IASIL 2019 – ‘The Critical Ground’ and Women’s Literary History

Anna Pilz Over the course of a week in late July 2019, close to 300 scholars gathered at Trinity College Dublin to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ‘International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures’. Under the theme of ‘Critical Ground’, delegates and…

Research Pioneers 1: John Wilson Foster

Research Pioneers in Irish Women’s Writing: An Interview Series Introduction Since the 1990s, scholarship on Irish women’s writing has made some significant strides in recovering forgotten authors and texts. Thanks to pioneering work by researchers such as John Wilson Foster, Patricia Coughlan, Heidi Hansson,…

MINING THE WORKS OF IRISH WOMEN WRITERS, PART II

Kathleen Williams See Mining the works of Irish Women Writers Part 1 here. In 2005, granted a two-month research leave from the Boston College Libraries, I worked on a project that sought to raise visibility of Irish women writers.  The project included creating an…

Mining the Works of Irish Women Writers, Primary Sources in Archival Collections

Kathleen Williams As researchers, particularly those exploring Irish women’s writings know, challenges abound!  Just as many of the works of Irish women writers have been hidden, so have, or indeed, still are, the primary sources that would foster greater understanding of the women and…

An Appreciation of Winifred Letts

“An Appreciation of Winifred Letts” [1] Dr. David Clare, Mary Immaculate College, UL   Winifred Letts was born in Salford, in what is now Greater Manchester, in 1882 to an English vicar father and an Irish mother. As a child, she greatly enjoyed the…

“A good English factory-girl”: the erased Irishness of nineteenth-century poet Fanny Forrester in Ben Brierley’s Journal

Dr Suz Garrard Twenty-first century newspapers and media outlets have unparalleled power to not only shape the narratives surrounding superstructural subjects such as immigration, but to construct the social, political, and national identities of the individuals they represent. The power of the media to…

Truth or Dare: Martina Devlin shares the introduction of her new book

Leaders. Rebels. Pioneers. Short stories about some of Ireland’s trailblazing women by award-winning writer Martina Devlin. In this collection we encounter Countess Markievicz back from the dead to cast a disapproving eye over modern Ireland, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on hunger strike in jail, and Somerville and Ross discussing book…

The Mystery of the Disappeared Drishane Archive

By Julie Anne Stevens Research recalls detective work. The scholar follows clues to solve unanswered questions or to reveal forgotten or overlooked information. The archive gives opportunity to track clues, and while one of scholarship’s pleasures lies in this search, one of its compulsions…

Noêlle Ffrench Davies: A Transnational Irish Polymath

S Morgan Dr. Noēlle Davies (1889-1983), née Ffrench, of Mount Talbot, Co. Roscommon, was a 20th Century intellectual, educationist, litterateur and political activist across Ireland, Wales, Denmark and Europe. Her story is largely unexplored. Using transnational sources, we can trace and assemble her 50…

IASIL 2018: Reimaging Traditions

Dr Lindsay Janssen This year’s IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literature) conference, ‘Reimaging Traditions’ was held at Radboud University, Nijmegen (the Netherlands; RU). RU is my alma mater and although I do not work there anymore, I was asked to co-organise…