Irish Studies: Geographies and Genders

Product Description Highlighting the work of both established and emerging scholars in Irish studies, this collection brings together fifteen essays working at the intersection of two important and developing fields of Irish studies: gender studies and cultural geography. Developed from papers first presented at a regional meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in South Carolina in 2006, not only does this work suggest the importance of linking gender and geography, but it also suggests, in the range of literary and historical topics, the rich interdisciplinary nature of Irish studies at present. Central to all of the essays is an attention to intersections of gender and sexual identity formation with the politics of place and space. Although considerations of geographic space have long been staples of Irish cultural studies, especially in relation to political identities, these pieces suggest the critical importance of linking spatial and geographic analysis more clearly to ongoing examinations of gender and sexuality. From institutions such as the Magdalen laundries and the prison to the domestic garden and home, across urban and rural landscapes, from the Dublin GPO to a St. Patty's festival in the southern United Statesthis book examines the local and human contexts of identity formation and performance. About the Author Ed Madden is associate professor of English and associate director of Women and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Signals, which won the South Carolina Poetry Prize, and Tiresian Poetics: Modernism, Sexuality, Voice 1888-2001, a study of twentieth century aesthetics grounded in sexual dissidence. Marti D. Lee is a PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina in twentieth-century British and Irish literature and medieval literature. Currently an adjunct professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University, she is completing a dissertation on 20th century adaptations of the Cuchulain myth.