Requirements for the Minor

Irish Studies Courses -- Spring 2009

Eng 258: Introduction to Irish Studies
Miles, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 25

Content: This course will pose a fundamental question:  What is “Irish Studies?”  During the semester, we will explore many possible responses to this query, and in so doing, students will be introduced to the unique exchange between history, politics, and art on the island of Ireland, both north and south.  In particular, we will explore the connection between politics and literature and assess the varied roles of the poet, the fiction writer, the dramatist, and the memoirist in relationship to historical event.  Students will be introduced to Emory’s extensive Irish archival collection housed in Woodruff’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.  Collectively and individually, students will engage with one-of-a-kind documents including manuscript drafts, correspondence between writers, and related publication materials in order to gain a more nuanced perspective of Irish Studies as both an historical and a living discipline.

Texts: Texts may include James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Patrick Crotty’s Modern Irish Poetry:  An Anthology,Senia Pašeta’s Modern Ireland:  A Very Short Introduction,Marc Mulholland’s Northern Ireland:  A Very Short Introduction.  Films may include Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996), Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday (2002), and Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006).

Particulars:  Active participation in the course is essential.  There will be several short papers and one extended essay assigned over the course of the semester as well as a brief oral presentation.  This course is a requirement for the Irish Studies Minor (see www.irishstudies.emory.edu).

Eng 389RWR/Thea 389: Special Topics in Literature: Total Theater of W. B. Yeats
Flannery, Th 4:00-7:00, Max: 15    

Content: W. B. Yeats is generally acknowledged as the greatest poet and one of the most innovative dramatists of modern times.  As T. S. Elliot wrote:  “[Yeats] is one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them.”

This course will focus on the major poems and plays of Yeats as well as his extraordinarily rich and productive life.  The word “total” in the title refers to the Yeatsian idea of a theater in which all the arts (poetry, music, acting, dance and spatial imagery) are combined.  The other sense of the word reflects Yeats’s lifelong study of folklore, mythology, and the occult sciences as well as his practical involvement in the shaping of modern Ireland as a politician, critic and social activist.

Eng 482RSWR: Seminar in Fiction: James Joyce
Chace, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 15

Content: This course, designed for undergraduates, is an introduction to three of Joyce’s major writings, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses.  Roughly two-thirds of the reading and the class discussion will be devoted to Ulysses and each episode of that book will be given close attention.  The writing demands of the course will include three essays, each more extensive than the last.

Particulars: There will be no final exam in the course, but an occasional in-class quiz might be given.  Every student is expected to contribute to the daily discussions.  The class size is limited to 25 students.

Particulars: Short weekly presentations, bibliographical essay, final paper.

Eng 789R: Desiring History in Irish Literature
Higgins, Tu 1:00-400, Max

For history's a twisted root
with art its small translucent fruit

and never the other way round.
          Paul Muldoon, "7, Middagh Street".

CONTENT: Irish literature is profoundly concerned with historical events and frequently reflects upon its own role as the interventionist interrogator of History.  Similarly, historical events are strongly influenced not only by writers and their works but also by the imagined identities formed by literary texts. Desiring History examines the use of fictional histories and historical fictions in contemporary Irish literature and film in order to investigate the relationship between art and the historical event. We will examine how literary narratives dislodge other versions of history and seep into the popular consciousness, shaping the way in which cultures remember.

The question of historical accuracy is one that informs the burden of representation borne by the texts under consideration as underlined by Brian Friel’s remark, “You don’t go to Macbeth for history.” Historian Roy Foster, in his 2004 book, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland, calls attention to the Irish tendency to narrate history, to tell the Story of Ireland from various (biased) points of view. A central question for our discussions will be: how do alternative histories contribute to the formation of new, often disruptive cultural memories that reshape our collective understanding of the past.
 
TEXTS:  Writers and critics may include Eavan Boland, In a Time of Violence; Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary; Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger; Roy Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland; Brian Friel, Freedom of the City and Making History; Seamus Heaney, North; Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland; Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness; Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British; Ian McBride, History and Memory in Modern Ireland; Joseph O’Connor Star of the Sea and W.B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916.”

PARTICULARS: Short weekly presentations, bibliographical essay, final paper.

"It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abbatoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.” Heaney, “Crediting Poetry”, Opened Ground