New publications in Reimagining Ireland series

NEW BOOK FROM PETER LANG

New Voices, Inherited Lines: Literary and Cultural Representations of the Irish Family

Edited by Yvonne O’Keeffe and Claudia Reese

Oxford: Peter Lang

230 pp. | ISBN 978-3-0343-0799-4 | £40.00

Irish writers have always been fascinated by the family, sometimes depicting it as a traditional space under threat from external influences, sometimes highlighting the dangers lurking within. More recently, families have been represented as a type of safe haven from a bewildering postmodern world. At the heart of these constructions are questions of power and agency, as well as issues of class, gender, ethnicities and sexualities.

This collection of essays explores literary and cultural representations of the Irish family, questioning the validity of traditional familial structures as well as exploring newer versions of the Irish family emerging in more recent cultural representations. In addition to redefinitions of the nuclear family, the book also considers aspects of family constructions in Irish nationalist discourse, such as the symbolic use of the family and the interaction and conflict between private and public roles. The works and authors discussed range from Famine fiction, Samuel Beckett, Mary Lavin and John McGahern to Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín and Hugo Hamilton.

Contents: Christopher Cusack/Lindsay Janssen: Death in the Family: Reimagining the Irish Family in Famine Fiction, 1871-1912 – Yvonne O’Keeffe: Home Is Where the Heart Is: (De)constructing Family Ties in the Emigrant Novels of Mary Anne Madden Sadlier – Stephanie Eggermont: Bad Breeding in George Egerton’s Irish Families – Jack Fennell: Siege Cultures: The Early Twentieth-Century Rhetoric of External Threats to the Irish Catholic Family 75 – Julie Bates: Beckett’s Maternal Miscellany – Theresa Wray: Sisters Under the Skin: Signalling a Viable Alternative to Blood-Relations in Mary Lavin’s Short Stories – Máire Doyle: Exploring the Alternatives: The Orphan and the Family in John McGahern’s Fiction – Claudia Reese: The Secrets That You Inherit: Family and Identity Construction in Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People – Louise Sheridan: Escaping the Role of the ‘Irish Mammy’: Motherhood and Migration in Kate O’Riordan’s The Memory Stones – Hannelore Fasching: ‘The new drama of being a mother about which so little has been written’: Maternal Subjectivity and the Mother Icon in Anne Enright’s Writing – Bridget English: Laying Out the Bones: Death, Trauma and the Irish Family in Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship and Anne Enright’s The Gathering.

Available from Peter Lang

NEW BOOK FROM PETER LANG

The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television

By Zélie Asava

Oxford: Peter Lang

203 pp. | ISBN 978-3-0343-0839-7 | £36.00

This book examines the position of black and mixed-race characters in Irish film culture. By exploring key film and television productions from the 1990s to the present day, the author uncovers and interrogates concepts of Irish identity, history and nation.

In 2009, Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe, with almost 24 per cent of births attributed to the ‘new Irish’. By 2013, 17 per cent of the nation was foreign-born. Ireland has always been a culturally diverse space and has produced a series of high-profile mixed-race stars, including Phil Lynott, Ruth Negga and Simon Zebo, among others. Through an analysis of screen visualizations of the black Irish, this study uncovers forgotten histories, challenges the perceived homogeneity of the nation, evaluates integration, and considers the future of the new Ireland. It makes a creative and significant theoretical contribution to scholarly work on the relationship between representation and identity in Irish cinema.

This book is the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Irish Studies.

Contents: ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’: Being Black and Irish in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1993) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005) – Gendering the Other: Raced Women in Irish Television (Prosperity (RTE, 2007), Love is The Drug (RTE, 2004) and Fair City (RTE, 1989-present) – New Identities in the Irish Horror Film: Isolation (O’Brien, 2005) and Boy Eats Girl (Bradley, 2005) – Black and Mixed Masculinities in Irish Cinema: The Nephew (Brady, 1998), Irish Jam (Eyres, 2006) and The Front Line (Gleeson, 2006) – Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: Trafficked (O’Connor, 2009) and the Multicultural Irish Thriller – The Raced Stranger in Contemporary Cinema: Between the Canals (O’Connor, 2011), Sensation (Hall, 2010), The Good Man (Harrison, 2012) and The Guard (McDonagh, 2011).

Available from Peter Lang