Current Research: Literary Memory of the Irish Famine 

This course aims to offer an examination of how the trauma of the Great Famine (1845-1849) has been mediated in Irish (diaspora) literature, from early literary recollections to early twentieth-century representations. We will read a variety of genres (drama, prose, poetry), from authors living in Ireland or abroad as (descendants of) immigrants, paying specific attention to the performance of cultural memory in connection to national and ethnic identity.

The literary mediation of the Famine played an important role in the Land Wars and Irish nationalist movements of the 1870s and 1880s, such as the Fenian brotherhood and “Young Ireland”, as well as in Ireland’s struggle for independence during the Easter Rising (1916) and Civil War (1921). We will therefore explore the role of the Famine in nationalist literature written on both sides of the Transatlantic, so that we can come to an understanding of the mechanisms of cultural mediation through time and through relocation, with specific attention to the experiences of diaspora and exile that were generated by the Great Famine. We will approach this performance of the memory of Famine in literature from a theoretical perspective. We will examine the function of literature as a medium of performing memory, and we will incorporate several theories on trauma (Assman, LaCapra), as well as on performing cultural memory in literature (Rigney, Erll) in our class debates.

Bibliography (10% of final grade), written biographical entry (20% of final grade), presentation (30% of final grade), research essay (40% of final grade).