Clarke

Articles

The fire is not in the future, so don’t ask when it will be. The fire is not yet to come, for it has happened already. The pandemic took hold, and the world became different. The sense that we lived in a tim... Read More...

The IAAS’s Americanista: An Interview with Catherine Gander (IAAS Chair)

Caroline Schroeter and Sarah McCreedy

Interviews

Editor’s note: Catherine Gander is the Chair of the all-island Irish Association for American Studies and Associate Professor of American Literature at Maynooth University. She is the author of the award-winnin... Read More...

Satire, Symbolism, and the "Working Through" of Historical Ghosts in The Confidence-Man

“‘Normal People’ Indeed!”: Anne Tyler, Sally Rooney, and the Narrative of Youthful Quirk

Depictions of Shame: White Identity and Cultural Blackness in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner

“The Product of a Spoiled America”: Divorce as Collective Crisis in U.S. Popular Culture of the 1990s

The Populist Turn in American Politics: A Review-Essay of Kivisto’s The Trump Phenomenon

On Becoming an Americanist

From Dangerous Outsiders to Beloved Innocents: Irish Servant Figures in American Gothic

Review: Leopold Lippert, Performing America Abroad

Review: Kloeckner, Knewitz, and Sielke, eds., Knowledge Landscapes North America

Review: T. H. Breen, The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America

The Populist Turn in American Politics: A Review-Essay of Kivisto’s The Trump Phenomenon

Review: Andy Connolly, Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition

Review: Ernst, Matter-Siebel, and Schmidt, eds., Revisionist Approaches to American Realism and Naturalism

Review: Bernice M. Murphy, Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction

The IAAS's Americanista: An Interview with Catherine Gander (IAAS Chair)

From Mitchelstown to Michigan: Kevin Roche’s Formative Years

IAAS 50th Anniversary Special Issue on Irish American Studies

On Becoming an Americanist

From Dangerous Outsiders to Beloved Innocents: Irish Servant Figures in American Gothic

The Shock of Recognition: Reading American Fiction in Celtic Tiger Ireland

Some Comments on Irish American Studies

Lonely, But Not Alone: Studying America in Ireland in the Time of COVID-19

Two Roads Diverged

But It Is Your Problem

Reading Transatlantically in the Era of Trump

(Dis)Connections: Civil Rights and Discrimination in America and Northern Ireland

A Backward Glance: My Quarter Century in the IAAS

Moses Roper, The First Fugitive Slave Lecturer in Ireland, 1838

Kindred Spirits: Solidarity Between the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Ireland

“[N]ow There Ought to Be a Watchman”: Curfews and Race in U.S. Literature

What a Difference a Word Makes: Reconsidering Language in Huckleberry Finn

American Wakes and the Global Troubles: U.S. Collapse Fiction and the Irish Future

Undecided: Nixon, Trump, and the Risks of Counting on the Silent Majority

“The Conviviality of Thinking Together”: Personal Notes & Recollections for IAAS@50

A Transatlantic Conversation: Poetry, Politics, and Violence

“The Fire Is Not in the Future”: Reflections on American Studies in a Year of Crisis

The IAAS’s Americanista: An Interview with Catherine Gander (IAAS Chair)